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Off season swimming
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: January 30, 2017
I’m going to finish my endurance off-season series with swimming. Now to most competitive swimmers this off-season discussion is going to sound like Swimming 101. But to those relative newcomers such as triathletes, well, this might be unfamiliar territory, especially if the difference between your off-season and your in-season is a gray area that has little separation value between overall seasons. Thus, this column will focus on the requisite elements of a multi-sport athlete’s off-season swim routine.
Okay, from the get-go, I know swimming is the nemesis of most multi-sport athletes. Therefore, it receives the least amount of attention during their in-season. So it shouldn’t surprise you when I say that despite my stressing how workout time should go down for the bike and run during an off-season, it’s quite the opposite for the swim. What’s more, winter is the perfect time to extend your swim training because it’s the only one of the three sports which isn’t really affected by weather.
Gently increasing your off-season swim time still leaves you with less overall off-season training volume because you’ve already decreased your bike and run time. So if you swam two times per week during in-season, increase your weekly swims to three to four times a week during your winter off-season. This way you can use the front end of each workout for technique work and the back end for pacing and interval work.
A multi-sport athlete’s swimming off-season should be a monster focus on technique, all centering on increasing your distance per stroke (decrease your stroke count). This is accomplished by improving three components: top-of-the-water body position, underwater propulsive force and hip rotation. Sounds easy, but there’s a lot of technique work involved here. Below are five of what I consider the most important off-season swim drills to incorporate into your routine.
Breathing Drills: In my opinion breathing technique is the bare bones essential to good freestyle swimming. Most entry-level swimmers lift their heads up to breathe, thereby throwing their bodies out of alignment in the water and becoming less hydrodynamic. The cornerstone of good freestyle form is maintaining your spine as a fixed-axis on which your head rotates side to side, not up and down. The neck and head should remain down as you roll your shoulders forward with each reach. When you extend your arm and roll to the side, turn your head to take a breath. The pocket of air your roll creates will be lower than the waterline, so there’s no need to dip the head up to breath.
Hip Rotation Drills: These drills teach you “body roll,” hip rotation during the stroke. Shoulders, torso, and hips should roll together as one. Rotating means gaining power by putting your outstretched arm into a mechanically better strength position for its subsequent pull.
Catch-Up Drills: These drills teach the swimmer how to maintain a long and straight body alignment position in the water, from the tip of the outstretched arm, hands, and fingers, through the shoulder, all the way down to the toes. What’s more, catch-ups teach proper breath timing and the appropriate starting point for the next pull.
Single Arm Drill: The foundational elements of a great stroke are the pull, recovery, kick, and breath timing. Practicing single arm drills lets you focus on these four elements one side at a time. And by isolating each side of the body you’ll be better able to develop a symmetrical and balanced stroke.
Kicking Drills: Many novice swimmers bend their knees as they kick, creating large amounts of drag. It’s a primary reason why an inefficient swimmer's legs sink low in the water. Kicking drills stress kicking from the hip with relatively straight legs.
Now there are many, many more drills that swimmers can utilize to improve their form and efficiency, so your best bet is to have a qualified swim coach evaluate you in the pool and then point you in the right direction with respect to the drills that best suite your current swim deficiencies.
And don’t forget to use the T-test (test for threshold pacing) every so often to establish target pacing for your interval workouts. It’s also a good way to measure your progress with respect all those form and efficiency drills.