Having a plan before you hop into the fast lane will keep you more engaged in your workout and ideally help you improve faster.

There are endless ways you can change your swim sets in the pool, but there are some fundamentals you should follow each time you train.

1. Swim with a focus on technique

Daily I see swimmers who thrash and gasp across the pool in a flurry of white water. The effort is there, but the technique isn’t.

Like any other kind of resistance activity, swimming should be done with an emphasis on proper form—from beginning to end, from warm-up to your main set. Just as you wouldn’t do Squats or Push-Ups with inefficient form, swimming without good technique is not only harder but also opens you up to increased injury risk.

2. Warm up properly

Before the meat and potatoes of your workout comes the appetizer—a.k.a. the warm-up. Here is a three-step process to make sure you are ready to fire it up later in the session:

Step 1: Mobility work outside the pool. Arm Swings, Leg Swings and opening up your thoracic spine with a foam roller are great ways to loosen up before you hop in the water. The easiest way to avoid swimmer’s shoulder is to perform an effective pre-hab routine that includes opening up your upper back and shoulders before engaging in those hard efforts.

Step 2: General warm-up. This is easy- to medium-paced swimming, kicking and pulling. Mix up the strokes to open up the shoulders and hips, and employ lots of kick to boost your core temperature. The general warm-up should take up approximately 20 percent of your workout.

Step 3: The Pre-set. Here is where you really start to prime your body for the main set. Perform some build efforts (50’s starting easy and finishing at close to all-out speed) and some drill work that is relevant to the things you are focusing on in your technique. The pre-set should take up about 10 percent of your total practice.

3. The main set

Alrighty, here’s your big moment. Go time, baby. The heavy lifting of your swim workout. The main set.

Whatever your goal is in the pool, this is where you do the serious work to help you get there. If you are a sprinter, this is where you perform the ultra-speed stuff. If you’re a distance swimmer, now is the time to belt out intervals as close to possible to your target race pace or heart rate.

Here are some sample sets:

Aerobic:

• 20×100 freestyle @:15 seconds rest between
• 10×150 as [50 kick, 100 swim] @3:00
• 100-200-300-400-300-200-100 ladder pull set @2/minutes per 100 base (Intervals: 2:00 for the 100, 4:00 for the 200, etc.)

Speed:

• 5 x [5 x 25 freestyle ALL OUT @:45] with 100 swim easy between rounds
• 16×25 kick with :15 seconds rest between reps; alternate 1 ALL-OUT, 1 cruise

Strength/Power:

• 16×50 pull, paddles and band @:15 rest between reps
• 10 x 75 swim with fins as [25 build, 25 cruise, 25 all out] @:20 sec rest between reps

4. Recovery

Now that you have pummeled yourself, it’s time to recover so you can come back and do it all over again. Your warm-down should comprise about 20 percent of the time you spend in the water.

The warm-down. Yes, I know—the last thing you want to do after a tough workout is spend more time training, even at a low to moderate pace. But warming down helps flush metabolic waste and prompts your nervous system to get back to square one. For sprint swimmers, the warm-down should be longer than for distance athletes, per USA Swimming’s recommendations.

Dryland stretching. Once you are toweled off and have hopefully crushed some post-workout nutrition, some light stretching and foam rolling of your chest, shoulders, back and hips will help keep you loose—not only for tomorrow’s workout, but over the duration of the weeks of training ahead.

READ MORE:

• Improve Your Swimming Times with These Starting Drills
• 10 Tips for Effective Strength Training Programs for Swimming
• 6 Ankle Strength and Flexibility Tips for Swimmers
• 3 Drills for a Better Freestyle Swimming Technique

RELATED: 10 Signs You’re a Horrible Sports Parent

Worth repeating: The worst time to “discuss” your kid’s athletic performance is on the ride home. You want to talk so badly it’s like acid in your mouth. You think your child needs to know what you think. You have great points to make, and your son 0r daughter can learn how to improve. All true, but you simply should not share your thoughts on the ride home.

Even if you commend and don’t criticize, you may get in the habit of making the ride the time and place to discuss. Your kids are trapped in the back seat and forced to listen.

When athletes play poorly, the last thing they want to hear is someone trying to make them feel better. It doesn’t help build their mental toughness, because they need to feel the pain of not getting what they want.

