Going For The Gold: Training In Swimming
Going For The Gold: Training In Swimming
There is not much of a life for swimmers. Imagine practicing seven days a week, two times a day for four hours each time in the pool. This is an ongoing process if one desires to become a nationally ranked swimmer. Because swimmers swim all year, their work-outs build up as their competition approaches making it harder to have time of their own. When they get closer to the big meet, swimmers put in more time at the pool and weight room. Since physical fitness along with preparation becomes essential as the important meet nears, a training process through the year is necessary for swimmers to compete successfully. According to Steve Clark, who was once a world recorder holder and Olympic and world class swimmer, in Competitive Swimming As I See It, swimmers improve their performance by splitting a swim season into three phases: early season, mid-season and pre-competition (85).
Early season training helps swimmers get into shape progressively without starting off with hard training from the beginning according to Swimming Coach and Physical Education Professor, James Councilman’s, book, Science of Swimming (239). The early season training regains swimmers’ strength after the swimmer does not have strenuous work-outs. Each week grows more intense than the previous as the early season progresses. The early season prepares for the mid-season, which usually begins after first month. In order to train a swimmer into the mid-season, the early season has to “improve the swimmers’ strength and flexibility through dry land exercises, to improve stroke mechanics, starts and turns of the swimmers, and prepare or condition the body for the hard work that is to come in the next phase” (253).
Dry land activities have a direct effect upon swimmers’ strength. During dry land activities, it is important for swimmers to work the muscles that are mainly used to swim. Ninety percent of the thrust though the water comes from these specific muscles: the pectorals, the latisimus dorsis, the triceps, the shoulder muscles, abdominals, the upper thigh, hip muscles and muscles located in the wrist. Many of these muscles are located in the upper body, because three out of the four competition strokes use the arm pull for two-thirds to three-quarters of the stroke’s propulsion. Some activities to benefit these muscles includes pulley weights, isometric-isotonic and weight lifting (Clark 123-4).
To improve swimmers’ stroke, coaches of swimmers focus...