When I first fractured my foot, I could only push off the pool wall with one foot, but I still threw myself into going a little farther and faster each swim session. “It also lets you tap into another gear that you might not be able to reach in other sports like running, due to injury or burnout.”įor injured runners especially, having an outlet to stay competitive is important not only for your fitness, but your mental health. “Since it’s a non-impact sport, swimming helps you recover and hit refresh,” he said. Walton suggests that runners utilize swimming during a transition period, whether they are in a training lull, taking some time off post-marathon, trying to survive the winter, or moving from marathon to triathlon seasons. Plus, you’re strengthening your quads, hamstrings, and glutes by activating them.” 3. “But kicking will make you so much more powerful in the water. “People figure they’ll just pull and save their legs,” he says. “A strong core does way more than just making you look fit.” The coach notes that strengthening these muscles boosts thoracic mobility, which is key for maintaining good posture and reducing lower back pain.ĭicharry also points out that while many athletes focus on the upper body aspects of the exercise, your hip flexors and legs are just as important for driving your stroke. When you do freestyle, for example, your abs, obliques, and lower back muscles help you maintain a streamline position and rotate you from side to side, while your upper back muscles work with your shoulders to pull through the water, he explains. Swimming is a fantastic exercise for strengthening that core, Walton says. 7 Lower Ab Exercises for a Prerun Warmup. When your form begins to falter in mile 20 of a marathon, you can count on your core to keep you upright and moving forward. It’s especially important during long races when we’re fatigued. Having a strong core-the complex muscle group that supports the spine-is key for distance running, as it maintains your posture and stabilizes your hips. “When you replace a day of running with a low-impact exercise like swimming, your brain perceives it as a day off,” Dicharry says. “Swimming is more about how your body is feeling in the water.” That break from following numbers strictly can be refreshing both mentally and physically for us. “Runners tend to fixate on data, and swimming can be a nice counterbalance,” he says. That absence of data calculating your efforts can also be a blessing. “Every time you rest on the wall, you get instant feedback on how hard your body is working,” Walton says. Earl Walton, head coach of New York City-based triathlon club Tailwind Endurance, says he instructs his swimmers to check their heart rates the old-school way, holding two fingers to the pulse in their neck for 10 seconds and multiplying that number by six. One challenge of swimming is that it’s hard to measure heart rate unless you have a waterproof, swimming-specific watch like the Apple Watch Series 4 or Fitbit Charge 3. Easy-to-Follow Weight-Training Guide for Runners.If the same woman ran for an hour at 7:30 pace, she would burn 726 calories, according to our calorie burn calculator. For instance, if a 120-pound woman swims an hour of freestyle at a steady clip of 1:30 per hundred yards, she will burn about 750 calories, according to this swimming calculator based on a University of Wisconsin study. In fact, if you’re relatively strong in both running and swimming, maintaining a long, hard effort in the pool will burn about as many calories in the same time as running on land. “But intervals are a great way to give your engine a boost while putting very little stress on your muscles and ligaments.” “I see a lot of swimmers get in the pool and loaf around,” he says. One way to boost your cardio effort more in the pool is to incorporate high-intensity intervals, such as fast, 100-meter repeats with 10 seconds of rest between each. Still, seasoned swimmers can get an incredible workout by increasing the speed and length of their efforts, he explains. Here’s why: Newbies tend to make thrashing movements-which require a lot of effort-to get to the wall, while advanced swimmers with more economic strokes conserve energy by gliding and rotating efficiently. “You can actually get a better workout if you’re not very good at it,” he says. I’ve seen a lot of athletes hit a higher VO2 max in the pool than on land.”ĭicharry, who swam competitively and coached Master’s swimming in the past, explains that no matter your skill level in swimming, you can benefit from laps. “So you heart pumps harder to keep the blood cycling to the muscles. “When you exercise horizontally, your blood return is higher, because the blood doesn’t have to compete with gravity to move throughout your body,” he says. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play
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