Five Exercises for Swim-Specific Strength

By Brad Culp

Plenty of triathletes are willing to do whatever to takes to become faster and more efficient in the water. They join the local masters team, they do all the right drills and they listen intently to their coach’s every instruction. Even with that kind of focus, these triathletes still struggle with the opening leg.

The truth is, unless you’ve been in the pool since you were in grade school, you need more than just time in the pool to drop those swim splits. You need to develop swim-specific strength to make you slice through the water like Michael Phelps – or at least like you belong in the local triathlon.

Strengthening these very specific muscle movements often means getting out of the pool, as well as altering the sets you do in the water. Listed below are some of my favorite workouts to build these muscle groups and improve swim efficiency.

1. Pull-ups. You already know how to do them and chances are you hate them. As with everything else in sport, they get easier with time. Start by doing five sets until failure with your legs directly underneath your torso. After a few weeks, try lifting your knees up so that they’re even with your midsection. This will help you strengthen your core muscles, as well as your upper back and arms. You can alter your grip between palms-facing and palms-away for a slight variation.

2. Reverse push-ups. This is a slightly more complicated exercise. Place a barbell on a squat-rack about two-feet off the ground. Slide you body under the bar and reach up so that you’re suspended and looking up toward the ceiling. You can place your feet on the ground, or to make it harder, place your legs on a bench. Pull your midsection all the way up to the bar and then slowly lower yourself until you almost reach the ground. It should look like an upside-down push-up. Try five sets of 8-12 reps.

3. Dry-land swim simulators. These devices help you mimic a swim stroke while out of the water to build upper-back, shoulder and tricep strength. You can use a basic swim simulator, such as Stretch Cordz (www.nzmfg.com), or a more complex system, such as a Vasa Ergometer (www.vasatrainer.com), the Halo Swim Bench (www.haloswimtraining.com) or DrySwim Trainer (www.dryswimtrainer.com). These tools allow athletes train with far greater resistance than they could in the pool. Twenty minutes with any of these tools will feel like a 4,000-meter swim workout.

Source : Triathlete Magazine