RELATED: How Parents Are Ruining Sportsmanship

Sports Parent Strategy: The Talk

The best time to discuss the game or practice is at an agreed-upon time. This might be after dinner or after cleaning up—whenever you agree as a family. Your son or daughter will appreciate the time to decompress and won’t dread the car ride home like their friends, who get grilled every time.

Much can be accomplished after everyone is cool, calm, and collected, especially after your child has calmed down and has had time to process.

Resist the urge to talk more and just listen. Allow your son or daughter to tell you what he or she did well, vent about their mistakes and relate what they learned. Kids take more ownership when they do the talking.

Finally, as Auburn’s head swim coach Brett Hawke says, “catch them doing it right!”

How does shoulder impingement syndrome develop?

The rotator cuff tendon crosses through a very small space between the clavicle’s acromion and the arm’s humerus. Because of the small space, the rotator cuff tendon is susceptible to impingement between these two bones.

When the arm moves, the rotator cuff muscle and tendon start to rub against the acromion. This causes the tendon to become irritated and inflamed. Therefore, the swelling fills the space and creates pressure. And from the pressure, a whole list of complaints occurs.

Shoulder Impingement Syndrome Symptoms:

• Pain when you reach or lift your arm to the side or above your head.
• Pain when you lower your arm from an extended position.
• Sensitivity and pain on the outside front of your shoulder.
• A loss of mobility and flexibility of the shoulder.
• Sensitivity or pain when lying or sleeping on the afflicted side.
• Sensitivity, pain, or achiness is felt mainly at night.
• Pain reaching behind your neck or back.
• The shoulder or arm is weak and feels stiff.

Symptoms tend to get worse gradually over weeks to months. It does not seem to go back and forth to good.

How to Avoid and Treat Shoulder Impingement Syndrome

Understand Why and How

You must look at the pain and trace it back to the cause. Many common issues can cause impingement pain. You think it is your shoulder, and it is not. For example, pain and impingement are caused by poor shoulder alignment, imbalanced shoulder strength, weakness, poor posture, overtraining, sitting too much, and lifting too heavy. And then you add athletic movements on top of that.

Understanding why it is just as important as how it is happening. You don’t just want to treat it to get better. You want to prevent it from returning.

Physical Therapy

Physical therapy works great for shoulder impingement. The simple exercises help rebuild strength, alignment, mobility, and range of motion.

In addition, make sure the therapist checks your alignment. Your poor posture and misalignment are hidden unconscious causes. So, have your alignment checked because stability is essential to move correctly. And it creates a maximal range of motion and mobility. I say this because if you are a baseball pitcher and misaligned at specific joints, it can be the cause and return of the impingement.

For example, if your hips are tilted back, your thoracic mid-back rounds forward out of alignment. When the thoracic rounds forward, it misaligns the neck and shoulder by leaning and rounding forward. When your shoulders are rounded forward, it weakens the rotator cuff, and you cannot lift your arm into a full range of motion above your head. Unfortunately, you lose mobility—all caused by poor hip alignment.

Medication

The use of over-the-counter (OTC) medicine, such as ibuprofen, can alleviate shoulder discomfort and swelling. The doctor may also provide an anti-inflammatory injection if the inflammation is severe.

Surgery

Surgery will increase the space surrounding your rotator cuff by shaving some bone away arthroscopically. This will reduce the thickness of the bone. Therefore, it can move more freely without rubbing on the bone.

Here are some quick strengthening tips.

• Strengthen your mid-back muscles. Focus on pulling the shoulder blades back and contracting those muscles. Strengthening those muscles helps to align the shoulder joints better and restore mobility.
• Perform isometric and stability movements holding for about 15 seconds.
• Do strength movements slowly for about 12-15 reps. This is because moving slowly retrains the muscles faster.
• Think thrice. Put ice on your shoulder for 15-20 minutes three times a day. This will really help reduce swelling and pain.

Here are some specific exercises to help strengthen and rehab your rotator cuff.

• Internal and external rotation.
• Lying down abduction and adduction.
• Stability exercises.

Shoulder impingement takes about three to five months to heal completely. However, you can usually return to moderate training in about two weeks. The more faithful you are with your rest and treatment, the faster you will recover.

