Recovery training

This type of training refers to easy swimming used to hasten recovery from more intense training and from competitions. Recovery swimming stimulates and enhances the rate of improvement in aerobic capacity and anaerobic power. It also increases the amount of intense swimming that athletes can perform weekly because it hastens recovery from such training.

Safe holds for baby swimming

The following holds offer you comfortable and safe options for moving with your child. With all these holds, make sure your hands are secure but relaxed (and not clenched), as this will indicate your confidence. Also talk to your child throughout to reassure her.

The Waltz (hug) hold

This hold provides the most security for your child, and should be used if he is unsure or clinging to you. It is the ideal hold for the first few trips to the pool. Move a child from the Waltz hold to the face to face hold only when you feel him relax in your arms. Hold your baby up in your arms, slightly to one side of your torso, so that he is straddling you around the waist to chest area and is only slightly immersed in the water. Use it when getting in and out of the pool and while your baby gets acclimated to the water.

Warm up procedure for competition

The major portion of the warm up should be a reasonable period of easy swimming. This activity will allow swimmers' oxygen consumption mechanisms to respond faster when the race begins so that they will more quickly reach an optimum level of oxygen consumption. As a result, they should be able to swim farther and faster before becoming fatigued.

Besides increasing blood flow and oxygen consumption, swimmers should include activities in their warm up that wil increase their range of motion, their stroke mechanisms, and their sense of pace. Another purpose is to focus on strategy for the race. Available research and the reported experiences of successful coaches and athlees suggest the following warm up procedures. They include low intensity swimmingto increase blood flow and oxygen consumption as well as activities to increase range of motion and stroke efficiency. Attention is also given to the practice of starts and turns. Finally, they include a physical rehearsal for the race in the form of paced swims.

Guidelines for increasing propulsive force

Always wait until a high elbow catch position has been achieved before apllying backward force against the water. Inexperienced swimmers try to apply force when the arms are facing downward or against the water. They must learn to wait until they have positioned the undersides of the arms and the palms of the hands to push back against the water before apllying force. The arms and hands should travel through approximately one-third of their underwater armstrokes before swimmers begin to push backward against the water.

The arms should be flexed approximately 90 degrees when the catch is made, and they should not be extended or flexed further by any significant amount during the propulsive phases of the strokes that follow. In other words, swimmers should form a boomerang-shaped paddle with the undersides of the arms and hands when they make the catch, and they should press backward against the water throughout the stroke without changing the shape of the appreciable. In this way, the work of forward propulsion is done by the large adducting and extending muscle groups of the shoulders and torso instead of the small muscle groups that tend to rotate the forearms and hands. The only exception to this rule occurs in the backstroke, in which the arms extend backward and below the thighs during the propulsive phase of their strokes.

Overload endurance training

Overload endurance training is the third level of endurance training and it should be done at speeds exceeding those at which the anaerobic threshold occurs. This sort of training is highly anaerobic and produces severe levels of acidosis. What I just said may cause you wonder why it is in the category of endurance training. It is placed in this category because of it's training effects which are:

• An increase in the maximal oxygen consumption of all trained muscle fibers including FTb fibers
• An increase in the number of capillaries around all trained muscle fibers including FTb fibers
• An increase in the amounts of myoglobin and mitochondria in all trained muscle fibers including FTb fibers
• An increase in the rate of lactate removal from all trained muscle fibers including FTb fibers
• An increase in the buffering capacity of all three categories of muscle fibers

Threshold endurance training

A few weeks ago I blogged on basic endurance training. Today I'm going to continue that post with guidelines for threshold endurance training. Training in this category should be done at a speed that approximates the swimmer's individual anaerobic threshold. The training effects of this type of training are:

• Increased percentage utilization of VO2 max
• Increased lactate removal from muscles and blood
• Increase in number of capillaries around slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers
• Increased myoglobin and mitochondria in slow twitch and fast twitch muscle fibers
• Increased stroke volume and cardiac output
• Increased blood volume
• Increased pulmonary capillaries
• Improved blood shunting
• Increased VO2 max, particularly in fast twitch muscle fibers