Dry Swim Trainer : The Next Best Thing to Water

The history of Swim Machines and Dry Swim Trainers is a rich one. Since the 1800s, a number of dry swim trainers or simulators have been designed to hold a person in a position in which swimming motions could be carried out. The earlier devices were devised for swimming instruction, while later machines were built for the purpose of physical exercise. Swim machine inventors had many early dry swim trainer models before inventing ones that really work. And so, efficient freestyle swim training can now be accomplished in a totally dry home or health club setting.

Today, a quick glance at most swimming magazines will reveal ads for these dry swim trainers. Their use to clubs and competitive swimmers is very much a topic of current debate in sports science. Although swimming strokes each involve a unique, integrated pattern of neuro-muscular and joint actions, the body position and movements involved in dry swim trainer exercise suggest that this type of training may effectively imitate actual swimming. The potential advantage over true swimming, of course, is the possibility of increasing resistance to movement in excess of that usually encountered. Thus the overload principle of training can be allowed to take effect - the artificially increased training stimulus should hopefully result in greater power gains. Another use may be in observing an individual swimmer's stroke pattern so that immediate instruction and feedback can be given. Those who can afford to purchase a dry swim trainer can also have a computer-interfaced system for analysis of power output and movement pattern on-screen.

A recent study, from the same laboratory in Japan that carried out the work on hand paddles, has compared the peak oxygen uptake between dry swim trainer exercise and arm-stroke-only swimming. The authors had correctly identified a gap in the research where no one had yet determined whether the two forms of exercise actually required similar amounts of oxygen under maximal conditions.

The researchers found that the use of these ergonomic exercise machine for swimmers, when performed at the maximum intensity possible, required over 20 per cent less oxygen than arm-stroke-only swimming. A possible reason for this appears when one considers that oxygen requirements are very highly related to the size of the muscle mass involved in the exercise - in other words, does dry swim trainer exercise use less muscle? Most dry swim trainers require the user to work against a resistance while pulling the arm to the rear position, but during the recovery little or no resistance is felt, or the arm may even be drawn forward. However, during actual swimming, voluntary recovery must take place with some considerable physical effort, which ultimately has an oxygen cost associated with it.

An additional reason may be that the torso is completely supported on most dry swim trainers. The dry swim trainer conforms to the natural and desired body rotation to maintain a steady pace while conserving energy and swimming with “the body” and not just the “arms and legs”,
whereas during swimming the postural muscles of the upper body must be recruited to both maintain optimum horizontal positioning and initiate rotation around the head-feet axis.

In summary, this very recent research suggests that the cardiovascular stress induced during dry swim trainer exercise is not comparable to that met in arm-stroke-only swimming. Thus, if the perceived advantage of dry swim trainer exercise exists, it should certainly be combined with significant amounts of traditional training to ensure a proper training stimulus (Ogita and Taniguchi, 'The comparison of peak oxygen uptake between swim-bench exercise and arm stroke', European Journal of Applied Physiology, 1995, vol.71, pp 295-300).

Source : Peak Performance