Yes, it is. Just look at Olympic swimmers who spend hours in a pool. They don’t have the same mass as a bodybuilder, but it’s not all lean muscle. Swimming can build muscle, but you won’t see the fruits of your labors as quickly as you would with free weights.

Building Muscle Through Resistance

Your muscles grow when they stretch, tear and recover from resistance exercises. Like weightlifting, swimming is a resistance exercise, but unlike weightlifting, it places inconsequential amounts of stress on your bones and joints. This can decrease the amount of muscle you build in a short amount of time, but it also decreases the impact on your body, which is a huge benefit for staying physically active your whole life.

Swimming will build muscle much faster and more effectively than traditional cardio exercises like running or biking. The constant pushing and pulling against the water, which has a much higher resistance level than air, builds muscle capacity and endurance. Before you know it, you’ll have a fully toned swimmer’s body—maybe even with a six-pack!

Best Practices for Building Muscle While Swimming

Swimming with various strokes is a great way to build muscle, but if you want to speed up the process and target certain muscles, there are a few things you can do.

Be Consistent

Swimmers seeking muscle mass won’t get there if they only swim once or twice per week. Consistency is key in building muscle groups and maintaining the toned look of a swimmer’s body.

It’s best if you have a swimming pool in your backyard where you can swim laps anytime you like. If the cost of installing such a pool is impossible, joining a gym with a swimming pool will work, too, as long as you’re dedicated to going 3-5 times per week.

Eat Correctly

As you may know from other forms of exercise, you’ll have a hard time getting toned if you aren’t eating the right foods. Increase your intake of lean proteins and decrease refined sugars and processed foods. Healthy foods are ideal for recovery, which is key to building muscle quickly and safely. And just because you’re swimming doesn’t entitle you to follow a 10,000-calorie-a-day diet a la Michael Phelps.

Focus on Arms and Legs Separately

When lifting weights, you probably focus on your arms one day and your legs another. The same principle applies to swimming, but you’ll have to get a little more creative with how you do it in the water.

To focus on your legs, swim with a kickboard. Your arms will do nothing but hold you up, and your legs will do all the work of propelling you across the pool. This is also great for engaging your core and building those central muscles that are essential for being a great swimmer.

To work your arms, use a pull buoy, which isolates your arm muscles and will help intensify your workout. It’s hard to take your leg muscles entirely out of the equation when swimming, but this style of exercise will allow you to build the muscles in your arms more quickly.

Vary and Intensify Your Routine

Just as in the weight room, doing the same routine in the pool consistently for weeks on end will do little for muscle growth. You’ve got to mix things up. You might do the breaststroke for a week and switch to the backstroke the next. Each routine will work different muscles, ensuring you don’t neglect certain muscle groups while you train.

It’s hard to find ways to intensify your routine with swimming since you can’t add more weight. But you can vary the way you perform each exercise. You might increase the length and decrease your speed one day, or you might speed it up and practice sprints with different strokes. Varying and intensifying your routine will keep your muscles guessing and engaged so they can grow and adapt.

Maintain Traditional Strength Training

Swimming is a great way to stay toned, but it shouldn’t completely replace traditional strength training. At least twice a week, incorporate some form of weightlifting into your workouts.

If you like, you can reduce the impact on your body and bring strength training into the pool. Use a set of water dumbbells to do Bicep Curls while treading water, for example. You could also wear light weights around your wrists and ankles to increase resistance. (Be careful when adding weights in the pool since it can make you sink!)

Building muscle through swimming is a great way to stay lean and toned if you go about it the right way. These tips can help you build muscle with very little long-lasting impact on your joints and bones.

READ MORE:

• 3 Reasons Why Swimmers Need Strength Training
• Why Swimmers Shouldn’t Overtrain Their Quads
• 10 Tips for Effective Strength Training Programs for Swimming

All coaches and athletes employ some type of stretch or warm-up activity both in and out of the water. Usually, there is a bias toward one or the other, though. Go to a swim meet, and you’ll see all the strategies. But which is ideal? The answer is both.

