5 Reasons Every Swimmer Should Lift Weights

5 Key Advantages of Strength Training for Swimmers

Injury Prevention

Repetitive tasks can lead to muscular imbalances. Over-developed, weak, or tight muscles, lack balance, putting joints and tissues under undue strain. Sports often involve repetitive and overdeveloped movement patterns at the expense of others. A smart strength training plan is designed around muscular balance, developing opposing joint actions, moving the body through multiple planes of movement.

Mobility

Both too little or too much mobility can pose problems for athletes. Despite common myths, competitive lifters often have the best mobility and the lowest incidence of injury. A balanced strength training routine, such as a well-designed kettlebell program for swimmers, trains and develops strength through all joint actions, full ranges of motion, and across all planes. It stretches and mobilizes restricted patterns while stabilizing hypermobile areas. This approach promotes muscular balance, leading to centered joints that move without restriction. By incorporating a kettlebell program for swimmers, athletes can enhance both strength and mobility, optimizing their performance and reducing the risk of injury.

Efficiency

On theme with mobility, a centered joint moves efficiently. Tight stiff muscles are like having the breaks on, with the body working harder to move through restricted motions. Loose hyper mobile tissues are like over stretched rubber bands lacking elasticity and tone. A fit, strong, and powerful muscle produces force economically, with greater ease, and for greater durations, than a weak one.

Endurance

Endurance - exclusively developing type one slow twitch aerobic muscle fibers can come at the expense of type two fast twitch anaerobic fibers, not to mention the intermediate fibers than can take on additional fast aerobic characteristics. The swimmer who can perform 10-20 pull ups can sustain similar or fewer stroke counts at higher and sustained velocities in the pool.

Speed 

Speed  - once stroke tempo is optimized and maxed out, the only way to get faster, is greater force production at that stroke rate. Improved force production can only come from overloading those muscles and patterns with external load.