Dryland Swim Team Workouts Outside of the Weight Room

One the biggest challenges in dryland workouts for swimmers is the combination of facilities, the sheer number of athletes and the amount of time to complete the workouts. Weight rooms are impossible for 30-40 athletes to get in a good workout in 40-45 minutes or less. Secondly, more times than not, you are on the pool deck or in a hallway outside of the pool anyways. One solution is metabolic running. This type of training allows for a great number of athletes to workout at the same time without any equipment. More importantly, we observed a 10-15% improvement in our times in the pool after 4 weeks of implementing the metabolic swim team workouts.

Not only does metabolic running develop a swimmers overall conditioning, it will develop swimmer’s overall athletic ability. The metabolic training will challenge their overall speed of movements, coordination, as well as, their conditioning. The workouts are as follows; a set of 10 exercises with a 10-15 sec rest period between each exercise. Repeat 10 times and then allow a 3 min rest.

The program is only limited by the coach’s creativity. Program the sets longer (3-5 min-500 free lengths) or shorter (20-30 sec, 50 free lengths) based on your team needs. You can make them as hard and as easy as you see fit. You can add complex movements or simply, skip for 50 meters.

Here are a couple sets we have used with our swimmers:

1. Set 1: 10 pushups, Sprint , Carioca , Jog, Streamline jumps, Jog, Power Skips, Shuffle, Backpedal, and 5 sit-ups
2. Rest 3 minutes
3. Set 2: Jog 10 sec, 5 pushups, Backpedal, Sprint, Zigzag Run, High Knees Backwards, Carioca, Shuffle, Sprint
4. Rest 3 minutes and repeat for 1-2 additional sets

By the end of this 20-25 minute workout, they will be pushed to their limits. Add a 15-20 cool down flexibility program and you will see performance gains in the pool almost immediately.