Strength Training for Faster Swimming

2 MAKING STRENGTH TRAINING COUNT

The ultimate effectiveness of a strength training program is measured in terms of what is accomplished in the pool. There must be positive results. To make sure this happens, the strength training program should be designed and redesigned to meet that objective. It should evolve as the swimmer's strength evolves and consider the individual swimmer's changing needs. This means that careful observation and monitoring must be an essential element of the program. By evaluating results, or lack of results, we can tailor the program to work better or take positive steps to redirect efforts. Ongoing evaluation should consider a number of issues, as outlined below.

TRANSFERABILITY

The key to a successful strength training program is that every activity must be transferable to swimming speed. If it doesn't transfer, then it is a waste of time, or worse, it could even hinder faster swimming. Every strength training exercise can make a swimmer tired, but once the swimmer recovers, does the new strength improve his or her swimming speed?

In order to get strength work to transfer to swimming speed, it is important to perform activities that use swimming-like movement and target major swimming-specific muscle groups that together produce that movement, including both visible and underlying muscles. We must strengthen the muscles that move us forward as well as those that stabilize us. It is important to consider directionality when applying resistance on land. Our primary effort should be focused in simulating the direction of swimming. It is also important to mimic swimming tempo as much as possible. A tempo slower than swimming tempo will not transfer to faster speed in the water.

Finally, at the stage of a swimmer's career when he is specializing in particular events, it is important to focus on strength work that will benefit the swimmer's specialty. Strength work for these specialists should maximize the strong aspects of the swimmer's event and build up the weak points. For instance, if a swimmer is specializing in the 200 fly and has awesome stroke efficiency, but tends to lose tempo on the last 50, the emphasis of strength work should be on training for force (the strong point) as well as building power (the weak point). However, a 50 freestyle specialist who is an awesome finisher but needs to improve reaction time off the blocks, should focus on training for power (the strong point) as well as building explosiveness (the weak point).

ADAPTATION

Strength training is based on the premise that when muscles are stressed, they adapt to that stress, thus becoming stronger. Because the process of stressing muscles actually creates tiny tears in the muscle fibers, they must be allowed to rest and rebuild before they can become stronger. For this reason, strength building must be considered a long-term activity, designed to build strength gradually over time, using periods of stress and rest.

When adaptation is allowed to occur in this way, it is important that the program evolve, providing new challenges to swimmers as they adapt. Such challenges can take the form of doing the same exercise with more load, more repetitions, or faster repetitions depending on the objective. Or a swimmer could be asked to perform a more complex action than before. Simply repeating the same stress that the swimmer has already adapted to will not increase strength. Each time a swimmer adapts, new demands must be introduced. By using this kind of progression, a swimmer will develop strength more steadily through his or her career. There is no hard and fast timeline for adaptation. Just as with swimming, strength training does not produce immediate results. Patience is required. A conservative approach, using periodic test sets once a month to gauge adaptation, should determine when new challenges should be presented.

ORIENTATION

When exposed to resistance, muscle fibers adapt and develop, resulting in more strength. The kind of muscle fiber we develop depends on the amount, duration and rate of the resistance. Strength training can develop either slow or fast twitch muscle fiber. Slow twitch muscle fiber is associated with endurance and stamina. Strength training that focuses on developing power builds slow twitch muscle. Slow twitch muscle fiber enables us to do continuous or repetitive movements over a period of time. Fast twitch muscle fiber is associated with speed and agility. Strength training that focuses on developing force and explosiveness builds fast twitch muscle. Fast twitch muscle fiber enables us to sprint and produce bursts of acceleration.

That being said, it is important to remember that in swimming, every event (no matter how short or how long) benefits from both slow and fast twitch muscle strength. While fast twitch muscle fiber is most important for sprinting, even the shortest swimming event requires a number of repetitions of a stroke to be performed over time. Therefore, some slow twitch fiber is also important for the sprinter to have a strong finish. Likewise, while slow twitch is most important for long distance swimming, some fast twitch muscle is essential for the distance swimmer to develop the force and explosive strength that would allow him or her to do quicker starts and all those turns.

Swimming is an activity that builds slow twitch muscle very well. However, not a great deal of fast twitch muscle is built by swimming. This leads some to conclude that the orientation of a strength training program for swimmers should focus on slow twitch development because it is the kind of strength that swimmers use most. But that is only half of the picture. The reason swimmers engage in land-based strength training is to build more strength than they can achieve in the water. If the goal of strength training is more speed then our efforts should address building fast twitch muscle fiber, the type of muscle fiber associated with speed. The most effective strength training program, oriented toward the goal of more speed, must actively address fast twitch muscle development in addition to supplementing the slow twitch work we already get in the pool and need to swim stroke after stroke.

Every individual naturally possesses either more slow twitch muscle or more fast twitch muscle that helps determine what activities they will favor. In swimming, those with more natural slow twitch muscle tend to excel in long distance events and seem to prefer them, while those with more natural fast twitch muscle tend to excel in the sprint events and seem to like them more.

Training, however, can change this. While people are born with a predisposition for endurance or speed, the amount of total muscle fiber responsible for natural ability is very small. In fact, the majority of muscle fiber in the human body is neither fast nor slow twitch. It is convertible, or responsive, to training. Convertible muscle fiber can be trained to work as fast twitch or slow twitch.

This wealth of convertible muscle fiber suggests some interesting possibilities. Would a natural sprinter be able to develop more slow twitch muscle fiber and excel at long distances as well? Would a natural distance swimmer be able to develop more fast twitch muscle and also excel at the sprint events? Certainly the presence of convertible muscle fiber offers swimmers the opportunity to train for more versatility. However, at some point in a swimmer's career, success in certain events leads that swimmer to narrow his or her focus a bit. At that point, training too should be focused toward particular specialties. Training equally for all distances could reduce the results at either extreme. Some sprinters can develop a great deal of bulk, resulting in more resistance and density in the water, in addition to less flexibility that would hinder long distance performance. Conversely, the stroke tempo of most distance swimmers is too slow to achieve great sprinting success. By training for all distances, a swimmer could expect to become pretty fast across the board, but not very fast at any one event. By specializing, a swimmer maximizes performance by training convertible muscle fiber to enhance natural skills.

VARIATION

The concept of alternating stress and rest suggests that a swimmer should not do strength training on a daily basis. Actually, for some swimmers, a well-designed strength training program can be done on sequential days, although it is advisable to incorporate one to two days off per week for "pure" rest. The design of a successful daily program accomplishes the stress and rest model by having the swimmer perform upper body exercises on one day and lower body exercises the next day. On the upper body work day, the lower body rests, and on the lower body work day, the upper body rests.

Building in variation in training also keeps a swimmer sharp, both mentally and physically. A creatively designed program uses a diverse array of exercises to meet each training objective. For instance, if the objective is explosiveness, a swimmer could be given leaps for height, 15-yard running sprints, or a speed jump rope activity. If the objective is core stability, a swimmer could be given a two-minute plank, a series of "V" ups, or some "left rights" with a medicine ball. If the objective is power, a swimmer could be given fifteen minutes of rowing, some stretch cord work, or as many dips as they can do in a minute. This sort of variation in training adds interest and can boost a swimmer's coordination, as he or she is required to accomplish new and different actions with the same muscles groups. The crucial point is...