Gym exercises for shoulder and arms

A bit of a hijack, and this is just my opinion...but I think the best thing for working on the kicks off the last turn is to do race-pace intensity swimming/kicking in practice. A lot of people do fast 25s & 50s underwater kicking, far fewer do 75s and 100s at the same intensity, with 12+ kicks off each wall. (And for good reason: they are pretty painful.) Also: do you really find there is a strong correlation between leg curls and underwater dolphin? Leg extensions and squats seem to work better for me. Hey Chris, For weights I was doing quad extensions (what I referred to as leg curls) not hamstring curls. In the pool I started doing race-pace kicks for 75s, which also seemed to help, so this is not really a good, controlled experiment. You're right, those kickouts are pretty painful, but I thought if I want to get better on the turns, I've got to practice them. I still have a lot of work to do! What really surprised me in the weight room was when I attempted to keep lifting with intensity for 45 seconds. I really bombed out after about 25 to 30 seconds, and this correlated with my bombing out after the second turn. I like the idea behind Lezak's weight program, that you're training yourself to produce power for x time, me being a drop dead sprinter and all. Over 30 seconds is distance work... But it did correlate with me. YMMV, and all. Best of luck at nationals, by the way. I won't make it this time, but maybe next year.

A bit of a hijack, and this is just my opinion...but I think the best thing for working on the kicks off the last turn is to do race-pace intensity swimming/kicking in practice. A lot of people do fast 25s & 50s underwater kicking, far fewer do 75s and 100s at the same intensity, with 12+ kicks off each wall. (And for good reason: they are pretty painful.) Also: do you really find there is a strong correlation between leg curls and underwater dolphin? Leg extensions and squats seem to work better for me. Hey Chris, For weights I was doing quad extensions (what I referred to as leg curls) not hamstring curls. In the pool I started doing race-pace kicks for 75s, which also seemed to help, so this is not really a good, controlled experiment. You're right, those kickouts are pretty painful, but I thought if I want to get better on the turns, I've got to practice them. I still have a lot of work to do! What really surprised me in the weight room was when I attempted to keep lifting with intensity for 45 seconds. I really bombed out after about 25 to 30 seconds, and this correlated with my bombing out after the second turn. I like the idea behind Lezak's weight program, that you're training yourself to produce power for x time, me being a drop dead sprinter and all. Over 30 seconds is distance work... But it did correlate with me. YMMV, and all. Best of luck at nationals, by the way. I won't make it this time, but maybe next year.