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Swimming - Recovery
Swimming - Recovery
THE ULTIMATE RECOVERY WORKOUT
Here's a tip from top freestylers: Use backstroke to work out the kinks.
The backstroke's power works on more than swimmers. An obvious question that never seems to get asked: If hard-training athletes are forever being urged to use swimming as a recovery workout, what do hard-training swimmers use? Auburn University head swim coach Dave Marsh knows. And if his simple answer pinpoints one of the best recovery workouts you can do in the pool, perhaps it pinpoints one of the best recovery workouts for anyone. Marsh tells his top freestylers to turn over on their backs following a hard training set in their main stroke. His reason sounds simple enough. "Swimming backstroke gives them a chance to work the kinks out of their tired freestyle muscles with some active-rest swimming." But there are several big ideas embedded in that little prescription, all of which can work equally well for cross-trainers who want a quicker recovery from land-based workouts and for people who spend almost all their athletic time in the water anyway.
Marsh has given this subject considerable thought. Auburn's swimmers, currently (1998) ranked second in the NCAA, cover six to ten miles a day in training--a healthy load even for a runner, never mind a swimmer, whose body interprets it as the equivalent of a marathon or more six days a week. Add two to three weekly sessions in the weight room for good measure, and it's obvious the team's recovery training had better be good. Marsh uses backstroke as a key ingredient because, while freestyle and backstroke are both "long-axis" strokes, meaning they share the same pattern of body rotation--and use many of the same muscles, they use them in slightly different ways. In both strokes you lie stretched out in the water and rotate the hips around the spinal (long) axis while stroking with an alternating arm pattern. And though you swim backstroke with many of the same muscles used in freestyle, the movement is reversed, so easy backstroke swimming can "massage" tired freestyle muscles. The ones that were contracting are now lengthening and vice versa. Besides, in freestyle, the simple act of breathing correctly is a technique and many people tense up if they don't have it just right. Backstroke is more relaxing for them because they can breathe any time they want. On top of that, you get to loosen up and take the session with something less than deadly seriousness. A slightly sloppy stroke technique can be harmlessly brushed off a lot more easily than it could in what most triathletes, swimmers, and cross-trainers consider their primary stroke. The idea is to use "non-prime" strokes for warming and loosening, as in a recovery workout, and save your prime stroke for fast swimming with good form.
Even if swimming is just a sport for your "off" days, you can get a lot out of facing the ceiling instead of the pool bottom. If you're swimming to recover, you should know that backstroke, thanks to its natural loosening properties, may work even better as a general recovery stroke than freestyle. And if you're into more serious water work, say training for a triathlon, open-water or Masters swimming event, you undoubtedly swim mostly freestyle and can use backstroke as a restorative, just as Marsh's troops do. So why don't more people swim inverted if it's so great? Probably because it's disconcerting to be upside-down and going backward, and it's harder to stay afloat.
Both are easy to fix. First, get your bearings. Use a line of tiles or lights or other markings on the ceiling to help you set a straight course. Failing that, just hug the lane line. Most pools have a set of colorful pennants hanging across the pool near each end wall. Swimmers call them "backstroke flags" because they warn you that the wall is 5 yards (three to four strokes) away. To help stay afloat, learn to balance your body on your back. On your back, you keep your butt from sinking by leaning on your shoulder blades and the back of your head. (Just the opposite of pressing on your chest in freestyle.) Don't put your head back; keep your chin slightly tucked, as if you were holding a golf ball between your chin and throat. That will keep your hips near the surface and you'll ride the waves like a pro, relaxing as you go.
Before starting an exercise program, consult a physician..
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