Warming Up in the Water

Ideally, swimmers should get acquainted with the water prior to competing in it. They need to feel the temperature of the water and go through the motions of their strokes. Going through the exact motions of a stroke in the water helps the athlete warm up the same muscles they’ll be using in the exact same sequences. This helps fine-tune their technical efficiency, which is crucial to improving race times. It creates short-term muscle memory, if you will. Nothing replicates swimming like, well, swimming. Nothing else will prepare a body to swim better than making the motion itself. Warming up in the water is vital to optimal performance.

A swim-specific warm-up can demand a wide range of time and effort specific to the athlete’s personal preferences. Whatever they prefer is fine as long as the athlete doesn’t spend too much energy in the water. Where most coaches and athletes get it wrong, though, is what they do on dry land.

Dry Land Warm-up

As I said, all athletes do at least a little dry land warm-up prior to the race. Many athletes do whatever they feel like, usually involving various stretches and some jumping in place. These aren’t terrible ideas, but not necessarily the best, according to research.

Postactivaation Potentiation

Post activation potentiation is a very exercise science-y term, but all athletes and coaches should familiarize themselves with it. Post activation potentiation (PAP) is the phenomenon by which the force exerted by a muscle is increased due to its previous contraction. In other words: do something hard, then do something easy. You’ll find that doing the easy thing is much easier after doing something hard.

Here’s a classic example of PAP. Imagine jumping as high as you can, and measure the height of the jump. Next, let’s say you do a really heavy squat. After the squat and a rest break, you jump again. This time you jumped a lot higher. That is PAP. The heavy squat primed the body to move some serious weight. This pumped the body up, making your jump feel effortless, leading to a better result.

PAP is a strength and power hack that many elite athletes use to get the most out of their performance. It’s essentially a temporary performance booster. Swimmers can significantly benefit from the PAP principle to swim their fastest, particularly at the start.

A swimming race begins with a jump off the block. At the end of each lap, the athlete similarly jumps explosively off the wall. Approximately 30% of swim times are attributed to the start of short races. Using PAP as a warm-up on dry land can be especially helpful in getting the most out of these jumps. Improving the start off the block, as well as the beginning of each lap, can be pivotal to winning a race.

A 2021 study from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research showed that PAP immediately improved swim times in the first 15 meters for 11 national-level swimmers. Here are the three exercises performed and recommended for swimmers to get the most out of PAP and their dry land warm-up.

1. Banded squat. The band creates more resistance as you come up in the squat. This is fantastic for power development and will let to a better launch off the block.

2. Weighted jump. This is another exercise that creates a more powerful jump. Similar to the banded squat, except this time you are jumping.

3. Drop jump. The quick landing forces the athlete to quickly and reactively contract the involved leg musculature. This also helps prime the nervous system yet while expending little energy.

Here are quick examples of this on my Instagram account.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CaAKVpulbno/

Remember, this warm-up shouldn’t be viewed as a traditional exercise. Let the athlete do this at their own pace, ensuring they have plenty of rest time between reps and exercises. I would recommend only 3-5 reps of each of these.

These exercises require minimal equipment that I do recommend the athlete brings, besides the dumbbells. Dumbells are ideal, but there are usually items or even weights already at the facility that can be used instead of your own. Use your own discretion.

Warming up before an athletic event is crucial for optimal performance and injury prevention. Creating a more ideal warm-up is the most effective way to boost game-day performance. Both dryland and in-water activity is necessary for an optimal swim warm-up.

https://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Fulltext/2021/10000/Effect_of_Ballistic_Potentiation_Protocols_on.25.aspx

For more articles on swimming or swimmers, CLICK HERE!

As an age grouper, I was doing 10 workouts a week plus a couple of weightlifting sessions while in school. My life felt perpetually water-logged and smelled of chlorine. At the end of the day, as I emptied my bag of soggy towels and a sopping suit, I would write out my workouts in my workout journal.

Though writing out my practices was a good start, simply logging a ton of meters isn’t enough. Your workouts also need to be focused and purposeful, with an eye on progression. This kind of attention to your training results in faster swimming and is much more enjoyable than going to swim practice and just going through the motions.

Here are 5 things you can start doing right away to get more from your swim training:

1. Regularly evaluate your training

When things aren’t going our way, we tend to sag our shoulders and accept that this is the way things are. With some regular evaluation, however, you can more clearly see where things fell off, where things are going well, and what you can do more of. Regularly evaluating your swim training provides critical feedback. Self-evaluation and awareness are essential the more elite you become; tiny differences in technique and effort magnify the more competitive you become.

