Warmup to Move

Over the past 3-4 years, I have been influenced by several people, whether in person or by what they have written.  These people are Verne Gambetta, Mike Bottom, Jim Steen, and the staff at 8th Day Gym which is a crossfit gym here in Grand Rapids.

Lately, I have become increasingly frustrated in our team warmups.  It's not that the team is doing anything wrong as our warmups include 1000-1500 yards of easy swimming with various drills, kicking, and pulling and it looks as most swim teams do. I attended several workshops and workouts at a cross fit gym this summer and they warmup in a way that prepares them to move properly through the entire workout.  In other words, they were warming up how they want their body to move for the task at hand.  Another concept they teach is the most important part of the workout is how you warmup and warmdown.  How prepared are you for what the coach is asking of you and how are you going to process the workout and get ready for tomorrow. 

I asked myself, how am I preparing my team to move during warmups.  This got me to drastically change the way we prepare for practice.  If you look at a swim practice, there is a lot of rotation around the long axis (down through the top of the head), and most shoulder injuries occur when the hips and shoulders either don't move they way they were designed or they don't rotate at all.  How many times do you see swimmers on deck yanking on their shoulders against a wall and then get in and do lazy swimming during warmups with bad form or movement?  If you read Verne Gambetta's Blog about functional path training, you will find that dynamic stretching is the way to start most any practice.

We start out of the water with a couple different dynamic stretching routines that take 15-20 minutes followed by a shorter warmup in the water, but the team is much more prepared to move in ways to be faster and eliminate injury.

1.  Pole stretching - Greg Parinni at Dennison uses broom handles, and I used the same stretches except I use a  6 ft. 3/4 diameter PVC pipe filled with water and capped to do the same thing.  I found the PVC filled with water adds a little more weight, but is not heavy and it just feels better to me.  I think both work well and are cheap and easy to get for any size team.  The stretches using the pole are for shoulder flexibility, rotation along the vertical axis, and you can do some hip/leg swings.

*I will put up video soon, but your swimmers will appreciate being out of the water a little longer, able talk to each other, and still start the warmup process.

2.  After our dynamic stretching with the poles, we move into some movements that get the heart rate up a little more, but more importantly continue to mimic the movements they are going to be asked to repeat in the water.  We rotate through 3 different activities.  We spar with boxing gloves (I got this from Mike Bottom) and the team loves this and I love how it translates to the water.  We use medicine balls (Verne Gambetta has a good routine to follow if you are new). On our recovery days we use a little bit of yoga/pilates combo that is fairly simple as yoga goes, but it is something the swimmers can memorize and repeat.

3.  Now we get in the water.  Here is the standard:
1 X 300 with open turns to focus on good pushouts and streamlines (your team should value these, what if your team started every day with 12 perfect streamlines?)
*I got this concept from Jim Steen - you need to warmup your walls
1 X 200 kick with a buddy
6-12 X 12's descending by 3's

*I may do another set to prepare them for a really fast main set, but after this, they are functionally ready to take on the challenge of most any set.