How to Develop Savage Speed on Your Swim Team

Courtesy of Destro Machines, a SwimSwam partner.

POWER

The ability to exert a maximal force in as short amount of time as possible. 

You’ve probably heard of power training in sports like Olympic weightlifting, football or boxing, but swimming? You bet.

While strength is defined as the ability to produce maximum force against a given resistance, power is the ability to utilize that force as quickly as possible. In the sport of swimming, the main objective in its simplest form is to effectively move against the resistance of the water for a given distance in the shortest amount of time. Having the strength to move your body through the water’s resistance is one requirement, but to move through that resistance while applying that strength quickly, requires power. From this, you can recognize that power training plays a vital role in improving a swimmer’s performance. The goal of this program is to provide you with an introduction of how power training can be applied to the sport of swimming.

EXPERIENCE

As with any training program, each athlete will adapt differently on a multitude of variables. One key variable to consider when starting power training, is an athlete’s experience level.

It’s important to understand that as an individual’s experience increases, progress in their training will become more reliant on specific movements and variability vs generalized training. Conversely, those with low experience will make substantial progress in their training with generalized exercises and programming. This is mainly due to the neural adaptations that are created when an athlete learns a new movement. The more an athlete is exposed to a given movement, the stronger the neural response becomes, making that movement become more “natural” to the athlete. As the neural response becomes stronger, variations to that movement become crucial in creating new stimuli they will need to adapt to. This new adaptation will continue the athlete’s training progression.

For this power training program, we will focus the first phase on developing those base neural adaptations and creating a solid foundation of strength that we will build upon. After a solid foundation has been created, we will introduce multiple variations in the swimmer’s workout to continue their progress.

REPS

It is our opinion that due to the neuromuscular stress of power training; rep volumes should be prescribed based off of real-time feedback. The most effective way to do this is through the use of our SwiMeter. A set should be written as: 20x25s Max on 2:00 @ F1RM + 20 OR FAIL. This indicates that a swimmer should perform up to 20 reps on the tower at their Functional 1 Rep Max plus 20 pounds. The coach would dictate a “Fail” based off of their 20m split recorded on the SwiMeter. For this set, we would recommend starting with a “Fail” being a 1-second add from their 1st rep 20m split. If you do not have a SwiMeter, then you would dictate the fail based off of a pace clock, stopwatch, timing pads, or swimmer feel. However, once you start doing very short blasts to 10m or less, then the precision of the SwiMeter will become more necessary.

For example, if a swimmers first 20m split is recorded as 14.0 seconds. The swimmer would keep repeating reps until they record a rep of 15.0 or slower. At that point, the athlete would be given rest before moving on to the next portion of practice.

EXERCISES

During this program, all exercises will be derived from the following core exercises utilizing the Destro Machines Swim Tower (single or double):

After a solid base of strength is developed from these core exercises, you can introduce variations using additional equipment (fins, paddles, etc) and variations in training distances sizes during a given week (ie 5m, 10m, etc.)

REST

While it is possible to use power equipment to train Anaerobic systems and technique, for the purpose of this guide we are focusing strictly on Neuromuscular and Creatine Phosphate training.

The Creatine Phosphate provides the maximum power through the muscles, however, this system can only provide the swimmer with energy for the first 8-10 seconds of their efforts, and it takes 3 to 5 minutes of rest to fully recover back to 100% For this reason, it is important to allow adequate rest between efforts to ensure that we are presenting the body with the correct stimulus in order to make the adaptations that we desire for fast sprinting. We realize that rest interval of 3+ minutes can be impractical for many teams, however, we do not recommend sendoffs slower than 90 seconds for this type of training.

RESISTANCE

Destro Machines latest tower features a graduated scale inside the bucket which will instantly  tell you how much weight in pounds you have in the bucket for maximum ease of use. If you  have an older design, please reach out to DM to purchase the latest scales.

Just like in traditional weightlifting, selecting resistances for power is very critical. We need  enough load to stimulate the body to grow stronger, while being light enough to execute  correct technique. The next section will help you select the appropriate weight for your  swimmer if you are just starting out.

