By David “Dirk” Smith, M.Sc, CSCS, SDL (He/Him)
At the very beginning of my Strength and Conditioning career pursuits, I attended a day long workshop hosted by one of the snottiest universities I had ever been to. While I was never a student at Snooty University, I had worked there and also trained there at the height of my swimming career. One of the lectures during the workshop pertained to developing speed training skills and drills for sports like soccer, football, and other sports. As a swimmer, I was very much interested in learning how I could develop and adapt this training to be beneficial for swimmers.
Raising my hand, I went to ask said question to the instructor (at the appropriate Q&A period of course) and before I had finished my question, the lecturer (who was a coach at Snooty U) interrupted me to try and correct a technical detail I mentioned in my question. I mentioned that swimming is a concentric sport with minimal to no eccentric muscle contractions and the coach decided to zero on this technicality to publicly argue otherwise, for no other reason than to assert his competence. Which was risky since his point was (and is) inherently wrong and was publicly reminded of that in a room full of field experts. After that public embarrassment on his part, I managed to ask my question “how can I apply these principles of speed training to helping develop kicking in swimmers” which he quickly brushed off and moved on, leaving my question unanswered.
It is quite surprising to see a field that promotes itself so much on things like “coachability” and “constantly learning to improve” be so filled with ego-oriented mindsets who are more interested in exerting their own pride in competence that they can’t be bothered to actually listen before responding, correct themselves when they are wrong, and think outside the box for even a moment. In the end, he embarassed himself and I left the workshop with the only takeaway being that I felt more competent in myself than I did in half of the people they had leading it.
To this day, I have not seen one strength and conditioning coach who has ever applied speed training for swimming, none who have talked about it, taught it, done research on it, or even know anything about it. Unfortunately, swimming is one of the more… neglected sports when it comes so strength and conditioning programs, with primary focus on injury prevention in the shoulders. So it isn’t surprising. However, the point of this whole story is that, as a strength and conditioning coach myself, I have made it a focus to better develop such strength and conditioning training for swimmers that it effective in building speed, strength, power, and endurance on the land that better translates to performance in the water.
The principle of specificity states that your body is conditioned for the activities in which you train it for. This is the driving force behind the whole notion of periodization and unique program for athletes in any different sport and competition season. Speed training is most commonly used in sports which require sprinting skills, especially ones where the dynamics of game play involve constant acceleration and deceleration, changes of direction (agility) and short sprints over the series of 5-20 meters at any time. This is directly translating into the expression of speed, power, and stability from the leg muscles and through the feet that help the athlete to maintain control throughout the dynamics of gameplay.
What speed training also builds in athletes is anaerobic capacity which represents the body to resynthesize ATP (the body’s fuel source) via anaerobic metabolism (energy reproduction without oxygen) within a specific mode of short duration maximal exercise. Basically, what that means is maximizing your muscle’s ability to regenerate fuel during a high intensity bout of exercise that allows you to maintain the intensity for longer periods.
In swimming, the flutter kick is the standard method of propulsion for the legs within front crawl (freestyle) and backstroke events. The flutter kick is noted as an endurance-based kick involving short and fast cyclical movements between the two legs. The kick rate (number of kicks per one stroke of crawl) is defined by the intensity of the event itself, with short sprints (50m freestyle/backstroke) having a high kick rate and a correlative decrease in kick rate coupled with increasing distance to swim. At long distance events (800m/1500m/ open water), the kick rate is generally 1-1 or for some swimmers, non-existent.
While kicking is an important component of propulsion in swimming, it is also quite inefficient due to the sheer amount of energy utilized during kicking, especially given the legs are the largest muscle group in the body, when compared to the actual distance covered per kick, known as energy output. Thus, based on this level of energy output, the kick is more prominently utilized for shorter distance sprints and sparingly used for long distance events. This can be trained to develop the anaerobic capacity within the legs to reduce the energy output while maintaining, or even increasing kick performance. This can be both effective in increasing speed and reducing energy output during sprint and mid distance events, but also utilized tactically in longer distance events when a short, intense burst of speed is needed when overtaking a competitor or coming into the finish line for a big finish.
Even more so, because of the coordinative components that are so necessary to swimming skill and stroke development, especially as it pertains to timing of the kick with that of the arms in strokes like backstroke and breakstroke, but also even on the flutter kick with backstroke and freestyle, incorporating coordination training into the speed drills will serve an important role in enhancing this upper/lower body coordination and rhythmic timing. By incorporating exercises such as the ball bounces and such, you are developing focus on an external component to drive more autonomic development of the speed and coordination training with that of a conscious action which will build the muscle memory for you to enhance further when in the water.
Speed and agility are often trained together and while swimming, especially with kicking is generally a linear sport, some agility training components do serve an important role to developing kicking capabilities and, if applied effectively, serve to reduce the risk of injury. This is especially relevant for the breakstroke which which sees an external rotation of the leg and foot within every kick. It is important to consider proper technique of the breakstroke quick of which the knees generally stay together and the external rotation is more limited. This reduces the unnecessary lateral stress and sheering forces placed onto the knee joint due to bad technique. Given that the breastroke kick is a power-based kick, it’s the most common cause of lower legs injuries swimming and often due to repetive bad technique coupled with reduced strength/endurance in the knees.
Agility exercises are designed to train exactly this, to allow for a mutlitude of directional changes and push offs at different angles for both the ankle and knee joint. Allowing athletes to develop the strength, endurance, and power within the muscles and joints to allow for such stresses to minimize injury risk and enhance the power output within the step. This does translate to the breastroke and dolphin kick nicely as well. It is also very useful when coming into the turns and push offs. While there isn’t a need for full directional changes in agility drills, it is good to incorporate some basic sets to build that capacity within the legs.
Thus, the development of speed, agility, and coordination training on dryland coupled with dedicated kick development and training during swim practice can really benefit swimmers who are looking for an extra (and unexpected) edge to utilize during competition that will give them a literal leg up on the competition. Here are some basic drills to utilize.
Tools:
- Athletic shoes with good traction.
- Speed/Agility Ladder (Novice/Beginner)
- Flight of stairs (Intermediate/Advanced)
- Strong Resistance Band + Workout Buddy (Partner Pulls)
Exercises
- Note, these exercises can be performed both on the agility ladder and the staircase (going upstairs only). The staircase involves a more intense version of the same drills that also emphasize the concentric phase of the muscle contraction while deemphasizing the eccentric component.
- Click on each video for a detail description of the exercise and its purpose on the video’s YouTube page.
2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back with Ball Bounce
High Side Step Shuffle
Lateral Speedwork Drill on Agility Ladder
Partner Pulls
If you have any feedback, i’d love to hear it below! Remember to keep it on topic and respectful! 🙂
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