Strength Training for Swimmers

Andy Baker discusses the strength and conditioning for swimmers.

How can you apply linear progression to a swimmer? What changes? What are special challenges? What nutritional strategies are appropriate?

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Hi, Andy.
Could you share more about your experience and preference for swimmers doing heavy sets during tapering or even days leading up to meets. It seems like coaches are resistant to this as well as the athletes. It is our experience with swimmers is that they swim 2-3 meets a week...does this or should it change the linear progression?

Great suggestions about heavy chins and press work! Every swimmer I know fights shoulder pain!!

Thank you for posting this Andy. I've been trying to talk my wife into having our daughter move into some of this type of training, so I'm going to have her listen to this. She used to swim for Blue Tide, and is now with ESA on the Atascocita side. I hate, hate, the dryland training they do - always have. She also has joint hypermobility syndrome, so all of the stretch band and ballistic movements they do really affected her to the point of being fatigued before even hitting the pool for practice. We finally had a sit down with her coach to explain what was going on and to discuss ways to modify her dryland so as to not isolate her or undermine the coaches routine. It has made a huge difference and she is way less fatigued this season and swimming far better times.

Regarding nutrition and the constant theme of depletion, how would you feel about the use of creatine for teenage athletes, either pre- or post-swim? Thanks again for this resource and I hope more swimmers give this type of training further consideration.