How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Chris Stevenson — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 08:56:07 GMT

Maglischo has some good time based guidelines are warming up. Stretch ankles, shoulders and lower back for 5 to 10 minutes. Breaststrokers should also stretch their groin and knees. 10 to 20 minutes easy swim. Practice starts and turns. For sprinters, swim a few 25s a race pace. >200 eventers should swim 50s or 100s at race pace. Cool down 2 to 5 minutes. That should be completed at least 15 minutes before racing. Right before racing, try to swim 5 to 10 minutes easy and go immediately to the blocks. So the last bit would pose a problem for tech suit wearers. One of the questions I had was what to do when you don't have warm up space right before your event. Maglischo says that really sucks, because the warm up effect wears off. It is a good idea not to get too invested in a single warmup routine. Although I disagree with JH about a lot of what he says here about warmup -- mostly b/c I think he tends to overgeneralize from his own experiences -- it is worth considering what he is saying, the idea that dryland warmup CAN be as effective as a traditional "wet" warmup if you do it right. It is a good idea to develop such a routine if it is necessary (I basically do something similar to dynamic stretching). I love to follow Maglischo's advice and basically show up wet at the starting blocks. But sometimes it isn't possible for a variety of reasons. That shouldn't be enough to throw you off your game, you need to be (mentally) flexible about what constitutes a good warmup. Think about the some of the races in major international competitions. Depending on the situation, they may spend over 15 min in the ready room prior to the race before marching out, clearly they can't go straight from the pool to the blocks. Almost all of them are moving, jumping, and/or stretching, getting ready for competition in a way that doesn't involve swimming. For me there are basically two aspects to warmup: the pre-meet warmup before all the races start, and the pre-race warmup before my actual event. Sometimes the two merge if I am swimming the same event, or -- somewhat paradoxically -- if there is a lot of time between the official warmup period and my race. Besides preparing your body for best performance, the pre-meet warmup is also the time to get used to the pool: the blocks, the angles off the walls, considering how the sun will be at race time (if you are swimming backstroke outdoors), things like that. If it is really crowded, it is hard to do turns at race speed, but I always try to get in a few backstroke starts to get used to the blocks and pads. When it comes time to race, you don't want to be flustered by the unexpected. It is best if you consider these things as you are warming up in the main competition pool. For example, "what will this wall look like at full speed?" Visualize yourself doing it. At end-of-the-season meets I am usually shaved, and I absolutely love the feeling of warming up under those conditions. I convince myself how fast I am going and how effortless it is. Warming up is partly a mind game. You should plan your pre-race warmups (and putting on your tech suit) well ahead of time. Look at the timeline and decide exactly when you are going to put on your suit and get in the water. Give yourself plenty of time, you don't want to be rushing around worried that you'll miss your race or not get enough warmup in. I don't do a lot during pre-race warmups, really, unless it has been a long time since I last swam. Lots of easy swimming. I'll do some 25s underwater kicks (not at full speed), especially if it is before a backstroke race. Generally just get yourself ready for the race. Get used to the feel of the tech suit, if you are wearing one. I do a lot of stretching and bobbing, maybe more than anything else. One thing I like about pre-race warmups is that the water is supporting you, you don't have to waste energy standing or walking or even sitting.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:01:27 GMT

One should NEVER stretch "cold" muscles. Thus the invention of dynamic stretching. Example: Groin Injury Prevention

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Paul Smith — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 10:23:30 GMT

100% determined by how I "feel"...it has been as little as about 500 and probably never more than 1000. I will say I see a LOT of masters swimmers (IMHO) warm up WAY to much and in my opinion leave a lot of their race back in the warm up pool.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:53:41 GMT

I want to do what the fast people do and they warm up.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:48:00 GMT

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Bobinator — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:27:56 GMT

I thought you were going to bed early tonight for the meet Fortress. Is the time different there? The only reason i'm up this late is because i'm an insomniac at night.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

The Fortress — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:05:46 GMT

Warm up confuses me. I am probably one of those poor planners and executers that frustrate Ahelee. I usually do around 1000 or so with some builds and sprints. If I don't sprint enough, I feel "flat" or like I haven't gotten the cobwebs out in my first race. Often, like Ahelee mentioned, I'll swim better as the day goes on. On the other hand, sometimes I can warm up and sit around for a couple hours and then swim fast. It's a conundrum to me. I do like hot showers before and after races. And I always swim better in the afternoon no matter what I did for warm up. I would never swim fly without warming up.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Chris Stevenson — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:57:34 GMT

