Last summer, My daughter started swimming on a competitive swim team. It was her first experience with competitive swimming and we've seen a lot of improvement, but like anything it takes a lot of practice and commitment to really be a great swimmer. It also takes education. Lots of it. Who knew there was so much to learn about swimming? Stroke development, starts, turns, finishes, and what to expect in a swim meet have meant a big learning curve for our whole family. Being a yoga teacher, I decided to take a look at yoga and the benefits it might have for competitive swimmers.
Turns out, yoga is beneficial to swimmers and is used in what swim coaches call "dryland training" which helps complement swimmers' lap swimming and pool workouts. Practicing yoga helps swimmers with flexibility making them less prone to injury. Yoga practice also benefits swimmers with strength-building, proper body alignment, breath control, increased oxygen, concentration and balance.
Flexibility: Keeping you injury-free
Practicing yoga keeps an athlete flexible loosening up tight muscles. “Yoga is key for preventing injuries,” says Kimberly Fowler, founder of YAS Fitness Centers in California and creator of Yoga For Athletes.“I’ve had athletes, like U.S. Olympic hopefuls swimmers Amanda Beard and Keri Hehn and top U.K. hurdler Tasha Danvers, all of whom have amazing training and a team of coaches, trainers and therapists, come up to me and say ‘Wow! This is the first season I didn’t get injured,’” she notes.
Because yoga postures take the body through a full range of motion, muscles are more flexible and supple making them less prone to injury.
In Sims' work with swimmers, she focuses on key body areas and applies some of what she calls "universal principles" of asanas to help them ward off injury and improve performance:
Shoulder Blades: In Adho Mukha Svanasana (Downward-Facing Dog) and Urdhva Mukha Svanasana (Upward-Facing Dog), shoulder blades need to drop down the back. The same principle applies in swimming, where the shoulders create the biggest problems. Rotator cuff injuries or shoulder tendonitis (also called "swimmer's shoulder") occur when the rhomboids are not held in place when the arm is raised in freestyle stroke. Instead of the muscle carrying the weight of the arm, the tendon bears the burden. Over time the tendon becomes frayed and aggravated.
Hips:
Baddha Konasana (Bound Angle Pose), with the soles of the feet touching together and the outsides of the knees flat on the floor, demonstrates a healthy external rotation of the hip. For many people, though, the hips remain locked and stiff. In a swimmer, this congestion can manifest in a faulty breaststroke kick. Without free, loose hips, it's difficult to complete this stroke effectively and efficiently.
Ankles: In all of yoga's standing poses, it's important to place the foot on the ground in order to get full extension, and flexible ankles allow the foot to rest solidly on the ground. Similarly, swimmers use the ankles as the foundation of movement—propelling the body forward with a kick. The top of the foot should hit the water as if in Virasana (Hero Pose)—at 180 degrees. Sims will often work with runners who have such severe ankle stiffness that their kick literally pulls them backwards—"like trying to lift a plane off the ground with the flaps down."
Strength Building
Yoga asanas (postures) use body weight as a powerful source of resistance as gravity helps to build strength and muscle. Poses such as chair helps strengthen the glutes, thighs, and back. Plank, standing split, side plank, and half moon help strengthen upper body muscles. Many seated poses including help build core muscle. Practicing asanas can build strength without creating the tightness and bulkiness that can sometimes occur with basic weight training.
Proper AlignmentAlong with the benefits of strength building, yoga can help swimmers learn proper body alignment. Leslie Sims, a former national swim coach and a yoga teacher at "now YOGA" and head coach at Club Swim in Los Altos and Palo Alto, California says, "Body alignment, integral to all sports performance, is often thrown off kilter in swimmers. This is due to over development of the front of the body, which occurs from chronic overuse in three of the four basic swim strokes—butterfly, breast, and freestyle. Because a swimmers pectorals are predominantly in a contracted state, the opposing fascia (where muscle attaches to bone) of the rhomboids is weakened. Because the backstroke can counteract some of the repetitive stroke motions that lead to such muscle imbalance, Sims instructs her swim students to perform the backstroke at the end of every workout. Often just doing the backstroke isn't
enough, however."
Breath control/Increased oxygenYoga also helps swimmers become much more aware of their breath. Yoga teaches you how to lengthen your breath allowing you to have better control of your breath while calming your nerves before events. You also learn how to lengthen your breath which allows more oxygen to flow into your body.
Concentration/Balance
A series of postures called sun salutations help warm up and stretch out most of the muscles of the body. After practicing them time and time again, a rhythm and a continuous flow develops much like swimming. Because a swimmers mind is clear without distractions, they can focus on the job at hand. Sun Salutations done before a meet can help swimmers with concentration and pre-meet jitters.
