Many swimmers want to get faster in the water and look to technology like Fastskin suits while dismissing strength training because of it’s lack of sport-specificity being a non-impact, non weight-bearing sport. Those swimmers who realize the importance and benefits of strength training harness the ability to swim faster by training smarter.
Over the last several years more research has emerged showing the benefits swimmers can gain from doing strength training and the best practices a fitness coach/personal trainer/strength coach should employ to help their athletes reach their full swim potential.
The fitness/strength coach should focus conditioning on 1- improving the times when the swimmers make contact with solid surfaces (IE the start and the turn) and 2- helping keep the athletes injury-free through proper shoulder and hip exercises (prehab). By concentrating efforts on these 2 things they can positively and significantly improve the swimming performance of their athletes.
TAKE-AWAYS:
- If you want to get faster in the water you’ve got to strength train by focusing on your leg/hip strength needed for squats and vertical jumping which is the pretty much the same thing as your start and flip-turn.
- Everyone knows the fastest part of your race is during on the start and on your flip-turns. By focusing the training on those times and movements you can make those fast times even faster.
- Your back should be doing more work and be more developed than your pecs/chest.
- Knowing what muscles to train to keep you injury-free (impingement) and when to train them is paramount to optimizing your swimming performance.
Would you like to see your times improve by doing real strength training?
REFERENCES:
Bishop, Cree, Reed, et al. Strength and Conditioning for Sprint Swimming. Strength and Cond. Journal.2013;35(6):1-6.
Bishop, Smith, Smith, Rigby. Effect of Plyometric Training on Swimming Block Start Performance in Adolescents. Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research.2009;23(7):2137-2143. doi:10.1519/JSC.0b013e3181b866d0