FUNCTIONAL 1 REP MAX (F1RM)

The exercises in this program will utilize percentages of the maximum weight a swimmer can effectively move for 25 yards. Determining that F1RM can be difficult until you start collecting data on your athletes. A good guideline to start with, is to have your swimmer find the heaviest weight they can move for 25 yards while staying 5 seconds under their 50 yard time. If a 50 freestyler can go 19 in a race, they need to find the heaviest weight they can pull across 25 yards in 14 seconds. This applies to all strokes as well.

Below, we use X (or F1RM) to represent the maximum amount of weight (represented as Pounds in the Destro Machines bucket) a swimmer can move while still maintaining great technique.

As mentioned in the “Focus” of this phase, we want to make sure that technique is far more important than how much weight a swimmer can move. Having new swimmer load up a heavy bucket on the tower and letting it rip with poor technique is a sure-fire way to introduce injuries. We want to have the swimmer gradually increase their weight on the tower as they develop strength and improve their technique.

Coming out of this phase, a swimmer should have solid technique and a good estimate of their F1RM which will be used to calculate the loads in the next 2 phases.

PHASE 1 – CREATE

Goal: Generate neutral adaptations and a solid foundation.

Focus: Sound technique and base strength. Prioritize correct technique over heavy weight.

This phase will be built using thew following 2-week block for a span of 6-8 weeks.

This block is a great way to progressively improve the swimmer’s load tolerance and technique while also introducing minor variations by staggering the distance throughout the week. The weights below are merely an example; exact resistances should be set by the coach using an instant feedback method, as is done in traditional weight lifting.

PHASE 2 – BUILD

Goal: Improve power production using explosive movements through heavy loads.

Focus: Applying force rapidly, while also introducing variations of movement and intensity. Instead of varying the distance alone, as we did in phase 1, phase 2 will introduce variations in intensity per week in the below format, where X is the swimmer’s max that was discovered in phase 1.

With the introduction of medium and light days, new exercise variations can be included to build neuromuscular responses which lead to new adaptations at lower intensities, mitigating injuries that may occur at higher weights. Weight should be added based off of the previous weeks perfomance on the set, if the swimmer was close to 20 reps on the fail, then we need more weight.

As we previously mentioned in the “Sets” section, we also utilize level sets on the volume days  (Monday) and save the progressive sets for the intensity days (Friday). Placing a recovery day in between these days provides the swimmer the ability to produce maximum effort on the intensity day.

Coming out of this phase, the swimmer should be able to move a substantial amount of weight compared to what they started with in phase 1 and have a new estimate for their one rep max.

PHASE 3 – DELOAD

Goal: Savage Speed

Focus: Mimic the effort and movement pattern characteristics of race day efforts. Develop maximum force through high tempo and lower weights.

So far in this program you’ve created your foundation and built a machine ready for takeoff. Now it’s time to lower the weight and get a speed check.

The deload phase should be a quick 2-week speed check to see how the swimmer has responded to their power training. Here we also introduce a 25 for time with no weight after the final set on Fridays. Completing a heavy set before the weightless 25-yard blast, allows the swimmer’s muscle fibers to be in a fully “activated” state and enhances the “feel” of the weightless effort which leads to an increase in their performance. However, before they send off, make sure the swimmer rests between 3-5 min to recover. There is a delicate balance between resting too long and having that muscle fiber recruitment diminish and not resting enough, so expect variability from swimmer to swimmer and from effort to effort.

This type of training stems from the principles found in the Post-Activation Potentiation (PAP) methodology of training and is an excellent way to add variety to your swimmer’s training.

POST PHASE 3

One of the major benefits of this program is that you have many opportunities to adjust the training based off the swimmer’s response and the duration of time available.

This is also a great opportunity to add greater variety to training, especially to your elite swimmers who need further specificity in their training. If a single tower has been used through the first cycle, incorporate a Destro Double Swim Tower (DDST) for future training iterations. The DDST allows the ability to have 2 swimmers per station, or 1 swimmer utilizing 2 buckets for maximum resistance. Stretch cords in tandem with a tower (double or single) is another fantastic way to increase the resistance as well.

About Destro Machines

Destro Machines is a family and swimmer-owned company. We were founded in 2015 when we realized that swimmers and coaches were lacking the effective and affordable training technology required for them to reach their goals. Our team of engineers, has spent years working with Division I College and top tier high school programs to develop equipment that’s not only less expensive, but also more effective than any other resistance training system available.

Courtesy: Destro Machines, a SwimSwam partner.