A Competitive Swimming Warm-up

Last Updated on September 14, 2022 by admin

**Competitive swimmers need to warm-up correctly**

In this article, we will provide advice, hacks and tips on how to achieve an effective competitive swimming warm-up, that will help you swim faster.

Competitive swimming warm-ups are an area often overlooked in many training programmes.
Some swimmers find warm-ups ‘boring’, as they don’t understand their importance.

Why is a competitive swimming warm-up so important?

A competitive swimming warm-up is of key importance to swimmers because, in order to swim fast, swimmer’s muscles need to be warmed.

This increases their flexibility and enhances their range of movement, making them more efficient whilst swimming.
Swimming with warm and supple muscles reduces the chance of injury.
An effective warm-up also prepares the swimmer’s heart to pump larger amounts of oxygen-rich blood throughout their body whilst swimming.

The competitive swimming warm-up process

To perform an effective competitive swimming warm-up requires the swimmer to take a focused approach to the whole of the warm-up process, which includes:

Arrive at the venue on time

It’s important that the swimmer arrives at the competition venue in good time. This avoids creating unnecessary anxiety and ensures they have enough time to carry out an effective warm-up.

Dryland warm-ups

Dryland warm-ups are performed before a swimmer enters the pool, to ensure their muscles are warm and supple before swimming. These are sometimes referred to as blood-flow stretching.

They are usually performed in two parts, first some warming-up exercises, followed by dynamic stretching.

Warming-up exercises: Before undertaking any stretching, the swimmer should begin to raise their body temperature gradually, by performing warmup exercises like skipping or jogging on the spot.

Swimmers should not stretch any cold muscles, as they need to be warmed before they can be stretched. Stretching cold muscles won’t increase the swimmer’s flexibility but could increase their risk of injury.

Dynamic stretching exercises: After raising their body temperature, swimmers should then perform a series of dynamic stretching exercises.

These gently stretch the muscles and prepare them for the rigours of swimming.
These should be rotational and swinging type exercises, for example, arms circles and lunges.
Sometimes the pre-competition dryland warm-up is performed as group warm-up exercises, led by either a senior swimmer or a coach. The dryland warm-ups should take a total of 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

RAMP Per-pool Warm-up

Many competitive swimming clubs operate RAMP-style pre-pool warm-ups for both training and competition.

This is a four-stage pre-pool warm-up, wherein in each stage, a range of exercises are performed to produce the desired effect.

Stage 1: Raise

The first stage is to use wide-ranging movements to help raise the swimmer’s heart rate and body temperature. For example,

Skipping/jump rope
Running on the spot/running in place
Arm and leg swings Activate and Mobilise

Stage 2: Activate

The second stage is to use wide-ranging movements to help activate the swimmer’s major muscle groups. For example,

Squats
Wall press-ups
Superman

Stage 3: Mobilise

The third stage is to use wide-ranging movements to help mobilise the swimmer’s major joint, to help improve their range of motion. For example,

Shoulder rotation
Trunk rotation
Lunges

Stage 4: Prime

The fourth and final stage is to use wide-ranging movements to help prime the swimmer’s major muscles. For example,

Squat jumps to streamline
Burpees
Plyometrics

When RAMP to use and its duration

Ideally, swimmers should spend 15 minutes completing RAMP some 5 to 10 minutes before training and competition.

Many competitive clubs perform their competition RAMP exercises as a team.

Pool warm-up

As swimmers swim at different events and at different distances, most have differing warm-up requirements. As a result, there is no standard distance or time for an effective pool warm-up.

However, most coaches prefer a pool warm-up lasting between 25 and 30 minutes.

