Newbie Training: How You Can Use Bands for a Higher Swim

If you’re new to triathlon and swimming, you could have seen your fellow athletes on the pool or at races utilizing bands to heat up and puzzled if that’s one thing it is best to attempt. The quick reply is: sure, bands are are an effective way to get your shoulders, again and different muscular tissues heat earlier than leaping into the water. You can even use bands for full-on exercises in the event you can’t get to the pool. Slowtwitch spoke with former collegiate swimmer and present swim coach Ben Russell to get his tackle band warmups, band swim exercise alternate options and extra for triathletes.

The Importance of Warming up

Russell swam at NYU and, after commencement, he stayed in New York City, the place he now coaches the Red Tide masters swim membership. The membership has greater than 200 members who can swim collectively as much as seven occasions every week, with Russell (who’s the membership’s head coach), or one of many different Red Tide coaches because the on-deck lead.

Like any good coach, Russell highlights the significance of doing a very good warmup earlier than every exercise. When it involves bands, he says you don’t should do all that a lot to get your physique prepared earlier than diving into the pool.

“It can be a very quick five- or 10-minute thing,” he says. “You’re just trying to get some blood flow to your arms and through your shoulders to get ready to swim.”

Russell provides that hitting your lats on this band warmup is a good suggestion, too, particularly in the event you’re swimming freestyle (which is, in fact, the stroke of alternative for many triathletes).

“Warming up is important no matter where you’re swimming, but especially if you’re doing open water, [because] you might take an awkward stroke or something, which could tweak or pull a muscle,” he says.

Bands and Other Warmup Tools

Russell says that bands are nice to make use of for warmups, however he has a special instrument that he makes use of first up earlier than his swims.

“I get a PVC pipe and take it from in front of my body to behind my body,” he says. “As I do that and my shoulders start loosening up a little more, I start moving my hands closer and closer together along the pipe, just to kind of loosen up my shoulders a little bit before starting anything else.”

If you’re having hassle picturing that transfer, it’s fairly easy. Your arms are in entrance together with your palms unfold out extensive on the pipe, then you definately elevate straight up, over your head after which barely behind you. Don’t drive your arms again, simply go far sufficient so you are feeling a stretch in your shoulders.

With that transfer finished, Russell says it’s time to maneuver on to your bands. But what sort do you have to get? There are plenty of choices in the marketplace, and they’re obtainable in many alternative tensions. Russell says you desire a band that’s “pretty loose” for the aim of warmups.

“You want to feel some strain, but it’s not like you’re trying to build muscle,” he says. “It’s just waking things up a little bit.”

With that low-tension band, Russell first begins by taking it in each palms and holding his arms out straight in order that “it’s like you’re making a T with your body.”

From there, you bend at one elbow till your arm is at 90 levels. Next, maintaining your arm out straight from shoulder to elbow, rotate down so your hand goes from pointing as much as pointing ahead, than rotate again up. Do this motion 10 or so occasions, then repeat on the opposite arm.

Russell’s subsequent advice is similar transfer (arm bent at 90 levels and rotating down and again up), however with a repositioned stationary arm. For this transfer, as an alternative of holding your one arm out straight, you’ll preserve it down at your aspect in order that the band crosses your physique from one hip as much as the alternative shoulder.

“This is working down your arm a little bit,” Russell says. “It’s more of an activation through your whole arm.”

Russell’s final suggestion for this banded warmup requires a pole. (The pole that holds the flags on the finish of the lane works properly for this.) Start by placing the band across the pole, then maintain it on both aspect. Russell says to bend at your waist to about 120 levels (down however not all the best way to 90), then pull the band right down to your sides.

“It’s almost like the butterfly stroke when you’re underwater,” he says. This will assist activate your lats earlier than you hop into the pool.

Your higher physique could also be warmed up at this level, however Russell notes which you can’t neglect your legs. He says merely performing some leg swings whereas on the deck will help to “loosen up the hips” and get you able to go.

Finally, he provides that that is solely the primary a part of your warmup and that it doesn’t imply you’re able to swim at full pace as quickly as you hit the water. The first chunk of your swim ought to nonetheless be devoted to slower pacing, drills, kick and no matter else you utilize to ease into your exercises.

Dry-Land Training

Sometimes your life will get busy and for no matter cause, you gained’t have the ability to get to the pool in your swim periods. If you will have a band, nonetheless, you’ll be able to nonetheless slot in another exercise that may not less than preserve you in swimming health.

For these exercises, you’ll need one thing with a bit extra stress than the bands you’ll use in warmups. There are additionally bands you should buy which have handles, which make it simpler to make use of for swim-specific coaching and strikes.

As Russell says, these exercises will primarily concentrate on the catch part (once you’re pulling the water) of your stroke. You can definitely undergo the movement of doing all your full stroke, however the emphasis and many of the focus must be placed on the catch.

“You can go back to that lat activation I mentioned for a warmup, just with a slightly stronger band,” Russell says. If you will have a pole you should use at house our outdoors (for instance, the submit of a basketball hoop), this can work nice. You can even get bands that may be anchored to doorways, which is able to assist you to do these at house, at inns or wherever else you’re attempting to suit a exercise in.

Russell says you are able to do one in every of two actions right here. First is one arm at a time (like freestyle) or two arms without delay (like butterfly). You can even concentrate on one arm for nonetheless many reps, then transfer to the opposite arm, or you’ll be able to simulate your common freestyle stroke movement and go from one arm proper into the subsequent constantly.

While this can be a swimming various, you’re not going to get the very same advantages of a swim. Russell says not to enter this attempting to get any type of cardio finished, however fairly to have a look at it solely as a energy routine.

“If you did six to 10 45-second to one-minute sets where you’re really intentional with each pull, that’ll keep you in a good place,” Russell says. That’s fairly a fast exercise, however it would nonetheless assist to take care of and even develop extra energy in your arms and again, serving to you forestall an excessive amount of lack of health throughout your time away from the pool. Don’t count on to swim properly in the event you by no means contact the water and solely do at-home band exercises, however once you’re in a pinch, this can be a nice various.

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