Swimming Exercises: How to use Biomechanical Parameters in swimming
Swimming Tips by Dan Daly
Understanding the forces working for and against you in training, helps you to focus on leveraging strengths and minimizing inefficiencies.
DALY Tip 1:
In water, gravity is working against you, pushing you down, but buoyancy works for you, lifting you up. Stay down and horizontal in the water. The drag of your body shape, moving through the thick water, pushes and slows you down on the front end, and pulls you back on the tail end. Thrust or propulsion overcomes these forces to produce forward movement, but there is a greater opportunity to reduce drag over increasing propulsion.
DALY Tip 2:
On land, gravity pushes you, or the weights you are trying to overcome, down, but ground force reactions push back. Learning to push into the floor and wedging yourself between gravity and the ground, can be the greatest cue for your ability to produce force on land. Rooting yourself into the ground, engaging your points of contact for stability helps your muscles produce more force to overcome the external resistance of the weights.
DALY Tip 3:
Dryland exercises that optimize mobility and position needed in the water, combined with force production in the muscles and joints used to swim, translate into better streamline, and more forceful propulsion in the water.
