Warming Up and Cooling Down

The warm-up is your first in-water activity of each training session. The three important aspects of the warm-up are overcoming the chill of the water, getting your body ready for the workout, and tuning your mind in to the task. The best way to warm up is to get into the water and to start swimming slowly for several laps. Immediately, you are presented with a problem—water temperature that is comfortable during a workout is usually uncomfortably cool when you first get in. The urge to start sprinting can be strong, with heart-stopping, lung-gripping semipanic that only gives way to relative comfort after a few laps or more. But this can be a short path to injury. Better to do a dry land warm-up—calisthenics, Pilates, a brisk jog, or something similar to raise your body temperature and get you moderately sweaty—and then to jump into the water before you have a chance to cool down.

After adjusting to the water temperature, focus your mind and neuromuscular system. Going through a progression of swimming-skill drills will force your swimming muscles to move through all the ranges of motion that are required for full-stroke swimming. The drills also allow you to focus on proper execution. This is an excellent time to work on drills that are difficult to execute properly when you are tired. Your brain also takes a while to get fully involved, and skill drills focus it effectively. Adding full-stroke swimming by alternating a length of drilling with a length of swimming (that is, making what you correctly executed in the drill show up in your stroke) is an ideal way to transition into the main part of the workout. Avoid the tendency to just swim garbage yardage as your warm-up. The warm-ups throughout this book call for a mix of skill drills and swimming.

Actively cooling down at the end of a training session is like warming up in reverse—returning the body and all its functions to near-resting levels by doing some easy swimming or drilling. For a while after a strong exercise effort, your muscles continue to clear lactic acid into your bloodstream. Easy activity helps keep oxygenated blood flowing rapidly, thereby transporting lactic acid away from the muscles. Otherwise, lactic acid continues to accumulate even after you stop exercising. Listen to your car after you’ve turned it off following a long, hard drive; those sounds of ticking metal and passing vapors go on for minutes. In the same way, your body protests when you swim it hard and then come to a sudden stop. An active cool-down avoids extra strain on the heart and lessens postexercise cramping and soreness.

The cool-down is often treated as a waste due to the common misconception that moving at a low intensity offers no training effect. Ignorance is bliss. The most important training you do in swimming is the training of your neuromuscular system (doing it right rather than just doing it). The cool-down is an excellent time to do some high-quality drill work. In fact, coaxing your muscles to go through specific skill drills when they are fatigued presents an effective motor-learning opportunity. Choose drills and skills you have mastered for cool-downs rather than ones you have difficulty executing when rested.