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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Oh man, my college team had something similar to the Vasa called a total gym. You could interchange how you worked your upper body. You could use a pully-like thing, use a pull-up bar, etc. We would use it during circut training and it was a killer. And this is no mid-80's team using the device...this was early 2000! I'm sure they still use it now.
We would also use rubber band-like cords attached to the swim blocks during our circuts. You would hold onto the handles and would set the resistance by stepping away from the block. You would mimic different swimming strokes, chest press, tricep extension, etc as fast as you could during the interval. That's a burn that lasted a LONG time.
Oh man, my college team had something similar to the Vasa called a total gym. You could interchange how you worked your upper body. You could use a pully-like thing, use a pull-up bar, etc. We would use it during circut training and it was a killer. And this is no mid-80's team using the device...this was early 2000! I'm sure they still use it now.
We would also use rubber band-like cords attached to the swim blocks during our circuts. You would hold onto the handles and would set the resistance by stepping away from the block. You would mimic different swimming strokes, chest press, tricep extension, etc as fast as you could during the interval. That's a burn that lasted a LONG time.