I thought you were going to bed early tonight for the meet Fortress. Is the time different there? The only reason i'm up this late is because i'm an insomniac at night. I think Fortress warms up by hitting the forum. :)

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

pwolf66 — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 07:36:09 GMT

I thought you were going to bed early tonight for the meet Fortress. Is the time different there? The only reason i'm up this late is because i'm an insomniac at night. 12:05am IS her normal bedtime for her. :banana:

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 06:57:50 GMT

I didn't know that linking to Amazon did that. Oops.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 06:56:37 GMT

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:50:47 GMT

Think it's listed under "pet peeve". :D Don't go using age as an excuse around here again... I hate when masters swimmers do that! (where is that pet peeve thread?) There it be: forums.usms.org/showthread.php

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:12:56 GMT

Since I would simply regurgitate what every coach I've ever had says, what every current coach says, what every college athlete I swim with says, what every former D1 swimmer I swim with says it would not be of value to you. Their experience, coupled with my limited knowledge, is sufficient for me. I should be clear that while I find your methods to be unorthodox and unsustainable, they are yours and fine by me. When you reach out on topics completely refuted by most swimmers and coaches and your sole methods of refutation are "I question authority" and "mistakes are made," I'm gonna call you on it. I put the completely false part in bold. The ability of experts to be wrong is merely the basis for me to begin to question an assertion. As for the actual content of my refutation, I wrote a detailed argument based on known facts about the physical effects of psychological arousal and how they are potentially very similar to the physical effects of warm up. Did you miss that?

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:50:50 GMT

It's not like I called you an arrogant jerk or anything. Your assertions are not supported in the swimming community or sporting community. I believe what you have stated, if followed by most athletes is a one way ticket to injury. I know what you believe, the problem is that you haven't stated why you believe that. Part of it comes from the fact that experts say so. That has some weight, but I choose to challenge experts, on the premise that experts have been wrong before, so they can be wrong now. The only way to determine which statements by experts are actually correct, sans the benefit of hindsight, is to examine each issue in more depth. That's what I've attempted to do with the necessity of warm-up. If you want to refute what I've said, I'm glad to hear it.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:49:49 GMT

No, I don't. We really shouldn't be giving each other medical advice here. LOL, so true. I don't want medical advice and medical advice would tell me if I should race at all or not. I want to know how to safely elevate my heart rate before a race. I will look around and see if I can find some research on the topic, but I don't think the answer is medical advice. Maybe there is something nice in Google Scholar or Swimming Fastest. As for warm up in general, if it is such an individualized thing, is Jazz Hands walking to the blocks enough to warm him up? I have heard that "people" are not warming up enough. What is enough? I have heard that sprinters need even more of a warm up. How much is that? Thanks Shamboola for asking the question and everyone who posted what they were doing and how prepared it made them feel.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:46:28 GMT

What is a good warmup for 'fly? I'm doing my first pool meet ever in three weeks, and for some unfathomable reason (temporary insanity?) have put my name down for 50m butterfly.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Muppet — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:41:47 GMT

I don't warm up at meets, but if you want to do that much, go for it. Just as I suspected. Let me grab a cup of coffee and await the hecklers and critics. :anim_coffee: There is nothing wrong with no warmup. For sprinters like the Jazzmaster, it is easy to do. The last two summers, I ran 3 long course meets (2 of them with ~200 people) and swam some pretty good long course times in several events with zero warmup. However, I don't recommend trying it for anything 200 and up - I had some good swims in those events in there, but wow, did they hurt! Also, for those of you who actually need to warm up, we have a teammate that will warm up about 500, then walk up and down the deck between hot showers. Up on the blocks, and BAM team records drop just like that. Hot shower warmup/warmdown is great for small pools with little or no warmup/warmdown space.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 12:41:18 GMT

You mean such as muttering to yourself like a feral child before races is adequate warm-up. Is this tone necessary? You aren't directly responding to my argument. You're just laughing at your own cartoonish version of it. What's the point? Please, if you want to tell me I'm wrong, do it with some rhetorical device other than condescending ridicule. You told me that you're actually nice, so I don't get why you're being extremely rude about this.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:56:56 GMT

I usually swim a 600 free, 400 IM, 8-50's and some sprints off the blocks for warm ups at a meet. When I'm doing this warm-up, it feels like it's draining all of energy. But it actually helps you during the meet. Don't be afraid of long warm ups at a meet!

