Swim Team Prep flip turn drill

Swim Team Prep flip turn drill

Swim Team Prep class working on: flip turns
streamline gliding
breath control

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Flexibility for Swimming

Flexibility for Swimming

Physique Swim School video blog

Meet Ean. He takes our Swim Team Prep class at City College.

Reach and Pull

The most effective freestyle stroke is long, with a good catch (pull). Today’s workout concentrates on helping you develop the reach and pull that will make your freestyle most effective.  For this workout, you will need a pull buoy.  If a pull buoy is not readily accessible, you can try squeezing a kickboard between your knees instead (warning: this tends to be far trickier).

• 8 x 100 warm up (swim, kick, drill, swim – alternate freestyle and choice)

• 4 x 200 kick (10 seconds rest between each)

• 2 x 50 3-3-3 drill with kicks (arms at side)
• 2 x 50 swim
• 2 x 50 underwater recovery drill (arms pull down, and slice up above your head in the water instead of coming out of the water)
• 2 x 50 swim
• 2 x 50 high elbow recovery drill
• 2 x 50 swim
• 2 x 50 fast pull drill (your recovery should be slow and your pull should be fast – note if you are picking up the speed of your pull, your rotation will also need to speed up)
• 2 x 50 swim
• Repeat

• 6 x 100 pull (slow, medium, fast, repeat)

• 300 cool down

Below are a couple of good drills targeting the reach and the pull:

Mix It Up

One thing that most athletic trainers will agree on is that you must diversify your workouts to reap the benefits.  This doesn’t mean that you need to run 10 miles one day, swim 3,000 yards the next and do two hours of yoga on day three. This means that you need to break out of your comfort zone. Are you a distance swimmer?  Try some sprints? Are you a breaststroker? Try some backstroke? Your body adapts to your workouts, so it is important to switch up your workouts in order for your body to continually strengthen.

Today’s workout is a go to workout when you’re stuck in a rut.  It’s a bit of it all.  So get ready, get set, get wet!

• 200 warm up

• 4 x 100 (swim, kick, drill, swim)
• 4 x 200 kick (build within each 200)
• 5 x 75 pull (25 fast, 25 medium, 25 fast)

• climb out of the pool at the deep end
• 19 x 25 (odds: dive in sprint, evens: swim back easy)

• 1 x 500 (negative split each 100)

• 16 x 100 (pull, drill, kick, swim – IM order)
• climb out between each 100 and perform dryland (alternate: 45 second wall sit, 25 push ups, 50 crunches, 45 second plank)

• 400 easy

It’s Time to Begin

In honor of fall session beginning this week, today’s workout will be for swimmers just beginning to challenge themselves with swimming for exercise. As with learning anything new, swimming involves a learning curve. When you start using swimming as a cardio workout, you can’t expect to dive in and swim a 3,000 yard workout your first time. Make your goals achievable and you will be eager to tackle your next workout.

• 50 warm up

• 2 x 25 kick on front
• 3 x 25 kick on back
• 4 x 25 kick on side

• 2 x 25 6-kick switch
• 2 x 25 3-kick switch
• 2 x 25 swim

• 50 easy

If you feel like more of a challenge, swim 4 x 25′s, 4 x 50′s or 4 x 100′s.  You can also repeat each set. 

Hold Your Breath

One of the biggest benefits of being a swimmer if the ability to hold your breath (and make a wish) going through a tunnel.  How many times as a kid did you head into a tunnel, squeeze your eyes tight, puff out your cheeks and cross your fingers that you’d make it through the tunnel so your wish would come true?  For me, this was a more common occurrence than I may openly admit.  Perhaps it was so common because A) I had a lot of wishes or B) I was good at it because of my “swimmers’ lungs”.  Swimming demands breath control.  The less you breathe (i.e., move your head), the faster you swim.  This ultimately leads to the theory: if you want to swim as fast as possible, breathe the least amount possible.

Today we’re going to play around with breathing.  This is one of my favorite work outs and I hope you’ll enjoy it as well!

• 200 warm up (breathe every 3 strokes)

• 4 x 100 (25 breathe every 3, 25 breathe every 4, 25 breath every 5, 25 breathe every 6)
• 4 x 50 (1 and 3: breathe every 3, 2 and 4: breathe every 5)
• 4 x 25 (1: breathe up to 3 times; 2: breathe up to 2 times; 3: breathe up to 1 time; 4: no breathing)
• Repeat twice more

• 6 x 100 kick with board (slow, medium fast, repeat)
• 12 x 50 pull (long distance breathing pattern 3, 2, 3)
• 24 x 25 sprint (less than 2 breaths)

• 300 easy