2. Count the metrics that matter

You know that specific parts of your workout have a disproportionate impact on your overall swimming—things like swimming with proper technique, or the number of race pace meters you perform, or how many underwater fly kicks you do off each wall. A handful of things matter most with your training. Overall volume and attendance aren’t indicative of swimming intensity or focused effort.

Here are a few things you can measure that have high impact:

• Number of meters that you freestyle kick at a specific pace.
• Grade your effort after each practice.
• How many meters you perform at specific intensities/heart rate zones.

3. Set training goals

Every time you walk on deck, you should have a couple of goals in mind for your workout, even if you aren’t the one who designed it. There are things you can control and can decide to work on, regardless of what coach write on the whiteboard.

Here are some of my favorites:

• Do 10 minutes of extra core work after each workout.
• Perform a minimum of 4 underwater fly kicks off every wall for the whole practice.
• Really focus on a high elbow catch while swimming freestyle.

Think of these as your goals, the extras you are going to do to keep yourself engaged in your workouts, but also differentiate yourself from your competition.

4. Ask questions

Going through the motions and swimming through sets are all too common with age group swimmers. This is a communication failure on the coach’s part, yes, but at some point athletes need to take responsibility for their swimming.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Ask your coach what you should focus on, or what the overall purpose of the set is. Having purpose is crucial: when we don’t know what the point or purpose of a set is, we don’t know where to direct our energy, or we simply become apathetic about it and sail through the workout without really doing anything.

5. Be willing to fail

Katie Ledecky’s training is legendary, even beyond how fast she goes and how much yardage she logs per session. She goes out of her way to fail. This means choosing a just-out-of-reach stroke rate or interval and “failing” until the moment that she nails it.

The top swimmer on the planet will rinse and repeat this, perpetually cycling up toward becoming a faster and better swimmer. This willingness to fail is harder than it looks and sounds. It’s not just a physical toll, it’s the mental resilience to come back day after day and try and try and try. Each day, show up ready to break barriers, to do something new, and to risk failure. You aren’t going to achieve a best time every day, but if you keep banging away, breakthroughs will happen.

RELATED: 

• Olympian Swimming Skills: Five Ways to Improve Your Freestyle Form
• 10 Tips for Effective Strength Training Programs for Swimming
• Improve Your Swimming Times with These Starting Drills

It can be fun at times, but other times can be confusing, scary, and disappointing. Today we’re going to go over some great tips to make you and your child’s journey go much smoother.

girls swimming freestyle at a summer swim meet

Tools of the Trade

Snacks

It’s essential to have certain items or tools on you at all times during a swim meet. One of the most important things is snacks at the ready for both you and your young swimmer. Meets are long, and you’ll need sustenance throughout the day and weekend.

Swim Cap

Always keep a sharpie on hand, and don’t forget to leave conditioner in your swimmers’ cap, especially if they have longer hair. Don’t forget to print a “heat sheet.” That way, you’ll know when and where you’re supposed to be.

Get Comfortable

Swim meets can be very, very, very long. You’ll also want to invest in a tent and a comfortable lawn chair. And remember to bring a cooler. Bring reading materials because the meets are long and, at times, uneventful.

Apps

Apps are a part of our daily lives and can be extremely helpful for improvement and convenience. There are a couple of must-have apps for parents of swimmers.

Swimmetry

Swimmetry is a great app for both you and your young athlete.

• Sets customized personal goals automatically.

It helps parents and swimmers to be goal-oriented, which improves performance.

Meet Mobile: Swim

Meet Mobile is a must-have for any swim parent. It has several features and benefits you shouldn’t pass up.

• Access and information to meet programs worldwide
• Heat sheets
• Psych sheets
• Real-time results

Swimcloud

The website CollegeSwimming.com was founded in 2000 in an effort to promote college swimming and diving programs.

Valuable Resources

In life, you always need resources, and it’s no different for the parent of a swimmer. Aside from the tools and apps mentioned above, you should never feel afraid to seek other help.

Reach out to parents of more experienced swimmers. Pick their brain and let them know you’re willing to listen to any advice they might have.

