What is one of the most under utilized lift or exercise in your opinion for swimmers?

Question

Ian Markow · Answer

Squeeze elbows back, squeeze shoulder blades back, lift hands independently, don't let them touch. Straighten out your elbows without losing any shoulder extension all the way back and up. Lock out your elbows, feel the squeezing, and feel your upper back work. Slowly rotate around and end up in a big Y, just like you guys would do Y's on the ground. Try to rotate all the way back. From here, we're going to go ahead and reverse it just like a shoulder car, slowly rotating, reaching back for that back corner, ending up here, triceps lockout, elbows bent, slowly return but not to your lower back, and then down.

Matthew Pendola · Answer

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.

Dan Daly · Answer

Dr. Brian Cunningham wants to know, what is the most underutilized lift or exercise in your opinion for swimmers? It's a tough one to narrow down, because swimming is so upper body and pulling dominant. It's an overhead position probably the most specific exercise to that would be the pull up. It's also one of the weakest patterns for people in general, so probably typically underdeveloped people might avoid it. But because it's so specific to swimming developing the last, developing the shoulders in that overhead position, if you're going to pick one exercise to develop strength specifically in the pool there's a lot of science supporting your performance in the pull up translates to performance in the water. Thanks.

Lee Sommers · Answer

Dr. Cunningham wants to know what is the most underutilized strength and conditioning exercise for swimmers? There's a bunch of different patterns I think swimmers can train that they're going to benefit from. Number one on my list, and simply because I believe that a lot of strength coaches who don't have experience working with swimmers, they're a little afraid to go overhead. But in my opinion, doing a landmine press in a bunch of different fashions is going to be something that there's going to be a lot of carryover with and checks a lot of boxes for what swimmers need. Strength and stability in an overhead position, upward mobility of the scapula, and just upper body strength, along with some anti-lateral flexion, anti-rotation core benefits. There's a bunch of different ways to do a landmine press, whether it's standing or half kneeling, or with some rotation along with that upward mobility of this gap. But I think that swimmers as a whole, as long as they are stable enough to be able to get up there, can challenge it with load.

Paul Talty · Answer

Hi, Brian. An underutilized form of training I find with swimmers is plyometric training-- so shock contact, jump training. Because of the nature of the sport being so concentric and there not being a very big eccentric demand, it's a form of training that often gets overlooked. Also, in a lot of cases, the swimming athletes don't really have the basic movement patterns sufficiently developed in order to be able to move on to that style of training. But if you can lay down the groundwork with some good jumping and landing mechanics and move on to some really low-level pogo hopping and very low hurdle hopping, I think it's a great way of helping the athlete to develop their awareness of how to interact with the ground and to move on dry land and to access the strength that they usually develop in the weight room.

Erin Carson · Answer

Hi, Doc Cunningham. Erin Carson here. I think that one of the most underutilized lifts or exercise for swimmers-- I think a lot of people really focus on the backside of the body, as do I, lat activation and strength. Core position and pelvic position is really, really important, and overall body awareness, especially with the lower body, with swimmers, because they are in an open position. They're not interacting with gravity the same way as most of my athletes. But one of my favorite things is a single-arm overhead press and sometimes a single-arm overhead press with rotation. So it's one of my favorite ones for swimmers. They seem to enjoy it. It helps add balance, and good shoulder function, and strength, that they do transfer well and feel in the water.

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"What is one of the most under utilized lift or exercise in your opinion for swimmers?"