

Lee Sommers
Olympic & NCAA Champion Strength Coach
What are your favorite dry land exercises for swimmers? I love this question and yet, it's very broad. It really depends on what summer working with age physical maturity, and what they need within that season and within their macro micro Cycles. As far as their training, is concerned at a younger age. I like exercises that are teaching them, how to be athletes, especially they only do swimming. So teaching them basic foundational movement patterns, but also teaching them how to be a Thanks how to run, how to land, how to jump, how to find their core, very basic, teaching them how to be an athlete because they spend so much time buoyant and water that they don't really understand how to react to the ground as they get older. I put a bigger focus on them getting stronger. Obviously, I love things like squats split squats. I like doing some version of a deadlift whether it's like an R DL, or a hinge. Really teaching them that pattern because a lot of swimmers have a hard time finding a hinge pattern or X bar deadlift. I also like doing upper body strength, a lot of rows, landmine pressing external rotation of the shoulder and more progressed abdominal and core exercises. So that they can really make sure that they're stable through their trunk. They can also move powerfully through their trunk and that they're an efficient swimmer. They're not battling Body positions in the water and it's becoming an inefficient swimmer. Really? With all of that, the most important thing is a strength coach is to make sure that you relate the exercises back to swimming so that they understand the importance at an early age and that they buy into the process and really kind of engage in the process rather than just doing it and not understanding why they're doing the exercises they're doing.