

Matthew Pendola
Olympic Champion Strength Coach
What is one of the most underutilized lift or exercises, in my opinion, for swimmers? So I think-- great question by the way. This is oftentimes more of a cyclic pattern. We'll see, especially, with breathing where we might have this type of offset in our positioning. And then we want to really look at how we can start to set the table better between the lower trap, and then also we, oftentimes, will see that more anterior pelvic tilt and we need to get a little bit more centration. So what we like to do here is just have something like a band overhead on that left side, in this case, and we would get down onto our knees, making sure that we go into more in a posterior pelvic tilt with our hips. Then we like to just get the shoulder blade to pull down and back towards that opposite hip, maybe hold that for about 10 seconds. Just following the fibers here, I can get some good lower trap activation. Let it slide forward again, making sure that we're not bending the elbow and that we're keeping good hip position the entire time, making sure that our sternum is down in that position the entire time. I actually just did this earlier with one of the athletes that I get to serve. And she told me after her swim session, she just felt so fluid and really felt like she was connected. And that's what I'm looking for as a coach. The other thing I would say about this is when she is doing more of her mechanical lifts, since we set the table with something like that first, then we know that she's going to get more out of those strength archetypes that we're working towards if it's overhead or if it's horizontal. Whatever position she's working in, we tend to get more bang for our buck out of those movements. So that's my opinion on this. And I love the question. And let me know if there's anything else that you are curious about there, but thanks for the question.