Swimming Exercises: Rotation, Recovery and Better Breathing
Swimming Tips by Dan Daly
DALY Tip 1:
When training to get faster, stronger, or powerful, it’s important reps are fewer, and rest is greater. This improves your ability to maintain intensity and quality versus duration or quantity.
This can be counterintuitive for many endurance athletes who’s events may last 2-15hrs. However, it’s difficult to sustain speed, intensity and technique when fatigue is high.
Separate your speed and power training from your endurance training. Cut the volume and focus on getting faster.
DALY Tip 2:
Rotation is often the keystone to more mobility and power. If you struggle to rotate effectively when you breath to both sides, reach and lengthen your stroke, or are just looking for more power, assess your ability to rotate through they key segments, then connect them with speed and power work. Often times, stiff necks and shoulders, and a lack of pop in your stroke, is an inability to rotate and sequence multiple segments of the body together to have them work together as a team.
DALY Tip 3:
A high elbow recovery comes from more than the shoulder. Rotation through your upper spine and hips takes some of the demand off your shoulder, and clears space for you to move your arm in a circular motion high above the water in a long side lying streamline.
If you struggle with getting your elbow up, or swimming too square and flat, take a look at your rotation and notice immediate improvement in range of motion and position.
Give these dryland drills a try to increase your awareness in the water.
DALY Tip 4: One goggle in, one google out. Stay in the water!
Breathing breaks streamline. The closer you can stay to the water, rolling to breathe, and maintaining your streamline, the less drag you will create, the less you will slow down.
🏊♀️ Keep your head down, body horizontal, rolling to breathe as little as needed.
🏊♂️ Exhale underwater, inhale quickly at the surface.