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:22:55 GMT

Then stop trying to convince us your Googly Scholar posts are expert opinions. Meh, yawn. I'm not an expert, I just have rational arguments. Which is one better than you.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

That Guy — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 11:11:29 GMT

All I know is that no warm up with stretching means severely pulled hamstring on one occasion and strained long head of biceps on another while playing Ultimate Frisbee. Warm up with a decent amount of stretching means no muscular injuries in 10 years of playing. The two don't necessarily have to be correlated, but they seem to go hand in hand to me. Perhaps I just haven't been able to work myself up sufficiently. I also know that in running races, on the occasions I haven't warmed up properly, my legs felt sluggish and my performances suffered. I'm not discounting what Jazz has to say, but in my experience, it has not worked for me. Oh yeah, the results of swimming those cold 500 frees... Our times were slower than what we could repeat in practice during the season. I'm not disputing Jazz's findings either because he seems to be a sprinter, and I know that I'm not one, so it's natural that our race prep is different.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:45:16 GMT

arousal causes increased blood flow to skeletal muscle and generally prepares the body for maximal physical performance. You boys have all the fun.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:43:21 GMT

I will also say this topic was blogged on our USMS team website by two very accomplished coaches, USMS and USA Swimming. Both clearly stated warmup was necessary, but varied by individual. Neither suggested pre-race jitters as a suitable alternative for warming up. You may have noticed that I seriously do not care what experts tell me to do.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:14:27 GMT

Ok, I've decided to summarize what I'm talking about, since it's obviously a fun sport to twist what I'm saying and ridicule me. First, I can't believe I have to do this, but I'm going to talk about Google Scholar and how it is a credible source of information. There are a lot of databases of scholarly articles. That usually means things that have appeared in peer-reviewed journals. A search engine for these articles will index many journals and return articles when you enter a search query. The Google corporation has a relatively new one of these, called Google Scholar. It's important to note, and this is what aquageek has been (purposely?) missing, Google Scholar is not the same thing as the main Google search engine. It's based on a completely different database of results, and its purpose is completely different. It is much more similar to the article databases in that it only returns scholarly research. Usually, if I want to find articles on some subject, the easiest thing to do is search for the subject area in Google Scholar. From there I can use the "cited by" and "related articles" features to find more, as well as the actual citations in the articles themselves. This is just how I like to find articles. Other people do it with other search engines. The important thing to realize is that if you are going to find research to support a claim, you are going to have to search for it somewhere. Google Scholar is only one of the methods to search. Now, on to what we're actually talking about. 1. The purpose of warm-up before a race is to prepare the body for maximal performance. What I mean by this is that there are certain states in which we are more likely to produce greater force, with greater coordination, and anything else that leads to a faster time. Warm up is a very good way to achieve this. Blood gets moving to the muscles, joints get lubricated, and heart rate increases. There are also psychological effects, in some cases. I know a lot of people warm up just to feel as if they are ready to race. Also, being prepared for maximal performance means being prepared in a safe way. I think safety and performance overlap a lot here. We can reasonably assume that the body should have mechanisms which prevent injuries when going through physical exertion. This would be adaptive, from an evolutionary perspective. 2. It is adaptive to be prepared for maximal performance when psychologically aroused. This is essentially what that article is about, along with the specific physiological responses. Basically, psychological arousal is an indicator to the body from the mind that there may need to be an extreme physical exertion. This is very likely to have been naturally selected, because animals without this connection would be less effective at escaping predators, catching prey, or winning a fight, due to inadequate preparation. Safety and injury prevention also come into play here. Suppose such a system exists to prepare the animal for exertion, but it exists without proper safeguarding against injury. This gives the animal a lower likelihood of survival, because it will be able to produce top force and speed, but then get injured in the course of it. So there's probably also an evolutionary pressure for the safety of an arousal-based physical burst. 3. Therefore, it is possible to warm up without moving. At least to some extent it is. I'm not claiming this is absolute, or everyone has to do it this way. Just that it's a reasonable idea. It has worked great for me personally. Others, such as CreamPuff, have anecdotes about trying to race without warming up and being unsatisfied with the result.

RE: How Much Do You Warm Up Before A Meet?

Former Member — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:02:34 GMT

Jazz Hands, I agree with your statements with increased blood flow, fight or flight response type statements. Do you have anything that comments on what causes hearts to go through catastrophic failure under extreme stress, and how it could be prevented? No, I don't. We really shouldn't be giving each other medical advice here. I will point out that people are extremely freaking paranoid about heart attacks at this forum, to the point where a lot of people think that I am going to have a heart attack because of how I train, at 23 years old, having absolutely no reason to suspect that I have poor heart health at all.