Contributor, Rick Paine, is an expert on the college recruiting process. He is also the Director of Swimming at American College Connection (ACC). AAC is a SwimSwam Partner.
It’s 6:30 in the morning and you are barely awake. You just arrived at the cold, damp, smelly pool and already your coach is barking at you to get in and get warmed up for your first race.
There seems to be about 5,000 swimmers entered in the meet and they are all warming-up in your lane. It seems like a contradiction that in order to get “warmed”-up you have to get into “cold” water, and the worst part about the water is that it’s WET.
Like a Roman soldier preparing for battle, you pull on your swim cap and adjust your goggles while looking for the slightest opening in the endless line of bodies that have invaded your lane.
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you are asking the question, “will warming-up really help or is it just some form of torture that crazy coaches dreamed up to test their swimmers’ dedication.”
The answer is yes, warming-up is necessary and your attitude about it can make it a pleasurable or miserable experience.
I have coached swimming for 33 years at every level you can think of, from summer rec to the Olympic Games and one of the differences between the world class swimmers and the swimmers who strive to be world class is the approach to warming-up. The world class swimmers realize that a proper warm-up at a meet is necessary to prepare their body and mind to swim fast. They refuse to let anyone or anything keep them from getting a proper warm-up. It is called “attitude.”
If your coach has a specific warm-up for you, be sure to follow their instructions. Always listen to your coach! For those of you who don’t have a specific warm-up plan, here are some suggestions:
- Get to the pool early.
- Go for a walk. It helps wake you up and it gets the blood flowing. It won’t make your legs tired. Several Australian Olympians I coached would go for a mile walk as part of warm-up at their shave and taper meet!
- Swim 300 to 600 yards of general loosening and then get out and stretch.
- Never stretch “cold” muscles
- The middle part of your warm-up should be designed to wake up the energy systems, so be sure and get some swimming in at a heart rate of around 180 beats a minute (at least 4 x 100 free or 8 x 50 free). Many U.S. swimmers are too soft in their warm-ups especially at unrested meets. Don’t be afraid to warm-up hard!
- The last part of your warm-up should be in the same stroke of your first event and should include some pace work (descending or negative splitting), speed work and a warm-down or loosen.
- Work on starts and breakouts. Don’t just dive in and stop. Work your start and breakout at least 12 ½ yards. Make sure your lane is clear before diving in.
- Work your turns at race speed. Don’t expect to be able to find the wall in a race if you practiced them in slow motion during warm-up. Check the heat sheet for your lanes and get some turn work in the lanes you will be completing in. Make sure you can see the cross on the wall or the “T” on the bottom and make sure you have a feel for the backstroke flags.
- Work some fast finishes. There is no reason to get out touched because you couldn’t find the wall.
- There are some swimmers who get in the pool, swim about 100 and then stand by the wall and talk with a teammate. They are called “Cling-Ons” and don’t belong in the pool. All these types of swimmers do is to clog up the lane and make it difficult for serious swimmers to get a proper warm-up in. If you ask them to move and they don’t respond, you may have to send them a message by letting them “Eat Feet” by turning very close to them.
- If you need your coach to nag you to get in and get a proper warm-up done, then you might want to rethink why you are swimming.
- Accept the responsibility of making sure you get a proper warm-up. GET an ATTITUDE!!!!!
I read that Popov warmed up swimming only very slow freestyle, to save his energy for the race. And I think Gary Hall Jr would swim like a lap or two to warm up.
Warmup is awful and can degrade the performance of sprinters especially. The yardage done at a heats finals meet, with the warm up this author describes, would leave many swimmers exhausted and unable to perform. I have seen it many times – disciplinarian coach destroys swimmer at multi day heats finals meet. No thank you
For those prone to exhaustion – get extra sleep and do a dry land warmup 15-30 minutes before your race to make sure you have optimal muscle temperature.
Not necessarily. Some sprinters need a longer warmup and in my opinion need to be trained as a 500er so they can swim the longer warmups.
Its kinda like how distance swimmers train 9k+ per workout to be good at the mile. We don’t train for just the mile we train for getting a good warmup in and cooling down and also swimming the 400, 800, and 1500.
Now where you are correct is with post grads but the majority of them will only swim a couple of races.
I also remember reading an article on here about cooling down and it said that sprinters should actually be doing more warmup and cooldown upwards… Read more »
Cool down useful. Traditional warmup is overrated and sometimes detrimental.
And I am not a fan of 9k workouts.
Some top end 50 swimmers have practices under 1K leading up to big meet. Surely nobody would advocate 2k+ for a warmup/cooldown. Taper reverser.
You don’t always have to listen to your coach. My coach in college was notorious for giving awful meet warm-ups. The better solution is to listen to your body. Do what it NEEDS not what your mind WANTS. Not always an easy answer but if it was easy – everybody would do it.
I agree to some extent. Sometimes you just feel lethargic the morning of competition and need more time to “wake up” and get the blood flowing. Sometimes you wake up and are just ready to go and just want to get wet and get the heart rate up a bit. I certainly think getting some starts with breakouts and some turns in is be beneficial, especially the backstroke flags. But sometimes I think if things are too crowded, you’re just risking getting kicked or otherwise injured or getting frustrated because you can’t get into a good rhythm. Might be best in those circumstances to warmup by doing some dryland and then jumping into the pool at the tail end of… Read more »
I wish we could have more than 20-25 minutes for warm-up at any given meet.
Nice article.
I always despised the Cling-Ons. Did not always correlate with race performance that day oddly enough, but the bad habits caught up with them eventually.