Swim Warm Up

Be Intentional with your warm up

I believe that most triathletes waste a valuable opportunity during their warm up as a chance to focus on their swim technique. If you are intentional in your warm up it can take the place of doing drills. So, what does it mean to swim with intention?

Here’s an example of a swim warm up and workout that I just wrote for the athletes I coach.

WU :20 after each
100
100 P - focus on opening up recovering shoulder and extending shoulder of lead arm
100 P w/ Paddles - focus on setting catch
100 P - Focus on timing
100 - focus on timing, maintain the acceleration

MS 4 sets of 200 as
1) Zone 1 - Easy, slow swimming focusing on best technique. Body Balance, rotation, extension, strong catch
2) Zone 2 - Steady State effort/Moderately Hard
3) Zone 3 Moderately Hard effort. ~ 1-2 seconds per 100 faster than Zone 2 pace
4) Zone 3/4 - Threshold. Fastest pace you can maintain

CD
200 easy

Let me explain in more detail about the warm up.
The first 100 is just a general get going, get warm, begin to find the feel of the water type of 100. As a person who feels cold often, I typically have to swim 100-200 yards simply to get my body warmed up in the sense of not feeling cold. With the next 4 x 100’s you can focus on any part of your swim stroke that you wish or that you know needs extra attention. This would be a typical way in which I would do it for myself:

100 P - focus on opening up recovering shoulder and extending shoulder of lead arm

I like to use the Pull Buoy here so that I can remove my kick and focus more easily on my upper body. For me, this 100 P can take the place of doing Finger Tip Drag Drill. One of the things I really focus on when doing Finger Tip Drag Drill is to open up the shoulder on the arm that is doing the finger tip drag. By rotating more through the upper body it allows the shoulder on the recovery arm to open up more which allows the recovering arm to swing through the recovery motion faster, compared to the arm swinging wide around the shoulder in an arc pattern and/or compared to the hand leading the elbow during recovery. Additionally, by focusing on opening up the recovering shoulder it forces the shoulder of the lead arm to extend further down the pool thereby increasing Distance Per Stroke (DPS). As a reminder, swim speed is equal to DPS multiplied by Stroke Rate (SR). Speed = DPS x SR. Alternatively and interestingly, if you focus on extending the shoulder of the lead arm it will force the recovering shoulder to open up more. Our shoulders are connected through our collar bones and similar to our pelvis when in comes to swimming; the movement on one side will increase and enhance the movement on the opposite side.

Back to my 100 P; I might even do a couple strokes of Finger Tip Drag Drill and morph into regular swim stroke. By doing this, having this focus, I am swimming with intention. I am intentionally setting up my best form so that I can make the most of the main set. I am not mindlessly churning out the yards, just “to get the warm up over with”.

When it comes to engaging the hips in rotation and applied force to the swim stroke, some people will focus on driving the hip of the lead arm downward which then causes the opposite hip to rotate upward. Others may focus on engaging the hip on the side of the catch to initiate the catch. Once you’ve set the catch trying engaging the same side hip to pull first which then engages to Latissimus Dorsi (Lat muscle) which engages the Catch. In this way, the swimmer is using her hip and Lat muscle to create a stronger, more powerful catch. This sequence is a Timing issue. Many people begin their pull too soon and do without any coordination or timing with their hips. These swimmers, swim slower than their counterparts who are able to sync up their timing in a way that the hip applies power to the pull.

This same principle of opposites applies to the shoulders. If you want more rotation in your upper body, you can either focus on extending the shoulder of the lead arm. I do this by focusing on getting my arm pit to be facing the bottom of the pool. Or you can do this by focusing on opening up more through the shoulder of the recovering arm. It’s natural that for both the hips and the shoulder, focusing on one aspect will be more effective for some, while focusing on the other will be more effective for others. This is what I mean by swimming with intention. Which is most effective for you?

