Warm Up?

Are you warming up with all strokes? When I warm up I feel some "things" and it takes a while to work that out. Maybe 600-800 yds of back/***/free. The pace should build slowly. After that I may pick it up for a short 600 yd set to be sure everything is "working", then ready to go.

My warm up pace is finally getting to where it needs to be. When I do the initial 400-500 swim to start warm up. I try to shoot for a 1:45 (SCM) or 1:35 (SCY) pace. My normal pace during 100 repeats is 1:20 (SCM) and 1:12 (SCY), my best times are 59 (SCM) and 52 (SCY) to give you points of reference. For the longest time my warm up pace was too fast and was killing me for the rest of the workout. If you think you are going too fast, throw some drills in. Finger tip, distance per stroke, catch up, whatever it takes to slow you down to a nice even slow pace to let your body get ready for what's to come.

Stupid question: are your warmups with rest? I am going for my 500-600 without stopping, doing flip turns at both ends when I can, sometimes pausing just enough to turn myself around without the flip. During my warmup my only pauses tend to be to pop on/of the zoomers or grab the pull buoy. I generally avoid flip turns early in he warmup (I find my back needs to ease into this stuff as I get older as well), but generally do by the end. One other thing worth considering. What is the next set after warmup? I like a transition set (e.g. 6X75 on 1:20-1:30 at an aerobic pace, maybe a bit of kicking as well). Anything involving fly does not qualify in my mind as "transition". It simply puts too much load on my shoulder too early in the practice. I generally fall back to one-warm fly if the coach tosses in some IM work during what I consider to be the "transition" set. Skip

All great advice.. So right now I am not swimming with a team due to scheduling and having just started. I will once the home and work schedule balance to allow me. Stupid question: are your warmups with rest? I am going for my 500-600 without stopping, doing flip turns at both ends when I can, sometimes pausing just enough to turn myself around without the flip. I'll stop and stretch for a couple of minutes if I feel tight.

Our team's warmups are usually around 1000-1200 yards total. The first thing is often 400-800 yards of freestyle or maybe free w/every 4th length back or ***. This is done without stopping. Then typically a kicking or pulling set and a transition drilling set before we start the main workout. It always takes at least 1000 yards for me to feel warmed up and usually more like 1500. I like Geek's term of 'wakeup' for those first several hundred yards. I just try to be smooth and unkink my shoulders/hips/ankles/whatever. Oddly, the better shape I'm in, the worse I feel during that initial swim. If I hop in and feel awesome, that does not bode well for the practice! :)

I think I might swim too fast during warm up, but that is only because I want to make sure I can get in the entire workout. I'm usually the one pushing to get the first series started. if I am last to finish warming up, then we will lose time in the water. but one thing that I like about our warm-ups, is that we don't just do 200 swim, kick, arm, swim we usually have some kind variation for 800-1200m 300 choice 8x75 sculling, kick, drill or 200 choice 10 x 50 odds sculling/kick evens drill swim 9x50 dec 1-3 the biggest problem my group has is not enough time for a proper warm down. we finish our main series and have usually 15-20 minutes to do some kind of pulling or kicking series. most of the times my warm down consists of a 50 where I stop after 25 to take out the lane line.

Some coaches use warmups as part of a swimming set. I like separate warm ups that get all muscles prepped to handle the workout sets. A warmup should take from 5 minutes to a max of 10 minutes.

Although Jazzy is sure to disagree, our team does a whole lot of warming up. Usually start with a very easy 600 and then a set of approx 1K that is some moderate work (drilling) but still less than hard. I like to get at least 1500-2000 under my belt before I start working. I've done the flash for cash workouts where you do a 300 w/u and then go right to working sets and that isn't good. The ironic thing is that the kids home from college that swam with us this summer said even at 1500-2000 yards of w/u or moderate work they still didn't get enough warmup. They prefer about 3-4K of warmup before working sets.

If you are having "twinges" of pain in your shoulder and elbow, and if it "sometimes hurts" to raise your arm laterally, you need to think about more than just warmup. Otherwise, and I speak from bitter experience, you will eventually have trouble thinking about anything except how bad your shoulder and your elbow hurt. Do not ignore those warning "twinges" and do not think that a little warmup, or a little change to your warmup, is all you need to do to address them. I suggest that you go see a sports PT or chiropractor now, before you are in pain that stops you from swimming. You probably need to develop (and stick with) an exercise routine to make sure the small muscles stabilizing your joints are doing all they should be doing, but a professional can help you determine why your joints hurt and what you should do about it. You may also need to make some stroke alterations. But do not ignore joint pain when you are young, because it does not get better with age.

Are you warming up with all strokes? When I warm up I feel some "things" and it takes a while to work that out. Maybe 600-800 yds of back/***/free. The pace should build slowly. After that I may pick it up for a short 600 yd set to be sure everything is "working", then ready to go. I haven't been warming up with all strokes. Good point. I normally just do the freestyle (although sometimes I may take a "break" and flip over to my back for a few strokes in the middle of a length and give myself some cheat breaths while still moving but 95% of it is freestyle..) In fact 90% of my hour in the pool each morning is free, maybe that's why it sometimes hurts to raise my right arm laterally at the shoulder ;) I am trying to correct my *** kick and don't want to start doing the breaststroke much until I stop doing the scissor kick and start doing the whip kick right... Can't really do the fly yet so I do some backstroke and a fair amount of butteryfly kicks (or attempts at butterfly kicks maybe)