What Swimming Can Do for You

 

 

Reigning NCAA Champions from 2015 to 2017. Texas Men’s Swim and Dive have a total of 13 titles

 

Throughout this blog post, we have touched on the four swim strokes, different drills for each, and even discussed other aspects outside of the pool to help you in the water, from dryland exercises to mental training. Through these posts, I hope you learn basic things swimming can teach you in life. Here is what I hoped you learn from the sport:

1. You have to work hard to get what you want: Nothing in life comes easily, but it can be easier if you work hard. Some days you will not feel like it, but in the end, you will thank yourself.
2. You Learn How to Cope with Failure: As stated above, you have to work hard to get what you want. Yet many times, you do not achieve the goals you want and you wonder why you are wasting your time. Instances like this will teach you how to be mentally tougher.
3. You Learn to Discipline Yourself: Every day you choose to go to practice is teaching yourself how to stick with something. Some days you might hate it, other days you do not.
4. How you lose is as important as how you win

At the end of the process, you will be glad you started this journey and your body and mind will thank you too.

Block Starts

Do you feel ready to finally get up and race in a real competition setting? Whether that is in the form of a triathlon, US Masters Swimming, or you just want to see how it feels. Starts from a block are one of the best ways to improve your race time and see if you have quick reaction skills.

The first step you have to do to dive off the blocks is to see if your pool allows you to dive off the blocks. Many times community pools only allow their swim team to dive off the blocks because of insurance-related reasons. If your pool does not let you use the blocks, do not worry as you can dive in from the side of the blocks (unless your pool has no diving signs).

Let’s say your pool does allow you to dive off the blocks. On the blocks, you are going to stagger your feet, having your dominant foot in the front and the other foot behind it. Your dominant foot should have your toes slightly over the edge and your other foot should only have the balls of your foot to the toes on the block. The heel of your less dominant foot should be lifted up, to help you push off the block.

One aspect of the start that people tend not to realize is that you should not be aiming to push up in a dive, but rather out. If you try to dive up, then you have a greater chance of hitting the bottom of the pool. Think about it this way, you should be aiming to dive out by the flags, but not trying to touch the flags all the way in the air.

Here is an explanation of how to dive from the starting block.

When diving, you need to have a quick reaction start. No one wants to be the last person of the blocks, as it can negatively affect your time. Here are some drills to make your reaction time faster.

Individual Medley Training

If you feel as though you have mastered all four of the strokes, then you might feel ready to try out the individual

Katinka Hosszu, WR holder in both the 200 and 400 IM

medley (I.M.). The IM is similar to the decathlon, yet much easier. What I mean by this is that it is a combination of all of the events in swimming, in either the format of 200 yards/meters or 400 yards/meters. In my opinion, the 400 IM is the hardest event in swimming, as it is long and hard to switch up each stroke every 100. Essentially, the 400 IM is a sprint of all four strokes.

 

Swimming IM gives a swimmer the ability to cross train and work muscles they otherwise would not use if they only trained one stroke. Here are the reasons why it is beneficial to swim IM by each stroke:

1. Butterfly: The best stroke to develop strength and stamina while working the cardiovascular system to all new levels. When you practice a lot of butterfly, you will think the other strokes feel much easier and will have stronger shoulders as a result.
2. Backstroke: This stroke allows you to stretch out your chest and lateral muscles. Backstroke is the best stroke to swim as a warm down, as it helps lower the heart rate and you have a better opportunity to breathe.
3. Breaststroke: Practicing breaststroke works your leg muscles, by strengthening and stretching them.
4. Freestyle: Most practiced stroke, as it is the easiest. When you want to warm up or warm down, it is best to swim freestyle to warm up or cool down your muscles. It is also the only stroke to use for endurance training and pure sprinting.

Here is a link to a great IM set (found on the 2nd page).

Injuries

From all the benefits of swimming, one would think that swimming would have relatively no injuries since it does not push pressure on your knees and hips like running and the water is the most prominent source of resistance against your body. Many injuries swimmers face occur outside the pool, from dryland activities to frequent accidents. In this article, we will mainly focus on injuries that arise from the overuse of your shoulders.

The most common injury in swimming is from an injured rotator cuff, where the tendons in the area are either inflamed or torn. I injured my right rotator cuff muscles when I was 13, and then tore the tendons a few years later. This injury is commonly known as swimmer’s shoulder.

