5 Ways to Boost Your Swim This Year

author : jessicarandall
comments : 26

Kick your swim into hear with these tips to crush the swim.

Ready to unleash some faster swimming this season?

Sure ya are—here are some proven ways that you can get more from yourself in the water this season, whether it’s hammering down on a high-performance mindset or spending a little extra time doing warm-down, let’s get you swimming like a rock star this season.

Write down your workouts. One of the hallmark characteristics of elite swimmers is their ability to be self-aware. This keen sense of objectivity allows them to make course corrections more quickly when things are going well (but could be going even better) and more importantly, when they aren’t going well at all. Writing out your swim practices and reflecting on your performance gives you a moment to step back from the pool and get a clearer idea of where to go from here.

Master your breathing. Swimming is a unique sport in that you have to work on your technique, strength, aerobic capacity, starts, turns and more, and then, on top of all that, you need to condition your lungs and respiratory muscles to time your breathing properly. There are a few different ways to improve your breathing capacity. There are different breathing exercises for swimmers that boost their lung capacity, including using a respiratory training device, breathing patterns, and hypoxic sets.

Work on your mental training. Similar to the point above, a lot goes into your swimming. But how often has your workout or your races gone to garbage because of a mental hang-up: Perhaps you were focused, or you weren’t motivated enough to push hard in training, or you got overly nervous before competition. You don’t need to go full tilt with everything that mental training has to offer, but you should target the problem areas in your swimming, committing ten minutes a day to get started.

Warm down after your intense workouts. Ever notice that on the nights where you train your brains off that it takes a while to get to sleep? That’s because your body is coursing with cortisol and adrenaline, which can take up to two full days to return to normal levels. A simple way to speed up this process, while also improving your ability to clear lactate from your blood, is to perform 15 minutes of active recovery at the end of your most intense workouts.


Foam roll it out. Foam rolling has become quite the fun thing to do for everyone from high performance athletes to casual gymgoers to those seeking physical therapy. When done properly foam rolling helps to decrease muscle soreness, it reduces arterial stiffness, can help you perform more explosively in the days following a tough workout, and can increase flexibility faster than static stretching alone. Commit to doing 10-15 minutes of foam rolling after your workout, and then again later in the day or the following morning to help loosen things up and promote blood-flow.

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date: September 3, 2018

jessicarandall