A pool warm-up should consist of the following:

A 400m to 800m drill pace swim, which should include some kicking, with the focus on stroke technique.
A set of higher-intensity race-pace swims, which should be at an intensity to warm the body, but not to cause fatigue. Again, the focus should be on stroke technique.
For example: from either a dive or push and glide from the end of the pool, over a distance of 200m: The swimmer starts swimming freestyle, with their first eighteen strokes at drill pace, focusing on their technique. Then they perform twelve strokes gradually building their swimming speed to a 200m race pace. Finally, the swimmer performs six strokes holding that 200m race pace. The swimmer repeats this drill until 200m has been completed.
A 200m to 400m drill pace cool-down swim
Some competition warm-up pools can become very crowded, but it’s important that the swimmers keep moving during the whole of their warm-up. This will ensure their muscles are properly warmed and their blood flow starts to increase.
Some pool warm-ups finish with an opportunity for the swimmers to practice their starts from the starting blocks.
This is especially important if your swimming backstroke, as most pools have different types of blocks, and some pool walls are more slippery than others.
Swimmers should ideally finish their warm-up some 30 minutes before their event.

Keeping warm on the poolside/deck

After a pool warmup, the swimmer should change into a dry costume.

A swimmer can lose a vast amount of heat by remaining in a wet costume.
Swimmers need to stay warm in between races.
They should maintain their body heat by wearing warm clothing, ideally with shoes and socks for their feet, and a tracksuit with a tee shirt for the rest of their body.

Pre-race warm-up

A swimmer could have to wait for an hour or more before their event, during which time their muscles may have cooled, and their heart rate could have begun to slow.

Therefore, it’s important for swimmers to warm-up the muscles and to increase their blood flow again, by repeating their dryland warm-up routine (see above).

If available, a 10-minute warm-up swim in the swim-down pool, ideally 20 minutes before they are called up for their race.

Swimmers should continue with their dryland warmup exercises while waiting in the whipping area/ready room.

Cool-downs

After their event, the swimmer needs an effective cool-down to disperse any lactic acid which may have built up in their muscles, which can cause stiffness and/or soreness.

Post Event Swim-down: If available, a 10-minute easy swim in the swim-down pool, is an ideal way to cool-down effectively.

Post Event Cool-down: However, swim down facilities are not always available. In that case, some swimmers perform stretching exercises in a warm shower immediately after their race.

Post-event nutrition and hydration

After their event swimmers need to focus on their nutrition and hydration. A swimmer will need a light snack and a drink to replenish their fuel stores as soon as possible.

Some fruit and/or a cereal bar, with a sports drink, are some good options.
Some coaches prefer that the swimmer takes their recovery snack and drink with them to the swim-down pool and consumes them while swimming down.

Keeping warm between events

After cooling down, the swimmer needs to dry off, change into a dry costume and put on their warm clothing.

**Swimmers should develop their own warm-up plan**

Developing a competitive swimming warm-up plan

The key to swimmers performing an effective warm-up is the development of an individual warm-up plan.

This should be adaptable to most training or competitive situations and cover all phases of the warm-up process.

Most coaches provide their swimmers with a pre-set warm-up for training.
They also provide their swimmers with the information and advice required to perform an effective competition warm-up.
However, it’s the swimmers themselves that should develop their own individual warm-up plan.
This plan should be practiced regularly and developed where necessary. Swimmers should use lower-priority competitions to practice and develop their individual warm-up plans.
A swimmer’s warm-up plan should be fully developed in time for a major competition.
A major competition is not the place to introduce anything new into a warm-up plan, as the swimmer needs to be able to fully focus on their event, to enable optimum performance.
Many swimmers put their individual warm-up plans in their swimming log for easy reference.

Adapting a competitive swimming warm-up plan

Competitive swimming warm-ups can vary in quality from gala/meets to gala/meets. It’s therefore wise for a swimmer to be prepared to adapt their warm-up plan. Amongst the factors that need to be taken into consideration are:

What stroke/s is the swimmer swimming: Is there enough room in the lane to effectively warm-up for my butterfly event?

What is the distance of the swimmer’s event: A 50m butterfly sprinter will require a different type of pool warm-up than that of a 1500m freestyle distance swimmer.

How old is the swimmer: A warm-up for a junior swimmer, can be far different from that of a senior swimmer, swimming the same event.