Set up a lunch or coffee with a parent or two and make a list of questions to ask while writing down their answers for you to keep as a go-to cheat sheet.

They can ensure your swimmer won’t get disqualified (DQ’d) early on. It’s very common for new swimmers and parents to get confused with the rules, and DQ’s often happen.

For instance, some meets have what are called “fly-over starts.” The next starts without allowing the swimmers from the previous race to exit the pool when one heat ends.

They are required to hug the wall while the referees start the race. This can be chaotic, and if your swimmer isn’t prepared, it gets messy. Also, it’s important to know what the refs’ signals and different whistles mean.

Be Active and Supportive

How they swim isn’t a reflection of you. Don’t fall down the over-identification trap where your child’s swim performance is a reflection of you, leading you to ignore how they feel about the sport and focus on your feelings.

Volunteer

Swim meets are constantly in need of volunteers. Getting involved will help you understand the swim competition world and help you network with other parents and coaches.

Be supportive of your child. Let them know you’re proud of the work they are putting in. Also, let them know that you’re their biggest fan, win or lose. Positive reinforcement will produce better results in the pool.

Here are some core exercises to help increase athletic performance in ten major sports.

Basketball

Medicine Ball Slam

The Medicine Ball Slam builds explosive strength in your core essential for basketball, where most movements such as sprinting, rebounding and driving to the basket are explosive.

How to Perform:

• Get into a partial Squat holding a moderate to heavy medicine ball in front of you.
• Using your whole body, raise the ball overhead, then explosively slam it to the floor.
• Catch the ball on the rebound and quickly transition into your next repetition.

Sets/Reps: 3×15
https://youtu.be/Rx_UHMnQljU

Baseball/Softball

Medicine Ball Rotational Throws

This exercise builds explosive rotational strength in the core, hips, and shoulders. It mimics the hitting motion of baseball and softball players, allowing them to have a stronger, quicker swing.

How to Perform:

• Assume an athletic stance with your feet shoulder-width apart.
• Stand with partner or wall 5 yards to the left.
• Explosively rotate through your core and throw the med ball at your partner or the wall.
• Maintain tight abs and a stable lower body during rotation.
• Receive medicine ball back and continuously repeat for specified reps.
• Perform set with partner or wall to right.

Sets/Reps: 2×10-15 each side

Football

Supine Straight Leg Raise & Hold

This is a classic football drill that most players did back in their Pop Warner days. It builds strength and endurance in the hip flexors, lower abdominals and quadriceps, which tend to fatigue and feel heavy toward the end of a game.

How to Perform:

• Lie on your back with your legs straight and your hands either out to the side or underneath your lower back.
• Keeping your legs straight and feet together, lift your legs off the ground to about 45 degrees.
• Hold that position for 60 seconds; that’s one rep.
• Bonus: perform a basic Crunch during this movement to target your upper abdominal muscles.

Sets/Reps: 3×60 seconds

Cross Country/Track

Sprinter Sit-Ups

As its name indicates, this exercise benefits sprinters and athletes in sports requiring explosive speed. It mimics the sprinting motion, helping to train the core muscles to activate in the correct pattern to enhance running mechanics.

How to Perform:

• Lie on your back with your legs straight and your arms at your sides.
• Simultaneously sit up and bring one knee up toward your chest.
• Extend the arm behind you on the same side as your raised knee.
• At the same time, bring your opposite arm forward, bent at a 90-degree angle.
• After you reach the top of your Sit-Up, lie back down, extend your leg and place both arms back by your sides.
• Repeat with the opposite leg. That’s one repetition.

Sets/Reps: 3×15

Soccer

Scissor Crunches

Scissor crunches are similar to V-Ups, but they also target the transverse abdominals and oblique muscles. They mimic a soccer player’s kicking motion, helping to build explosive kicking strength by working the core muscles.

How to Perform:

• Lie on your back with your arms straight above your head and your feet on the ground.
• Simultaneously lift your right hand and left foot toward each other, keeping both straight.
• Once you touch your hand to your foot, reverse the motion until you reach the starting position; that’s one rep.
• Perform all reps on one side, then switch to the other side.

