Dear fellow swimmers
Should ALL swimmers do land training?
If you spend any time on social media, you will probably have come across videos of elite swimmers shifting
weights or doing other kinds of land-based exercises.
At the top level, swimmers need high levels of strength, power and muscular endurance to be competitive. Gym work supplements their pool training and helps them swim further, faster.
But is this necessary if you're a recreational swimmer? If swimming is your respite from digital overload or your moment of peace in nature, surely you don't need to complicate things by adding land training into the mix. For years, the only exercise I did was swimming and it was fine.
However, after struggling with niggling
shoulder pains one year, I added some simple land-based exercises. After a few weeks, not only had the pain gone, but I felt stronger and more comfortable in the water, and I swam faster.
Since then, I try to do some land-based exercise at least once a week - although this is typically the first thing that gets cut when I'm busy.
There is no 'should' here but most swimmers could benefit from doing land-based training too. Even if you've no interest in swimming further or faster, it will help you feel stronger in the water and possibly more confident.
We therefore asked strength and conditioning coach Eryn Barber to share some basic exercises with us. See Land Training for Non-Competitive Swimmers.
New issue now live
Our combined Jan/Feb 2025 edition of Outdoor Swimmer magazine is now live and available in print from the Outdoor Swimmer Shop and in digital formats on Pocket Mags and Outdoor Swimmer Extra. It also includes our free Swim Travel
Supplement.
