Set Of The Week: IM Warm-up Progression

Photo Courtesy: Griffin Scott

Welcome to Swimming World’s Set Of The Week! This week’s set is a quick warm-up or pre-set routine to get all of your strokes ready for the rest of workout. Take a look at the set and the description below:

10 x 75’s on :15 SR as:

75 fly kick

50 fly/25 back

25 fly/50 back

75 back kick

50 back/25 breast

25 back/50 breast

75 breast kick

50 breast/25 free

25 breast/50 free

75 flutter kick

While it is only 10 x 75’s, each one is different and there is some complexity to the pattern. While the first time explaining may be difficult, once swimmers go through it once or twice they can understand the order. Looking at it from a stroke standpoint, you will progress through all four strokes in IM order from start to finish. Beginning with a 75 butterfly, with each consecutive 75 you will take away a 25 of butterfly at the end and add a 25 of backstroke. You continue in this way until you get a full 75 of backstroke, when you then begin taking away backstroke and adding breaststroke, finally doing the same with freestyle.

While the set gives you a chance to work on all four stroke, the pattern is also what allows this set to be so useful. In the example above each full 75 of stroke will be all kick of that stroke, but you can change this or assign different instructions to the various distances depending on your needs. For example, you can make all full 75’s of the stroke kick, any 50’s of stroke drill, and any 25’s of stroke build. Using fins is also a good way to warm up the legs and get them moving fast if you want to incorporate that at the end of warm-up. Regardless of how you use this set, it is short and flexible enough so that you can return to it frequently without worrying about it becoming stale with your swimmers. Happy swimming!

All swimming and dryland training and instruction should be performed under the supervision of a qualified coach or instructor, and in circumstances that ensure the safety of participants.

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Aiden Smith

7 years ago

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