Here are a couple of videos that help demonstrate a few of the above points:

100 P w/ Paddles - focus on setting catch

When I began swimming, I struggled for years not understanding “The Catch”. I could never feel it and never find it. In fact, I thought it was like the Green Flash at sunset. Was it real? Was it a myth? And then one day, I felt it and my swimming has never looked back. I first found it with a pair of TYR Catalyst Paddles (which are no longer made but TYR now makes the Stroke Maker Paddle.) The Masters Swim coach at the time explained to me that the curved edge of the Catalyst is what helped guide my hand into the catch position. Quick note: I prefer a smaller size to a larger size paddle. The other very important thing I learned about using paddles is to remove the wrist strap because not having the wrist strap is what makes the swimmer apply pressure through the finger tips in order to stabilize the paddle and keep it from falling off. When I am swimming with intention, I focus on applying this same pressure from my finger tips on to the water in order to set a strong catch. I NEVER swim hard when using paddles. It’s not a tool develop shoulder strength. For me, it’s 100% a tool to intentionally set my catch. I use them for a couple hundred yards nearly every swim and completely to focus on setting my catch. Then, when I remove them, I focus on turning my hands into paddles, setting a strong high elbow catch.

100 P - Focus on timing

I begin my focus on timing by reminding myself of the importance of the Catch Up Style with the Freestyle swim stroke. I could do this with a couple drills of Full Catch Up and then a few drills with 3/4 Catch Up, however, my favorite way to do this is by morphing from Full Catch Up to 3/4 Catch Up to regular swim stroke. It’s very simple to do in a 100. Just begin doing Full Catch Up. I do this for about 1 length of the pool and then do 3/4 Catch Up for 1 length of the pull, morphing into regular swim stroke with intention of maintaining catch up style for the last 2 lengths.

100 - focus on timing, maintain the acceleration

I believe timing is so important to swimming faster that I spend a great deal of time focusing on it. The other part of timing, in addition to the catch up style, is the rotation of the hips. Here’s a video to better demonstrate the timing of the hips to creating a strong catch. After I set my arms to a catch up style, I turn my attention and intention to my hips. I focus on first, rotating the hip, more specifically pulling up/back on the hip on the same side of the catch. I repeat to myself, “hips, lats, catch” and make sure I am feeling the hip rotation create engagement of the lats so that the lats can create more power for the catch. There’s also a technique to first use the downbeat of the kick on the catch side to begin the hip rotation. Brenton Ford of Effortless Swimming is where I was first made of aware of this. After 30 minutes of searching, I was not able to find the video to link for you.

One of the more advanced techniques of timing that I practice came to me when I was teaching a swim class to people who live in Anchorage, AK. Knowing that most of them cross country ski I was able to use the metaphor of XC Skiing and how in skiing there is a transfer of power from one ski to the other; and that faster skiers maintain this acceleration by applying this transfer of power, while slower skiers accelerate and then stall out or decelerate prior to accelerating again. I realized that I see this same thing in swimmers and I immediately began focusing on maintaining my acceleration through the use of the timing of my arm entries, which no surprise is a more catch up style of swimming. For a more detailed description of my XC ski analogy, you can read it in this blog.

Let’s talk about the Main Set. One of my favorite principles of coaching is the Principle of Progressive Overload, simply stated as gradually and consistently increasing the difficulty of workouts over time. With this principle in mind a person could create a 6-12 week workout progression with just this one workout by beginning with 4 x 100 and then adding yardage each week. In week 2 it could be 4 x 150 or 4 x 200 and so on.

For a beginning swimmer, this workout might be best served up as 4 x 100. An intermediate swimmer might be best with 4 x 200 or 300 and an advanced swimmer might be best served with 4 x 500 or 600.

The secret to swimming faster is simultaneously simple and complex. The complexity is there are a ton of small details to focus on when it comes to improving ones swim stroke. The simple secret is to swim with intention. It’s not what you swim but how you swim that matters most.

Happy Swimming!