Sets/Reps: 3×15, each side

Swimming

Flutter Kicks

Flutter Kicks require core strength to resist movement, similar to many sports. They effectively mimic the kicking motion of the backstroke in swimming, but they are beneficial for athletes in any sport.

How to Perform:

• Lie flat on your back with your legs straight.
• Lift both legs about 45 degrees.
• Keeping your core braced, glutes flexed and legs straight, perform a kicking motion, alternating your legs up and down.
• To alleviate lower-back discomfort, place your hands under your lower back and/or simultaneously perform and hold a crunch, which will naturally cause your back to flatten.

Sets/Reps: 3×60 seconds

Volleyball

Medicine Ball Wood Chop

Wood Chops are an ab exercise that require full core engagement, targeting every muscle between the hips and  shoulders. Holding a weighted medicine ball makes them more difficult, helping to increase rotational strength needed for spiking the ball.

How to Perform:

• Stand with your feet hip-width apart and your knees slightly bent, holding a medicine ball with your arms straight, hanging down in front of your body.
• Tip your hips back slightly and bend your knees, moving into a quarter squat as you rotate your shoulders a bit to the right, so that when your arms are straight, the medicine ball is just to the right of your right knee.
• Engage your core and keep your arms completely straight as you swing your arms up and across your body in a diagonal motion, straightening your knees and hips until the medicine ball is held over and slightly to the left of your left shoulder.
• Throughout this motion, keep your hips pointing straight ahead. Twist through your waist and shoulders rather than your hips and legs.
• Reverse the movement until you reach the starting position; that’s one rep.

Sets/Reps: 3×15 each side

Golf

Cable Paloff Press

The Paloff Press is one of the most basic and important core exercises, especially for golfers. It targets the entire core, helping you rotate faster, and prevents injuries to your lower back. Just ask Tiger Woods.

How to Perform:

• Stand next to a cable tower perpendicular to the machine and grab the handle at about chest height.
• Squeeze your glutes and core and relax your shoulders.
• Push both arms straight out, hold the finish for a few seconds and return to the starting position; that’s one rep.
• Perform all your reps facing one direction and repeat facing in the other direction.

Sets/Reps: 3×15

Tennis

Dumbbell Single-Arm Wood Chop

This exercise mimics the backhand motion tennis players like Roger Federer have made famous. It builds strength in the hips, shoulders, forearms and lower back essential for a strong back swing.

How to Perform:

• Start in golf posture, holding a dumbbell in your right hand and place your left hand behind your back.
• Internally rotate your shoulder so the thumb of your right hand points to your left hip.
• Simultaneously extend the weight away from your body and externally rotate your shoulder so your thumb now points behind you.

Sets/Reps: 3×15 with each hand

Wrestling

Dumbbell Renegade Row

This variation adds weight via dumbbells, incorporating extra resistance to increase strength. It not only builds core strength, it also  strengthens your biceps and rhomboids as well.

How to Perform:

• Grab a pair of dumbbells that are challenging but not too heavy.
• Get into a standard push-up position with your hands grasping the dumbbells in a neutral grip on the floor and your feet a little wider than shoulder-width apart.
• Resisting the tendency to rotate your body, lift one dumbbell off the floor, perform a Single-Arm Row and place it back on the floor.
• Repeat with the other arm. That’s one repetition.

Sets/Reps: 3×15 each arm

READ MORE:

• This Ridiculously Simple Exercise Builds a Rock Solid Core
• New Research Discovers the Best Type of Core Exercise

The reason pool recovery workouts are so popular? It’s simple—they work. Performing active recovery in a pool helps to reduce soreness, flushes out lactic acid and prevents a drop-off in performance. A study in the International Journal of Sports Medicine concluded a “swimming-based recovery session enhanced following day exercise performance.”

Part of what makes pool recovery workouts so effective is that they let you put your body through a controlled range of motion without any of the pounding and impact inherent in dry land training.

“Pool recovery training is all about reducing the amount of impact your body endures while taking it through a range of motions,” says Brandon McGill, sports performance director at STACK Velocity Sports Performance.

The best part about pool recovery is that the benefits can be gained from a short session of simple movements. Try this quick routine the next time you hit the pool to boost your recovery and enhance your performance. Then you can get back to your cannonballs.

