Daily Dryland Swimming Workouts #63 – Another Test Set

For the past few months, SwimSwam has been posting a daily swimming workout to help inspire swim coaches around the world who are looking for new ideas to try with their swimmers. Since most of the world’s pools are currently closed for business, we wanted to give swimmers and coaches an alternative set of dryland workouts to use to stay fit during the quarantine. These workouts will be designed to be done around the house. Some will use basic equipment, like medicine balls or stretch cords, while others will be all body-weight exercises.

These workouts are provided for informational purposes only.

See more at-home training ideas on our At Home Swim Training page here

TEST SET ROUND 4

It’s time for our 3rd round of test set, which focuses on pushups and planks.  If you don’t, take a step back and evaluate your plan. Should be you adding load to your workouts? Are you giving a maximum effort, or are you cutting reps? For most swimmers, if you’re not progressing in strength after 6 or 8 weeks of purely dryland training, there’s probably an explanation – very few swimmers will hit a strength max, even at bodyweight exercises – that quickly.

If you’ve been tracking your test sets, please leave the results in the comments below! We’d love to hear if the workouts are working, or if we need to adjust the intensity or nature of them.

WARMUP

Shoulder activation warmup from GuerillaZen Fitness:

TEST SET

Like any test set, the key here is good record-keeping. Grab a piece of paper, or open a notepad on your phone, to mark down your performance after each item below.

Rest 60 seconds between each workout

• Pushup Max
• Standard plank max
• Pushup Max
• Flutter kick Max (for time)
• Pushup Max
• Standard plank max
• Pushup Max
• Run around a set course (look for about a 1 mile course, but whatever you can do safely where you live is fine).

Note: if your hips drop on a plank, that ends your time – keep your back flat!

Got that all down? Good! This whole set should take about 15 minutes, so below is a secondary post-test set to make sure you still get some good work in. This will focus on lower body, since the test set above is mostly an upper body and core test set.

SECONDARY SET

:20 rest in between each

• 15 x calf raises (most should be able to hold some weight while doing this)
• 10 x body weight squats (use good form)
• 15 x calf raises
• 10 x squat jumps (use good form)
• 15 x calf raises
• 30 x burpees

COOL DOWN

With a nice walk, or a stretching routine.