Posted on August 05, 2015 by Jenny Cromack

Strength Training for Swimmers

To effectively train in the gym you need to consider what movements you are looking to improve in your sport and try and replicate these movement patterns in your workouts. The personal training team at motive8 North have put together a swimmers strength workout, but before you workout let’s have a brief simple look at the movements needed in swimming.

Swimming Considerations

The arms are used to propel the body through the water and without going into each individual stroke there is a great emphasis on the posterior (back) muscles of the upper body to pull you through the water. Therefore the latissimus dorsi, rear deltoids, and rhomboids will be some of the major muscles working to achieve this. There will be some element of pectorals and deltoids working in other phases of the stroke but the propulsion through the water will generally be the back musculature.

The legs will work either in a hip and knee flexion-extension fashion during flutter kick strokes such as crawl or backstroke or it will work more flexion of the knee and abduction and adduction of the hips in breast stroke. The flutter kick muscles will combine work of the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes to produce the cycle of flexion-extension at the knee and hip. Whereas the breaststroke will combine the glutes, adductors and elements of the quadriceps and hamstrings.

The dive start involves an explosive extension of the hip, knee and ankle to propel you into the pool and get a quick powerful start to your swim.

Workout Breakdown

In this workout we have tried to replicate the movements needed in swimming and also the movement speeds and demands that are required for swimming. It is split in to upper body and lower body movements.

Warm Up Exercises

A1. Core Paddles – 1 set of 30 secs

B1. Overhead Single Arm Med Ball Wall Throws (done fast and repeatedly) – 1 set of 20 throws each hand

C1. Supermen – 1 set 30 reps

D1. Inchworms – 1 set of 10 reps

E1. Squat Jumps – 1 set of 10 reps

F1. Swiss Ball Plank 1 set 30secs

Resistance

Upper Body

A1. Straight Arm Pulldown – 3 x 6

A2. Alternate Hand Incline DB Press – 3 sets, 10 reps (each hand)

B1. Barbell Bench Press – 3 x 6

B2. Renegade Row – 3 x 10 (each hand)

C1. Bent Over Row – 3 x 6

C2. Alternate DB Front Raise – 3 x 12 (each hand)

Lower Body

A1. Jump Squats – 3 x 6 (done explosively)

A2. Cable Straight Leg Hip Extension – 3 x 10 (each leg)

B1. Barbell Glute Bridges – 3 x 6

B2. Barbell Side Lunge – 3 x 10 (each side)

C1. Half Kneeling Cable Rotation – 3 x 8 (each side)

C2. Single Leg Hamstring Bridges (Foot Elevated) 3 x 12 (each leg)

This is a very simple upper and lower body workout aiming to work into some compound strength of the major upper body muscles combined with some isolated single arm movements to replicate the cyclic movements of each arm. The lower body work uses the explosive movement required for the dive start and more isolated exercises to replicate the combination of movements present during the leg kicks of swimming.

This can be split into two sessions or as one whole body session depending on your time. Hope you enjoy this simple swimmers strength workout.