What is the size of the pool: Is it a short or long-course pool, and how many lanes does it have?

How many swimmers are in a lane: Is the warm-up lane too crowded to be able to perform a planned pool warm-up?

How much warmup time is available: Is the warm-up session long enough to be able to perform your planned pool warm-up?

A short pool warm-up: Sometimes swimmers only get a few minutes to warm-up in the pool.
A long pool warm-up: The swimmer has enough time and room to perform a quality warmup.
In reality, the usual pool warm-up is probably somewhere between a short pool warm-up and a long pool warm-up (see above). However, by planning for both extremes it should make it much easier for the swimmer to successfully adapt their plan.

What are the warm-up facilities: Is there a separate cool-down pool for a pre-race warm-up?

Psychological pre-race preparation for swimmers

Many top swimmers are increasingly using mental preparation techniques to help them in their psychological pre-race preparation. For example:

Self-talk

Swimming self-talk is a psychological self-motivational technique used by many of the world’s top swimmers.

Visualisation

Visualisation is mental imagery, mental rehearsal and meditation techniques, used to condition a swimmer’s brain to help them become faster. –

Breathing exercises

Breathing exercises are used as a relaxation technique to reduce any self-doubts and worries or physical anxieties while increasing concentration and performance.

A breathing exercise example: The swimmer should find a quiet place where they can either lay down or sit for 20 minutes, without being disturbed.
They should first close their eyes and focus on the rise and fall of their chest whilst breathing in a calm and steady manner for 2-3 minutes.
Next, they should focus on the sound of their breathing, whilst breathing in a calm and steady manner for a further 2-3 minutes.
As they become more relaxed their breathing should get louder. Next, they should focus on relaxing their chest muscles as they exhale whilst breathing in a calm and steady manner for a further 3-4 minutes.
Swimmers should ensure that their chest muscles rise higher and fall deeper with each exhalation.
The swimmer should repeat these exercises for the next 10 minutes.

Muscle relaxation exercises

Muscle relaxation exercises are also used as a relaxation technique.

A muscle relaxation exercise example:

The swimmer should find a quiet place where they can either lay down or sit for 5-10 minutes, without being disturbed.
Then they should close their eyes and focus on a particular muscle group in turn.
They should tense/tighten a group of muscles for five seconds, and then relax them for five seconds, and repeat five times.
They should slowly work all the muscle groups in the body.
Starting with their feet, then their calves, then their thighs, then their buttocks, then their trunk, then their chest and finally their arms (by clenching and unclenching their fists).
They then slowly work their way back down their body, in reverse order.

Practice Your Competitive Pool Warm-up During Training

For many younger and inexperienced swimmers, their first experience of a pool warm-up at a meet can be quite a bewildering experience.

Many are unsure of what they should be doing.
Usually, swimmers of all sizes and abilities are crammed together in a lane, often swimming at differing pace.

Therefore, many coaches practice a competitive warm-up during training.

This can help reduce a swimmer’s anxiety and increase their confidence when it comes to race day.
Some coaches even recreate the crowded conditions experience at many meet warm-ups by getting two or three lanes of swimmers into one lane when practising their competitive warm-up.

Takeaway

To be able to swim fast a swimmer needs to be properly prepared. An effective competitive swimming warm-up is a key element in any swimming preparation plans. But for it to be effective a flexible warm-up plan needs to be produced, practised and developed.

Swimming resource library

We have provided a swimming resource library, containing links to all of our publications and blog articles. To access any article simply click on the attached page link: Swimming resource library

The Competitive Swimming Exchange – Facebook Group

The Competitive Swimming Exchange is a Facebook group to help exchange ideas and information to collectively improve the sport we love.

It’s an international group for all swimmers, coaches, teachers, masters, triathletes and swimming parents.
In fact, it’s for all those who are interested in competitive swimming, either in the pool or in open water.

For more information about joining this group please use the following link: The Competitive Swimming Exchange

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