Best weight room exercises for swimming

best weight room excise = power clean Word! I'd add these in, provided you're not dealing with rehab work, bad back or shoulders. 1) Overhead squats - lift the barbell up over your head, stabilize the weight, and squat. You have to start with a much lighter weight than what you're used to, while you build the core stabilizers and get a feeling for the movement. If you're a weight junkie, you've "arrived" when you can do 3 sets of 10 with your bodyweight. In my heyday (hayday?) I could do 6-8 with my bodyweight (it's tough), but since I've been swimming more I can't touch that now. I like doing these because they require only a fraction of the weight and are easier on my knees. 2) Standing barbell or d-bell shoulder presses. Again, you'll use lighter weight than what you're accustomed to. Use an overhand grip, lift/raise the bar up to rest on the upper pecs/anterior delts, press to full extension, and lower back to below your chin. I think lifting weight over your head requires a lot more of your core muscles. However, while these are great exercises, if you've got limited range of motion or previous injury issues, these might not be for you. My two cents and here's a :banana:

best weight room excise = power clean

Word! I'd add these in, provided you're not dealing with rehab work, bad back or shoulders. 1) Overhead squats - lift the barbell up over your head, stabilize the weight, and squat. You have to start with a much lighter weight than what you're used to, while you build the core stabilizers and get a feeling for the movement. If you're a weight junkie, you've "arrived" when you can do 3 sets of 10 with your bodyweight. In my heyday (hayday?) I could do 6-8 with my bodyweight (it's tough), but since I've been swimming more I can't touch that now. I like doing these because they require only a fraction of the weight and are easier on my knees. 2) Standing barbell or d-bell shoulder presses. Again, you'll use lighter weight than what you're accustomed to. Use an overhand grip, lift/raise the bar up to rest on the upper pecs/anterior delts, press to full extension, and lower back to below your chin. I think lifting weight over your head requires a lot more of your core muscles. However, while these are great exercises, if you've got limited range of motion or previous injury issues, these might not be for you. My two cents and here's a :banana: That's interesting. To be honest, I never really thought about lifting over my head; we were told not to do it, back when we lifted weights with the swim team. (I was 14-16, and someone told me it stunted growth. Is that true?) Since most of my weight training knowledge comes from that, I generally just avoided lifting over my head, because I wasn't sure how to do it properly. Although, now that I think about it, a personal trainer (I got two free sessions when I joined a gym last year) had me do something similar to #2, but with a very light bar.

I just started concurrently doing the rotator cuff/shoulder exercises (the ones that are often linked here) and weight training. I've got a cranky left shoulder that started acting up every time I inched toward 3 miles in open water or increased yardage in the pool. I'm pretty sure the problem is technique; my right elbow is high in the catch phase, but I noticed that my left arm goes straight down for a bit before I finally bend at the elbow, so I've been working on that. Just this morning, I felt a little pain, immediately adjusted, and the pain abated considerably. Now comes the hard part -- being consistent. Should I just do the rotator cuff exercises for a while before starting the weight training? I wonder if I might be jumping into it too quickly. I've made sure to lift very light weights, and I haven't really felt much soreness afterward. And I'm completely avoiding bench press, pushups and dips. I'm trying to be extra careful, because the shoulder set me back this open-water season, and I really don't want the same thing to happen again next year. Also, I have a very nice medicine ball that I bought last year and has been collecting dust in my closet ever since. Does anyone have any good specific medicine ball exercise recommendations? It's been about a decade since I used one with my swim team, and I don't remember much aside from tossing it to one another. I would think you can do the RC exercises and weights simultanously or on alternate days. Don't do the RC exercises right before you swim. Unless you're in real pain, you should be able to do moderate weights. That's what I do. Having well developed back and scapular muscles will help hold the shoulder together and take some stress off the smaller RC muscles. In fact, increasing core strength will also be good for the shoulders. But watch out with the medicine ball being held up over your shoulders too much or for too long. That could be counterproductive. I'm just not a real fan of overhead exercises with weights. Although maybe it's just me. Another good exercise for the obliques with a med ball is to stand back to back with a partner with the med ball at your right or left side in both hands. Then swivel, say from right to left and hand your partner the ball. Then you swivel back to the right and get the ball back from your partner. Do 15 and then switch direction. It seems as if so many of us have cranky left shoulders and falling left elbows ...

I have a couple of related questions, so I figured I'd just post here... I just started concurrently doing the rotator cuff/shoulder exercises (the ones that are often linked here) and weight training. I've got a cranky left shoulder that started acting up every time I inched toward 3 miles in open water or increased yardage in the pool. I'm pretty sure the problem is technique; my right elbow is high in the catch phase, but I noticed that my left arm goes straight down for a bit before I finally bend at the elbow, so I've been working on that. Just this morning, I felt a little pain, immediately adjusted, and the pain abated considerably. Now comes the hard part -- being consistent. Should I just do the rotator cuff exercises for a while before starting the weight training? I wonder if I might be jumping into it too quickly. I've made sure to lift very light weights, and I haven't really felt much soreness afterward. And I'm completely avoiding bench press, pushups and dips. I'm trying to be extra careful, because the shoulder set me back this open-water season, and I really don't want the same thing to happen again next year. Also, I have a very nice medicine ball that I bought last year and has been collecting dust in my closet ever since. Does anyone have any good specific medicine ball exercise recommendations? It's been about a decade since I used one with my swim team, and I don't remember much aside from tossing it to one another.

Also, I have a very nice medicine ball that I bought last year and has been collecting dust in my closet ever since. Does anyone have any good specific medicine ball exercise recommendations? It's been about a decade since I used one with my swim team, and I don't remember much aside from tossing it to one another. Any quirk in the stroke might lead to more stress on one arm than the other. Have you ever tried alternate breathing? It'll balance your stroke out because it tends to make you swim with more symmetry. Learning how to breath on both sides is also a nice advantage in freestyle racing...when you want to get a glimpse of the competition. here's some core work ideas...and with a medicine ball... findarticles.com/.../ai_n8931232

Thanks for the exercises! Those look helpful. Yes, I do breathe to both sides regularly, although I favor breathing to my left (in a way, supporting myself with my stronger right arm). I'm pretty sure that's helped cause this problem. In practice, my breathing is probably 65 percent left, 35 percent right; at a meet or open-water race, the ratio is closer to 80/20. So there's definitely an imbalance. Maybe I should work on breathing just to my right for a few laps each workout?

i sometimes workout with a retired gentleman. He says the best exercise in the weight room is watching the young women.

That's interesting. To be honest, I never really thought about lifting over my head; we were told not to do it, back when we lifted weights with the swim team. (I was 14-16, and someone told me it stunted growth. Is that true?) Since most of my weight training knowledge comes from that, I generally just avoided lifting over my head, because I wasn't sure how to do it properly. Although, now that I think about it, a personal trainer (I got two free sessions when I joined a gym last year) had me do something similar to #2, but with a very light bar. Not sure about the "growth stunting," I would guess that would be related to premature fusing of bones (which can come from anabolic steroid use during adolescence) but haven't heard of it resulting from overhead lifting. We lifted weights on my high school swim team starting as freshmen, and I remember doing seated shoulder presses. To the best of my knowledge, no stunted growth (but maybe I should be 6' 4" instead of 5' 10"). I like the overhead lifting movements because they do recruit more core and stabilizer muscles, and you don't have to use as much weight. But, like anything involving agility and weight, start out slow, methodical, and light, then work your way up. Here's the bump thing instead of the banana :bump:

http://www.getwetgetfit.com :cheerleader: