Dry Land Strength Training At The Gym

A gym membership is also a great and inexpensive idea to workout. Whenever my daughter goes to the gym, she always sees many exercises being done by people that engage many of the major muscle groups in swimming. With the advice of a trainer, which every gym has, here are exercises that are a great workout.

1. Using the rowing machine is a great way to engage nearly all muscle groups and increase heart rate for a full body workout.

2. If you’re a swimmer looking to improve lower body/ leg strength, then the leg extension machine is a great option for you. It uses all your leg muscles, and you can adjust the weight as you improve.

3. If you are looking to engage the upper body muscles, then the chest press machine is a great option to engage the arms for a more powerful stroke.

4. The next exercises will incorporate medicine balls. The first one is medicine ball jumping squats, which both works your cardio and works on arm and leg strength and explosiveness. You can also hold a medicine ball while doing crunches to incorporate core strength or do medicine ball throws (either with a partner or simply do them overhead or to a wall and catch them yourself). You can also do leg raises, twisted crunches, twisted lunges, and more. You can even add them to things like box jumps for added weight and resistance. Medicine balls are one of the most versatile free weights and can be used for a variety of exercises.

5. Another great option for strength is using battle ropes. Battle ropes are weighted ropes that you can use for a variety of exercises to get many different workouts for various parts of your body.

6. Box jumps are a great idea to increase leg explosiveness and power. These are performed by getting a “box” at your gym, (or something of like nature available like a stool), and the rest is self-explanatory- you jump onto it. But be sure to land as softly as possible and not land with the front of your foot (you will destroy your shins doing that), and always land with your knees bent in a squat like position.

7. The last workout for today has to do with resistance ropes, which are like battle ropes but do not have any weight and are more for resistance training. These ropes are usually hanging somewhere, and you can use them to do things like pushups and squats but with added resistance.

Complete the above entire routine one to three times through. If you do all the exercises listed, you’ll effectively hit all your swimming physiology and major swimming muscles, including your deltoids, triceps, lats, abdominals, low back, glutes, quads, hip flexors, hamstrings and calves.

And of course, the sky is the limit in terms of biohacking this workout, including wearing a vest, using a restricted air breathing mask, going 10 seconds up-10 seconds down for exercises, or any hack you can muster to make it harder – if that’s your thing.

One thing to always keep in mind when weight and gym training is making sure that you always do the exercises properly to prevent injury. You also should be sure to not do weight amounts that are simply too heavy for you (weights that are beyond the point of challenging.) Also, it is important that you take it slow and increase weight gradually to prevent injuries.

In conclusion, dryland training is a great way to increase muscle strength to allow you to have more propulsion in the pool. There are virtually no limits when it comes to strength training when incorporating the exercises above.