Swimming Exercises for Building Muscle and Getting Fit
There are a few swimming exercises that can really help in strengthening your abs. It’s all about incorporating them into your daily lap routine. Here are a few swimming exercises that will help you get there.
Swim a Lap with a Focused Technique: Inhale on your left-hand side, pull with your left arm and kick on your left side. Exhale, then do it all again on the right side. As you breathe and rotate, think about moving through the water, not over it. Add a kickboard or float to your next lap for balance.
Maintain Good Posture: One of the biggest problems that swimmers experience is poor posture, which makes them inefficient. Whether your shoulders are hunched, your head is bowed, or you’re breathing on one side, you’re losing energy and giving yourself a posture problem. Inhale and hold your nose in the water to lift the head slightly, but don’t raise your shoulders or your chin. Exhale and repeat. Do a lap as usual, but lift your head when you inhale and release it when you exhale.
Swimming Exercises for Strength, Power, and Speed
Swimming is a great exercise for total fitness, and it’s a good form of aerobic exercise. And while swimming may not build the biggest muscles in the fastest time, it does burn lots of calories and work both the upper and lower body. It’s a repetitive exercise with a high number of strokes per minute … an arm workout in itself. And this offers great cardiovascular benefits.
However, if you want to swim to stay in shape, you need to use a proper swimming workout. Swimming certainly requires coordination, but it also demands strength, endurance, and power. Exercises are your best bet to bolster your swimming with both stamina and strength.
Below are 6 swimming exercises that will help you boost your fitness level in the pool:
Crawl (Freestyle) Swimming
Crawl is swimming’s most recognizable exercise and the one you’re most likely to do if you’re working on your technique. It’s a fast and effective workout for building power and strength in your legs and back. The swimmer’s gym, coached by professional swimmer, are the best source for learning a crawl stroke.
Breaststroke Swimming
Max Upper Body Power : Engage Your Lats, Shoulders, and Forearms with Paddles + Parachute .
If you are looking to increase your strength in the upper body, toss a paddles or parachute into the pool. They will help you gain strength in the shoulders, lats and forearms. Paddles work by using the resistance of the pool water, while the parachute will work your shoulders, lats, and arms in a similar way to a regular push up.
Extend Your Range of Motion: Try Depth Jumps. Swimming is one of the best body weight exercises for increasing your range of motion in the joints. A quick and easy way to boost your range of motion is by doing the depth jump. Simply execute a depth jump from the pool deck into the water; pull your knees up to your chest and tuck your tummy when you hit the water. Repeat this movement onto the side of the pool as well for an increased range of motion in the legs and hips.
Max Full-Body Speed: Develop sprint speed with fins + paddles .
What’s better than waking up after a good night’s rest and putting on your swimsuit to work on your speed and endurance? If you enjoy swimming, you can use this opportunity to practice some fast and efficient drills to improve your freestyle, or you can kick up the intensity using fins and paddles, depending on your current swimming ability.
Fins and paddles help you develop the strength and endurance you need to get the best out of your workout. They also work your hips, thighs, and shoulders. Using fins during swimming workouts is a fast way to build up your leg strength, especially for your front leg (the one you kick with). Swimming is a full body workout, but you can add an additional element of aerobic and strength training by pulling paddles or using fins.
To maximize your speed, you should do supersets. A superset is when you perform two exercises in a row with no rest. Let’s say you’re doing a butterfly, which is ideal for working out your core. Once you complete the butterfly, you immediately go into a backstroke. Then repeat the set. You can also switch from fins to paddles, or vice versa, to keep your workout interesting.
Leg Max Power and Speed Recruitment: DragSox Kicking .
Consider swimming with DragSox. The DragSox Kicking Power Exercise will greatly increase kicking power. This exercise will help you powerfully propel water backwards during freestyle. It will also help you strengthen your power side.
When you start and finish your freestyle stroke with the DragSox, you will develop a powerful kick with your legs, and generate more propulsion, resulting in faster freestyle. .
WARNING! The Strength in your kick is a major factor in preventing swimmer’s fatigue. The DragSox kicking exercise will benefit your kick. It will also strengthen your legs. But, if you kick your DragSox, long distances, you could be putting yourself at risk. The extended kicking will work the muscles so hard that they could become inflamed. To prevent this, take more time between kicking sets.
Max Lower Body and Abs: Vertical Dolphin Kicking with Fins
Even if you’re not a professional swimmer, a dolphin kick is a great exercise that you can do in the pool. It strengthens your lower body and improves your overall health.
Use a kickboard or a normal kickboard for this exercise, and you will be surprised to discover how difficult it really is to catch your breath and rest your muscles. This exercise engages both of your lower body and your core.
Begin by holding the kickboard vertically and facing down. Stand up straight at all times. Propel yourself forward by kicking your legs back and forth horizontally in the water. Your legs should stay close to the surface of the water throughout the duration of the exercise.
Keep in mind that you are performing this exercise to strengthen your core and your lower body, so it’s important not to cheat by letting your legs sink into the water.
The motion should be light and smooth. Don’t try to go too fast and keep your limbs moving at an even rate throughout the exercise. Hold your breath and rest every one or two strokes before continuing.
The main muscles that are strengthened are your quadriceps, glutes, and calves. This exercise also works your abdominal muscles, too, because you have to hold a straight posture, long enough to create resistance for your muscles to work.
Swimming Exercises for Cardio
Most people turn to the pool when they want to get in shape. And that’s a good thing. Swimming is one of the best full-body workouts you can do to improve endurance, strength, and flexibility.
With swimming, you’re also less likely to experience soreness and risk injury. It’s an ideal low-impact exercise for people who have joint problems or who are recovering from an injury. Swimming is also a great way to introduce variety into your exercise routine. If you get bored with running, there are other swimming workouts you can try.
If you’re new to swimming, you may be wondering what swimming exercises you should do to strengthen weak muscles and get the most from your workouts. It’s also important to make sure that your swimming routine includes both upper body and lower body exercises. You can also make your training more efficient by including swimming workouts in your regular routine.
Here are six simple swimming exercises you can do to get into shape and improve endurance, endurance, muscle strength, flexibility, and range of motion. All you need for each one is a pool and a moderate amount of time.
Swim-kick interval training
Here’s a fun interval training drill that will fully engage your core muscles while also helping you develop strength and stamina for endurance swimming.
Distribute your weight on your back and breaststroke kick, with your arms in a paddling motion, every other stroke or so.
You can do set lengths of the pool, or you can swim as many laps as you like at a time.
When one arm or the other gets tired, rotate to the other side to give your muscles a break. Do several rotations before changing sides.
Although this drill is intended for swimmers, it can also help runners and cyclists improve their overall fitness.
Water jogging
Water jogging can be a challenging, effective way to get in shape if your doctor gives you the green light. Studies have found that water jogging produces a fat-burning effect comparable to that of land jogging.
If you haven’t exercised for a while or have a health condition that requires a modified workout, you may want to consult your doctor before jumping into this activity. In the meantime, try water walking to get the feel for it first.
You can either jog in place along the wall of the pool or make rounds around the width of the pool, staying as close as possible to the wall. Be careful to maintain buoyancy, so you don’t get a cramp in your legs and feet.
You can add resistance to this exercise by holding a cinder block or another type of weight between your arms or legs.
Put your knitting down and grab a pair of boxing gloves.
Brazilian jiu-jitsu, horseback riding, boxing, and basketball are just a few examples of sports that use your body weight to sculpt muscle. Add swimming to that list. Swimming can provide an effective workout that will strengthen your core and build muscle mass.