Breaststroke swimming: not all warm-ups are created equal!

Swimming-specific warm-ups

While the broad principles of warm-ups apply equally to swimmers, unlike other athletes, swimmers have to perform in the water, which is a very different environment to land, and where gravity has a minimal impact but resistance of the (water) medium has a disproportionate impact. Therefore, many swimming coaches recommend swimming with hand paddles for sprints during warm-ups. These paddles provide extra resistance (satisfying element #2 above) yet are sport specific, loading the muscles and providing neurological stimulation in the same way that is needed during competition.

Some swimming coaches however recommend that performing weighted warm-ups on land can also provide a neurological and muscular stimulus to enhance performance during competition. This approach is analogous to land athletes engaging in sled sprints, using weighted bats or performing squats as part of a pre-competition warm up^(7,8). Other coaches believe that a land warm-up simulating the swimming stroke but with reduced resistance - for example by the use of resistance tubes or bands – is effective because it loads the swimming muscles but allows the swimmer to achieve faster movement speeds or higher stroke frequencies during warm-ups. This (in theory) translates to ‘neurologically faster activation’ in the water, providing a performance advantage – in a similar way that assisted jumps in land-based sports allow athletes to move with less resistance and increasing their movement speed (also known as ‘overspeed training’)⁽⁹⁾.

New breaststroke warm-up research

Given the special demands of breaststroke swimming, any warm-up method that can enhance performance should be embraced. But while these various methods (hand paddles, deep squats, tubing-assisted exercises) are all popular, there’s actually very little research comparing their effectiveness on the bottom line – competition performance in breaststroke and individual medley swimmers! However, the answer to the question as to which warm-up method is best seems to be solved thanks to brand new research by a team of Taiwanese scientists⁽¹⁰⁾.

In this study, which was published in the journal ‘Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology’, 18 swimmers who met the swimming competition standards of the National Intercollegiate Athletic Games were recruited. Nine were breaststroke specialists and nine were individual medley swimmers (where freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly are combined into one race). To ensure all the participants could quickly familiarize themselves with the tests, all participants were required to have been swimming training for four years or more, with at least one year of coached strength training experience.

What they did

On four separate occasions each separated by a week, the participants completed four types of warm-up protocols each of which was followed by a 50-metre performance time trial. These warm-ups were as follows:

• Conventional 1,400m warm-up – consisting of 400m of swimming using a stroke and pace of choice; 200m of pulling exercises; 200m of kicking exercises using fins; four sets of 100m, alternating between two pulling exercises and two individual medleys; 100m of simple swimming; two sets of 50m consisting of diving and swimming with a pace of 15 m fast/35 m easy.
• Tubing assisted warm-up – consisting of a 700m conventional warm-up (a shortened version of the above) plus two tubing-assisted 20-metre sprints, with a 2-minute rest between each. During this tubing-assisted warm-up, one end of a tube (a StrechCordz resistance band) was secured to the swimmer’s waist, while the other end was pulled by a researcher standing at the finish line reeling in the swimmer as quickly as possible during the swimmer’s upper limb pull phase and lower limb kick phase (see figure 1A). The purpose was to ‘speed up’ the neurological input to muscles, in readiness for the 50m time trial that followed.
• Paddle warm-up – consisting of a 700m conventional warm-up as above then two 20m sprints with a 2-minute rest between each sprint (Figure 1B). These sprints were performed using swim paddles (Strokemakers Technique Swimming Paddles) - designed to be slightly larger than the palms of the swimmers’ hands.
• Squat warm-up – consisting of a 700m conventional warm-up as above then two sets of 3 x repetitions of barbell back squat at 85% of 1-rep max, with a 2-minute rest between sets (figure 1C).

On the first trial, all participants performed the conventional 1,400m warm-up swimming test, but to ensure no systematic bias crept in, they completed the remaining warm-up swimming protocols according to a counterbalanced design: the first participant in each group followed the order tubing, paddle, and squat; the second participant followed the order paddle, squat, and tubing; the third participant used the sequence squat, tubing, and paddles and so on. During the 50m breaststroke performance test, video analysis was used to evaluate and compare stroke performance, stroke length, stroke frequency, and the acceleration of the hands, pelvis, and feet across the different warm-up methods.

Figure 1: Tubing paddle and squat warm-ups following the 700m swim

What they found

When all the performance data was collated and analyzed, the key finding was that when the breaststroke specialists performed the 700m swim plus tubing-assisted warm-ups, they swam significantly faster in the 50-metre time trial than when they performed the conventional 1,400-metre warm-ups (35.31 seconds for tubing vs. 35.67 for conventional). However, the 700m swim plus paddle and 700m swim plus squat warm ups did not significantly improve the breaststroke specialists’ performances. Another finding was that for the individual medley swimmers, performing a ‘700m swim plus squats’ warm-up improved 50-metre swim times compared to the 700m swim/paddle warm up (34.52 seconds vs. 34.92 seconds).

When the researchers analyzed the movement patterns of the swimmers using the video footage, they also noticed that the stroke length of breaststroke specialists following the tubing-assisted warm-ups was shorter than that following the paddle warm-ups, the squat warm-ups, and the conventional 1,400m warm-ups. However, they also observed that the stroke frequency (strokes per minute) was higher with the tube-assisted warm-ups – an observation that explains why their times were faster despite the shorter stroke length. Curiously though, the performance improvements that were observed above didn’t seem to correlate with acceleration data, which implies that rather than force gains, it was improved technique that was driving the improvements.

Practical implications for swimmers

Swimmers who swim breaststroke only will be training for intensively and specifically for this stroke, with the aim of increased mastery, strength control, frequency, and efficiency in breaststroke execution. By contrast, individual medley swimmers, who primarily compete in 200-metre events (50 metres per leg for each of the four strokes) have to be better all-rounders. Following a turn at the end of the backstroke leg and push off the wall, they will often adopt a gliding strategy to conserve energy during the start of the 50-metre breaststroke leg.

This difference results in variations of stroke frequency and movement control between the groups, which in turn suggests breaststroke and individual medley swimmers should employ different warm-ups. If you are a breaststroke specialist swimmer, a warm up that encourages fast or ‘overspeed’ activation to increase stroke frequency – for example by performing tube-assisted sprints – is recommended over other warm-up protocols. By contrast, for individual medley swimmers, warm-ups that incorporate squats are recommended. The optimum combination of sets and reps are yet to be determined, but in the above study, two sets of 3 x reps at 85% of 1-rep max seemed to work well.

But what about other swimmers – for example freestyle swimmers and triathletes? In the study above, the authors pointed out that the upper body arm ‘pull’ is proportionately greater in breaststroke than in the other strokes. That’s why speeding it up helped the breaststroke specialists but had little benefit on the individual medley swimmers. Instead, they benefited most from squats after their in-water 700m warm-up. Applying this logic to freestyle swimming, we might expect that including squats would be preferable to tube-assisted sprints. Indeed, a 2022 review study looked at the data on a variety of warm up approaches for freestyle swimmers over various distances; it concluded that for event of 400m length or less, performing high load resistance exercises such as squats was indeed a very efficient way of increasing activation and improving performance⁽¹¹⁾. It also concluded that the in-water warm-up distance should ideally be around 600m, and that regardless of type, some kind ballistic or loading exercise produces better race performance than just a swimming-only warm-up!

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