Is This Common Exercise Destroying Your Swimming Times?
The concept of using highly specific movement patterns on dry land can make sense. After all, we are trying to improve the swimmer’s ability to execute a rather unique and specific movement. This type of training can be seen all over social media, Instagram in particular, in which an ever-increasing number of athletes are using elastic resistance bands to simulate the arm cycle of all 4 strokes.
It’s a common practice to replicate Butterfly and Freestyle arm stroke cycles with resistance bands.
This type of training is largely used to try to enhance the swimmer’s ability to perform this same movement in the water. There are however several problems with this that a surprisingly large number of coaches and ‘strength and conditioning’ coaches either do not know or do not understand.
The swimming coach has the difficult job of trying to enhance motor skills and physiological adaptations in the athletes to maximise their ability during a race. To make this process as smooth as possible, the athletes must not be confused in their learning of a skill. The skill is specific to the environment in which it is learnt. We want that skill maximised in the water, not on land.
Replication of swimming stroke cycles on land with resistance bands changes the mechanics of the movement. It may look similar, but it really is not. Standing bent over with paddles attached to elastic is not the same as executing the arm stroke cycle in the water. In the water you have hydrodynamic resistance not elastic, you are in a horizontal and straight-line position not bent over as well as joint positions and angular velocities are applicable and specific to swimming. Using bands on land changes almost all mechanical aspects of the arm stroke cycle, those mentioned above as well as a lack of technical components of the arm cycle such as the press, catch and sculling. It is largely a case of how fast the athlete can pull their arm from an overhead position to down by their sides… of which there is a host of better alternatives without blurring the neuromuscular coordination achieved in the water.
Coaches on land must enhance physical qualities without impairing the work of the swimming coaches, giving your athletes movements that look like swimming is a detrimental and over-simplistic approach that shows a severe lack of mechanical understanding of swimming and training for your athletes. Land-based coaches must also understand where your job ends. It is not your job or responsibility to enhances swimming specific skills, it is your job to ensure the athletes have the physical qualities to be able to handle that training.
Drills do not equal skills.
However, having said that… there is one possible use for such exercises. Most things have a place, the trick is knowing when to use them. The optimal time to use such exercises maybe during the Coronavirus lockdown when swimmers have no access to the water. Using a vast array of banded shoulder exercises helps to keep and maintain sufficient tissue loading of the structures around the shoulder. This may help to maintain the adaptations they have acquired in the months and years of training before lockdown, putting them in a much stronger position to tolerate training and not have to play catch up once swimming training recommences.
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Stay safe.