This injury mainly occurs from the overuse of your shoulder muscles plus the fact that the muscles around it are not strong enough to support your stroke. If you ever feel the slightest bit of pain in your shoulders, stop immediately. If you swim through this pain, you are at a risk of tearing your Labrum muscle. There are drills one can do to build up the shoulder muscles, which require minimal amounts of weights. Many times swimmer’s face these injuries because these muscles are weak from not being used very often, as they are mainly worked in the pool.

One of the best ways to prevent this injury is to work on your posture. Standing up straight places less stress on your back and shoulders while helping to make you look taller. Here is a link to more ways to prevent shoulder injuries common in swimming, with drills and tricks in the pool.

If you are a breaststroker, you run the risk of developing “breaststroker’s knee.” This occurs from the over-rotation of your knees, and too much stress is placed on the MCL. If a breaststroker focuses more on the use of their hips in the stroke, they can prevent this injury.

Here is a link to an explanation of the three most common injuries, especially on breaststroker’s knee.

Breaststroke Kick Drills

Breaststroke kick is probably the hardest part of the stroke. It is also the main part of the stroke, where the majority of the power comes from. Most breaststrokers have extremely flexible ankles and hips, as your feet bend in different ways than performed in the other three strokes. 

For the kick, your feet should be flexed unless they are being kicked together, then they are pointed. Your knees should also not go outside your shoulders, and they remain very close together.

One of the best ways to practice your kick is to grab onto the wall and extend your body on top of the water. Holding onto the wall, practice your kick. Your feet should not be coming out of the water and if they are, trying lowering your hips a bit, but they should still be flat with your shoulders. Your feet should also not come above your rear when they come around.

I am not the best breaststroker, so I have provided a link to breaststroke kick drills, which can be found here.

A post for the lazier swimmer… Just kidding!

Sprint freestyle is best for those who enjoy finishing their race as

Nathan Adrian, US Sprint King, and the most reliable US Sprinter

quickly as possible. This was a bit of an exaggeration, but also true if you do not enjoy swimming a distance longer than 100 yards/meters.

 

When swimming a sprint event, one is to swim as fast as they can for the entire event. To do this, one must have a fast RPM and an extremely powerful, not to mention fast, kick. Normally, sprinters tend to be bulkier than a distance swimmer, as they need more muscle to generate power over a shorter distance.

One of the best ways to better your sprint abilities is to work on your RPM. When sprinting, you should not just be spinning your arms, but rather you should move your arms very quickly while grabbing the optimal amount of water with your forearms and hands.

Here is a link to a video of other sprint drills.

Sprinters also spend a lot of time under the water, but not past the 15 meters or yards mark. When under the water, they do not have the resistance of broken water pushing against them from the other swimmers. This does not happen in the prints as much because they are able to pull away from everyone else, while sprinters are stuck in a pack and the race can be determined by a few hundredths of a second.

Here are the three best training trips to improve your sprint events.

Go the Distance

The thought of swimming an event farther than 200 yards frightens many people. In fact, many people feel they could never swim an open water event due to fear they will never be able to finish, and therefore they will

Distance Queen Katie Ledecky, who has the WR in all freestyle events over 200 meters

feel ashamed of themselves.

 

If you are a swimmer who likes to mentally challenge themselves or loves to swim in the ocean, distance swimming is the perfect option for you. Do not worry, as distance swimming can be performed in a regular pool (there will just be A LOT more flip turns). There are fewer distance swimmers than sprinters, as sprinters are seen as somewhat mentally “weaker.”

Distance events are only swum using freestyle stroke, as the other three strokes do not go past 200 yards (but in reality, who wants to swim a 500 butterfly or watch a 1,000 breaststroke?). The events in short course are 500 yards, 1,000 yards, and 1650 yards (the mile). In long course (a 50-meter pool) the events are 400 meters, 800 meters, and 1500 meters (the mile). The 1500 meters for women and the 800 meters for men were recently added to the Olympics for men.

Distance events are one of the best ways to help lower your heart rate and improve your cardiovascular health. Here is a link to the benefits of long-distance swimming versus the sprints.

One of the great aspects of distance swimming is that it allows you to work on our stroke for a longer period of time that is not broken every 30 seconds to three minutes. It also allows you to push yourself in the event, as you swim each 100 under a different plan than the last 100.

