Back in the mid 80's when I was a competetive swimmer, our coach had us lifting weights, and I remember we also used these crude machines that were basically thus: pulleys mounted on a wall and a padded, angled sawhorse perpendicular to the pulleys that you would lay down on (stomach down). You'd grab the pulleys and pull back and forth for a certain number of minutes. Anyone here ever use such a thing? Do they still use something like that for today's modern swimmers? We practiced at a crummy old YWCA and the workout room looked like some random person's basement with homemade equipment. Then one day, they get this new pulley machine that had a digital readout on it. We all fought to use it rather than lay on the crummy sawhorse versions. :p
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Former Member
Slimy,
I don't know, I am not a modern swimmer anymore, but I am an advocate of weight training as long as it is in a form that will help a swimmer and not hurt them. Laying on a sawhorse? That sounds iffy to me, but I get the jest of what the equipment is there to provide.
I use the term "sawhorse" pretty loosely here because it's the best way to describe it. It was actually some sort of gymnastics bench that was angled slightly upwards facing the wall where the pulleys were. The whole thing was padded with foam and it was covered in some kind of brown pleather material. It had four crude metal legs. We had to wipe the sweat off the thing as we all rotated the excercises.
Slimy,
I don't know, I am not a modern swimmer anymore, but I am an advocate of weight training as long as it is in a form that will help a swimmer and not hurt them. Laying on a sawhorse? That sounds iffy to me, but I get the jest of what the equipment is there to provide.
I use the term "sawhorse" pretty loosely here because it's the best way to describe it. It was actually some sort of gymnastics bench that was angled slightly upwards facing the wall where the pulleys were. The whole thing was padded with foam and it was covered in some kind of brown pleather material. It had four crude metal legs. We had to wipe the sweat off the thing as we all rotated the excercises.