The 9-Lap Pool Recovery Routine

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when performing a pool recovery routine. One, you need access to an area of the pool where the water is at least as high as your navel, and two, focus on range of motion over speed or intensity.

“Recovery is all about range of motion. If you’re focused on going as fast and as hard as you can, you’ll tire yourself out. Slow down, be deliberate and focus on a big range of motion,” McGill says.

With that in mind, the movements in this routine should be performed at roughly 65- to 80-percent intensity.

The following routine is designed for a short course swimming pool with a length of about 25 yards.

Using the side of the pool for support, begin by performing:

• Forward Leg Swings — 2×10 each leg
• Sideways Leg Swings — 2×10 each leg

After the Leg Swings, move to the movement portion of the routine. This simple routine consists of nine laps using various movements.

• Forward Jog down, Backpedal back
• Forward Jog down, Backpedal back
• High Knees down, Carioca back
• Butt Kicks down, Forward Skips back
• High Knees down, Carioca back (facing other direction)
• Freestyle swim down, Shuffle back
• Freestyle swim down, Shuffle back (facing opposite way)
• Breast stroke down, Lateral Skip back
• Breast stroke down, Lateral Skip back

It’s that simple. This short routine can stimulate recovery and leave you feeling better than you did before.

If you’d like to extend your routine or further customize it to your needs, here are some other great pool exercises:

• Squat Jumps
• Knee Tuck Jumps
• Power Skips
• Swimming with a kick board
• Jumping Jacks

Fun and Games

Hopping in the pool help you physically and mentally recharge your batteries during a period of heavy training. Playing a game such as pool basketball, pool volleyball, tag or water polo allows you to have fun and blow off steam while stimulating recovery. Such games put you through a wide variety of movements and motions, which accelerate recovery and help flush out lactic acid while keeping impact to a minimum.

“I’ve found the loosely structured workouts geared towards both mental and physical regeneration work out the best,” McGill says.

Having fun while you recover? Sure sounds better than an ice bath.

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Coaches and swimmers also mention that:

• There aren’t high levels of carryover from dryland workouts to swimming in the pool.
• Strength training takes time away from athletes who could be practicing in the pool.
• Swimmers don’t want to put on too much muscle mass because it will decrease their flexibility.

The trouble with this mindset arises when young athletes spend all of their training hours in the pool, practicing the same strokes over and over again. Even though swimming athletes can handle high amounts of training, they risk injury when their training becomes too repetitive; and swimmers are often doing the same exact movement over and over again.

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Because of this, strength training for a swimmer shouldn’t be viewed as a way to get bigger and stronger, like a football player. Instead the workouts should be seen as a way to perform different movements and create better muscular balance in order to keep the body healthy and conditioned for a long and successful career.

Aside from being introduced to a variety of movement patterns, swimmers can gain other major benefits from a strength training program.

Core Strength and Spinal Control

The nature of competitive swimming requires the spine to move through cycles of flexion and extension. Whether your stroke is freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly or backstroke, you need to be able to control those cycles. This will ensure your movement is balanced throughout your entire spine so one area isn’t being stressed more than another, which can lead to an overuse injury.

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The best way to do this is to incorporate core-strengthening drills in your training, especially ones that require you to stabilize your spine with your arms overhead, such as the TRX Fallout.

Improved Body Awareness

When you spend many hours in the pool every week, you lose the ability to use certain muscles that are important for keeping your back and hips healthy. Using your time outside the pool to make sure you’re strengthening your glutes, hamstrings and abs is important for staying healthy in the pool and for developing better body awareness.

Below is a good video showing how swimmers can modify exercises to help them develop better body awareness in space while training outside the pool.

Build Durable Shoulders

The shoulders are by far the most stressed area of the body for swimmers. Your shoulder joints must work hard to propel you through the water quickly. Because of this, swimmers often face common shoulder problems like biceps tendinitis, rotator cuff injuries, and labral tears.

Next to changing your swimming technique and decreasing your yardage in the pool, the best way to mitigate shoulder injuries is to get out of the pool and build durable shoulders by training your rotator cuff, shoulder joints, and shoulder blades to be able to stabilize throughout all ranges of motion.

Photo Credit: Dave & Les Jacobs/Blend Images/Thinkstock

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