Yoga vs. weights ..what is best for swimming?

My athletes use weight training to increase strength and explosive power. By increasing strength, they can also increase endurance. If you have to use every motor unit to pull your arm through the water at the desired speed to swim fast, you'll tire quickly. But if you can improve your strength to the point where you only need to use a portion of the motor units, you can alternate motor units and thereby improve your strength endurance. All swimmers need strength, explosive power and endurance in the arm depressors, arm medial rotators, elbow extensors (mainly triceps), wrist flexors, leg and ankle extensors (for turns and starts), abdominals and back (for fixation of the hips) and the arm elevator muscles (deltoids). Breaststrokers also need to emphasize work on leg adductors. Swimmers must keep their elbows high on the pull, and therefore need strong arm rotator (medial) muscles. These are often the most neglected muscles for swimmers. But it is essential to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles by doing this arm rotator exercise: - Lie on back, elbows on the floor - Grasp barbell, hands just wider than shoulders, with bar just behind head, elbows bent. - Keeping elbows bent, bring bar forward, not up, in semicircular motion until forearms are vertical to floor. Since explosive power is so important to swimmers, we use a biokinetic swim bench that permits variable resistance and has acceleration programmed into it so the swimmer simulates the acceleration pattern of champion swimmers. I believe it improves explosive power because we do much of our exercising on the device at fast speed. My swimmers also do stretching exercises for the ankles and shoulders, and use an isokinetic leaper (60-120 jumps in sets of 30-- keep back straight to avoid injury -- 3-5 days a week) to improve jumping ability for starts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ By James E. "Doc" Consilman, Ph.D, Coach Indiana University (6 NCAA titles, 23 Big Ten Conference titles); Coach Olympic Men's Swim Team 1964, 1976. Author of Science of Swimming and The complete Book of Swimming. Note: This article (including authors' credentials) was written in 1986 for Bill Pearl, author of Getting Stronger - Weight Training for Men and Women. It can be found at page 149 of this outdated masterpiece. I have no idea about Doc's current thoughts on this topic as of today. It may have changed over time, like several things.

My athletes use weight training to increase strength and explosive power. By increasing strength, they can also increase endurance. If you have to use every motor unit to pull your arm through the water at the desired speed to swim fast, you'll tire quickly. But if you can improve your strength to the point where you only need to use a portion of the motor units, you can alternate motor units and thereby improve your strength endurance. All swimmers need strength, explosive power and endurance in the arm depressors, arm medial rotators, elbow extensors (mainly triceps), wrist flexors, leg and ankle extensors (for turns and starts), abdominals and back (for fixation of the hips) and the arm elevator muscles (deltoids). Breaststrokers also need to emphasize work on leg adductors. Swimmers must keep their elbows high on the pull, and therefore need strong arm rotator (medial) muscles. These are often the most neglected muscles for swimmers. But it is essential to strengthen the rotator cuff muscles by doing this arm rotator exercise: - Lie on back, elbows on the floor - Grasp barbell, hands just wider than shoulders, with bar just behind head, elbows bent. - Keeping elbows bent, bring bar forward, not up, in semicircular motion until forearms are vertical to floor. Since explosive power is so important to swimmers, we use a biokinetic swim bench that permits variable resistance and has acceleration programmed into it so the swimmer simulates the acceleration pattern of champion swimmers. I believe it improves explosive power because we do much of our exercising on the device at fast speed. My swimmers also do stretching exercises for the ankles and shoulders, and use an isokinetic leaper (60-120 jumps in sets of 30-- keep back straight to avoid injury -- 3-5 days a week) to improve jumping ability for starts. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ By James E. "Doc" Consilman, Ph.D, Coach Indiana University (6 NCAA titles, 23 Big Ten Conference titles); Coach Olympic Men's Swim Team 1964, 1976. Author of Science of Swimming and The complete Book of Swimming. Note: This article (including authors' credentials) was written in 1986 for Bill Pearl, author of Getting Stronger - Weight Training for Men and Women. It can be found at page 149 of this outdated masterpiece. I have no idea about Doc's current thoughts on this topic as of today. It may have changed over time, like several things.