Here is another link to how the efficiency of distance swimming.

Fly like a Butterfly, Sting like a Bee

The title of this page can be your motto when performing the butterfly, probably the most difficult and tiring of the four strokes (tbh, I believe breaststroke is harder, but that is because I could never get the leg movements down).

The Butterfly King, Michael Phelps

This stroke is the hardest because it requires A LOT of upper body strength, and I mean most of your power comes from your chest and shoulders. If you do not have strong enough shoulders, you have a higher risk of injuring yourself.

Many of the most famous and decorated swimmers were butterfliers, from Michael Phelps to Mark Spitz to Ian Crocker (where are my Texas fans at??!!). In my opinion, I believe the 100 and 200 butterfly are the most fun events to watch, but definitely not swim. It takes a lot of grace, strength, power, and determination to swim a 200

Mark Spitz, a butterflier who won 7 gold medals at the 1972 Olympics, the most until Phelps

butterfly (the 400 IM is the hardest event, but according to Maya Dirado, an IMer and backstroker, the 200 back is the most difficult).

 

In a later post I will supply you with drills, but for now, I will have y’all swim 2 laps of the stroke to get a feel for it.

Here is a wonderful video on how to swim the stroke.

 

 

 

FREE DRILL$!!!

Did someone say FREE drills??

Yes, but I mean free as in freestyle drills, not free goods. Sorry dude.

On today’s post, I will list some basic freestyle drills to help you with your stroke. On the last post about freestyle drills, I recommended one of my favorites, the catch-up drill (fun fact, I always thought it was called the “ketchup” drill – as in the tomato sauce). Anyway, I would like you to practice this drill again as it is a great way to practice your arm movements.

If you want to practice your breaststroke legs along with your freestyle arms, try the “breaststroke kick with freestyle arms” drill. After every cycle of arm strokes (right and left), perform one breaststroke kick. This will put you in a position that might make you feel uncomfortable (mental, not physical), but don’t forget, feeling uncomfortable is good (if you missed that blog post click here).

Another great drill is called the clenched fist. In this drill, you will swim with your hands in a fist position, making it extremely hard to grab the water. If you really want to spice it up, do this drill (by each 50 yards – 2 laps):

1. Do one 50 of freestyle with a closed fist
2. Next 50 do freestyle with your hands outstretched (fingers should NOT be touching)
3. For the 3rd 50, perform regular freestyle

Repeat this activity 2 to 3 times.

The last drill, which is my favorite freestyle drill, is called 6-kick-and-roll. For this drill, you will be on your side with your right arm stretched above your head and your left arm on your side. Your head should be facing down. For every 6 kicks, you are to take a stroke and alternate to the other side of your body. If you want, you can take 3 strokes in between each kick, but change it to 8 kicks and then three arm strokes. For reference, right-left-right or left-right-left is three arm strokes.

Here is a great link with more freestyle drills and videos on how to do each one.

What Do You Mean by Dryland? Isn’t all Land Dry…?

If you’ve never heard of the term dryland, do not be worried. Majority of people outside the swimming community do not consider weight training, running, push-ups, planks, and many other forms of non-swimming exercise as dryland. Obviously, you should be able to figure out why it’s called dryland, but you may not know the basics of how it works.

Dryland is essential for building muscle outside of the pool, as actual swimming has a hard time training one’s muscular strength. Another plus of dryland is that it is essentially cross-training, and everyone knows staring at a black line or the ceiling can be exceptionally boring. CoachUp Nation lists some of the best exercises for swimmers when training outside of the pool, as all of these drills will not only build muscle but work your cardiovascular system in a different way than swimming is able to.

 

If you do not feel comfortable doing these exercises on your own, I recommend attending different exercise classes at your local gym or even obtaining a personal fitness trainer. If you feel comfortable working out on your own, feel free to do it on the pool deck. Just make sure you wear the appropriate clothing, such as sneakers, shorts, and a t-shirt.

Dryland can help your explosive dive off the blocks, develop a stronger kick, and you’ll be able to pull more water with increased shoulder strength. Here is an article about the best dryland exercises for swimmers.

My only recommendation is to go easy on the shoulder exercises, as swimmers have an increased risk of injuring their rotator cuffs over any other muscle.