was wondering if the bands help out for practicing outside of the water
.
I only use my ankle band in the water.
maybe.
but why not tie the band around you feet and swim with it?
that will help much more.
I have used them as a coach as a more specific form of dry-land, particularly with swimmers who have tender shoulders since they can control the motion a bit more. I cannot say that I have done a controlled study of them, but the athletes who employed them swam well. I had a roommate one summer who used them quite a bit to maintain fitness given a less than ideal training environment (read - none). He swam quite well the following year, as well as he had the previous year with a full summer of pool training.
All this is quite anecdotal, of course, and says little to nothing about their effectiveness – I would hazard that if your pool is 15 minutes away and you have only 45 minutes of free time in the morning, you could substitute 1-2 sessions of bands (45 minutes) for spending a half hour in the car to swim 15. If you have injuries that the bands can help alleviate by better control over the motions that would be another case where I might recommend them. I have never had much success with bands around the legs swimming, played with it a bit over the years as a coach, and find that it is more effective to pull without bands or buoy, and that the little bobbles that the legs make are actually quite helpful (they teach you about timing if you are wiling to listen) rather than something to avoid.
regards,
r.b.
The Halo swim trainer was originally sold with bands. The idea was you lay on a bench and do some band exercises to burn in the right motions.
Gordo Byrn also references band exercises in the going long book.
That said, I have tried to use them with swimmers who had trouble with getting a good catch and trying to help them avoid dropped elbows on their pull. I can’t really say that anything all that great came of it.
If I was in northern Canada and all I had acess to was a bench and some bands I would do it.
Kevin
Asked this earlier in another thread but got no answers so I’ll try here.
Back in the 80’s there were these swim workout devices that you hooked up to the wall and you’d do the underwater freestyle motion.
The two handles were connected by a (hemp?) rope that was twisted around a t-shaped chrome tube that was attached to a wall. For more friction and resistance you just added more loops around the chrome tube (which got real hot).
The good thing was that there was no reverse (excentric) resistance on the recovery stroke and the resistance was constant throughout the stroke, unlike the rubber/silicone bands some use for dry land workouts.
Anyone remember those?
Can they be found still?
Hey Nicko -
I think the device you remember is called the Exer-Genie.
It was used on a space flight and then the entire fitness world bought into it.
The Yale swim coaches promoted it big time in the early 70’s.
The company has “re-invented” itself and now sells a new version of the Exer-Genie called “the Trainer” that isn’t so hard to adjust
the rope tension, but the nylon rope they provide with it has been known to melt if it is used too vigorously.
The cost is $130. I have some of the units if you really want them. (Make you a deal.)
The swimming world switched to surgical tubing in the 80’s - and for good reason and less expense.
The progressive-resistant nature of tubing promotes muscle-memory for acceleration of the arm through the stroke path.
Because water moves once we start to push on it, we get better results if our lever is moving faster than the water
we intend to push on. Think of it in terms of a “column” of water. If we start to push the column at .5m/sec, once it is moving
as fast as our arm at .5m/sec, then we don’t have anything to push against any longer.
But if our arm (and hand) is accelerating through
the water, once the water is moving at .5, we have increased to .75m/sec, then 1.0m/sec, then 1.5m/sec etc.
We will always have water to push on that is moving slower than our hand/arm if we accelerate through the stroke path.
Olympic Sprinters move a little faster than 2m/sec = 25sec for 50m (50 meters in 24 seconds for women - 21 sec. for men)
When we pull on tubing, even if we pull at the same speed in air, the progressive-resistant nature of tubing increases the force we apply
as we progress. When we apply that same muscle-memory pattern to the equal-resistance-of-water, the progressive increasing force we learned
from the dryland tubing causes us to accelerate through the stroke pattern - always leaving us with water to push on that is moving slower than our hand/arm.
That “hold” on the water - or more accurately a faster progressing push on slower moving water is what propels us forward.
So rather than pull a rope back and forth through a resistance cylinder,
you can get a set of swim-specific hand grips on tubing that costs $30 - not $130.
My version is called the Halo Sport Vector with SPHandles (Swim-Paddles Handles).
Check them out at HaloSwimTraining.com or LaneGainer.com