Warm Up?

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:50:39 GMT

I am a no pain swimmer. I start my warm ups at a very slow rate of swimming. After 100m I steadily increase my speed until I am at about a 25seconds for 25 m pace for my last length of the warm up. It takes me about 300 to 400m to start to feel like swimming. After that comes my workout. I reverse the cool down swim by swimming down to slow from a 25 sec 25m to dead slow. If anything but my legs hurt I do not swim hard. My legs always hurt. I might add that I only stretch my calf muscles when they feel strained to almost cramping when I swim.

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:36:37 GMT

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. Good point, I should call my doctor's office and get a referral to PT. No sports chiropractor's (at least that I know of) in my area (Southern/Central New Hampshire). I really went from not being in the best of shape to doing some weight training with aerobic to swimming and now I pretty much just swim 5-6 days a week for 45-60 mins a day.

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:05:59 GMT

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.

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:32:22 GMT

Our pool is closed this week (they're putting up the air-supported dome). Our coach e-mailed us some workouts that we can do on our own. Here are the warmups from the three workouts (written for SCY). Choose the intervals that are appropriate for you: Practice #1 - I.M. Workout 300 Free Swim, 30 seconds rest 300 I.M., Kick / Drill / Swim by 25 6 X 50 Choice @ :50 or :55 or 1:05 (2 easy, 2 med, 2 fast) Practice #2 - Freestyle 300 Free - Swim Easy, 30 sec rest 200 Pull - Negative Split, 20 sec rest 100 Kick - 50 Easy / 50 Fast, 10 sec rest 6 X 50 Freestyle Kick @ 1:05 or 1:15 or 1:30 (2 easy, 2 med, 2 fast) Go as fast as you can on the last two. Practice #3 - Mix 400 I.M. S.Ki.D.S. (Swim / Kick / Drill / Swim by 25), 30 sec rest 300 Free Right Arm / Left Arm / Swim by 25s, 20 sec rest 200 I.M. Right Arm / Left Arm by 25s, 10 sec rest 100 Free Swim 80-90% effort

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:17:53 GMT

When I first started back swimming after 23 years I also started getting my old friend Shoulder Pain back. Now I stop at least 3 times in the middle of my warm up and stretch thoroughly. My warm up is usually a 500 free, 300 kick, 300 pull...speed depends on how I feel that day. After each "set" of warm up I stretch my entire body. If I feel myself tightening during the workout I will stretch my arms again, especially after using a board with a kicking set. Since I've started integrating all of the stretching, my shoulder pain has stopped.

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:51:51 GMT

I guess it is a case of 'different strokes...' I like a brisk warm up. I start off with a 500 free which I always aim to bring in under 7 mins. That is below a 1:25/100 pace SCM. Sometimes I go even faster. (I have brought it in at 6:22 before, but it is more often a 6:40 something). I usually follow that up with a much slower 300 of the other strokes before I move onto my main set. I focus on good form and strong swimming in my warm up. I seem to get into my main set much more quickly with a faster warm up.

RE: Warm Up?

aquageek — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:12:51 GMT

My first 600 of a warm-up could more realistically be called "wake-up." There is no rhyme or reason to what I do.

RE: Warm Up?

smontanaro — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:58:13 GMT

I like a swim/kick/pull grouping during warmups. I would like to get in at minimum 600 yards total, preferably more like 1000. I'm not that fast (1:30/100yds is a good aerobic pace for me). The swim is pretty easy, typically half free, half back and ***. I frequently can feel tightness in my right shoulder, hence the real easy focus. I like to use my zoomers for half the kick chunk. It allows me to get my heart rate up easily without requiring me to stress my shoulders (5-10 SDKs per length). I also throw in some breaststroke kick to see how my knees are feeling. Finally, during the pull chunk I generally speed up a bit and see how my shoulder is feeling. Typically, the tightness is gone by this point. If not, I take it easy a bit more. Skip

RE: Warm Up?

mctrusty — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:43:21 GMT

If your shoulders are getting tired just in warmup, you might be doing it too fast. I agree with Paul that you might want to throw in some drills. Gliding works well for me, too -- try to focus on a nice loooong glide with good body position and perfect stroke. I need at least 1K in before I can swim fast. I get some shoulder twinges here and there and if that happens, I often switch to fist swimming for a bit.

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:31:18 GMT

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)

RE: Warm Up?

ourswimmer — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:05:28 GMT

RE: Warm Up?

aquageek — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:46:18 GMT

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.

RE: Warm Up?

Former Member — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:31:04 GMT

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.

RE: Warm Up?

Rykno — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:48:35 GMT

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.

RE: Warm Up?

aquaFeisty — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 03:21:53 GMT

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! :)

RE: Warm Up?

mctrusty — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 02:56:33 GMT

RE: Warm Up?

smontanaro — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:12:14 GMT

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

RE: Warm Up?

pwolf66 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 09:48:03 GMT

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.

RE: Warm Up?

rtodd — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:34:00 GMT