If you are swimming with proper technique, what muscles or parts of your body should be sore? In other words, help me justify my technique with soreness explanations…
Lats. If you are just now starting to use them the soreness will go away and it will just feel like a good pump. Swimming really gets fun when you access the big muscle chain in your lats.
Stand with your hand on something that is chest high and press down hard with a bent elbow, elbow at or just slighlty above the level of you hand. Pay attention to your arm, shoulder, chest and lats. Those are the muscles you are tying to engage. There are two parts to this - the msucles that generate the power and the muscles that allow our hand/arm to stay in the position to generate that power.
If you are in the process of improving your technique, its usually felt first in the triceps (back of upper arm) and then the lats as you become able to bring them more fully into the stroke. Your shoulders will be sore although that alone is not necessarily tied only to good technique i.e. if you triceps hurt, you are doing something right whereas your shoulders can be sore if you are doing it right or wrong.
Lats
Arms will feel very heavy by the end of it
Abs from all the flip turns
Sometimes rhomboids/traps
.
Also if you’re not used to doing a proper catch, you might feel it in your forearms as well.
I dont think this is normal but when I did big yardage days sometimes my hands would get real sore
Also if you’re not used to doing a proper catch, you might feel it in your forearms as well.
I dont think this is normal but when I did big yardage days sometimes my hands would get real sore
Ya, my fingers actually get sore. My forearms get sore if I swim or pull more breast than normal.
Ya, my fingers actually get sore.
Try relaxing your hand and wrist on your recovery.
+1
This is 100% right
.
not chest? I get a chest pump…am I doing something wrong?
Right now it’s all lats with some upper corner of my chest and a small portion of my upper tricep as well as my lower back. In the past, my fingers and forearms will be sore as well, but that is usually only when I used paddles a lot, which I have not been using lately. Also, my abs are usually sore as well, but this time it appears the lower back has weakened first.
Ya, my fingers actually get sore.
Try relaxing your hand and wrist on your recovery.
Actually my recovery is very, very relaxed and my hand/wrist are not taut at all. In summary, my whole upper body gets sore when I increase my yardage, as I have over the past 3 months. I’ve gone from averaging 30K/wk up to 44k/wk, so I think my soreness is well warranted:)
Actually my recovery is very, very relaxed and my hand/wrist are not taut at all. In summary, my whole upper body gets sore when I increase my yardage, as I have over the past 3 months. I’ve gone from averaging 30K/wk up to 44k/wk, so I think my soreness is well warranted:)
44k/wk X 4 wk = 176/month. Yikes. What the hell event(s) are you training for? You have to be swimming doubles to get in that kind of yardage. And yes soreness is a natural outcome of going from 30k/wk to 44k/wk.
Actually my recovery is very, very relaxed and my hand/wrist are not taut at all. In summary, my whole upper body gets sore when I increase my yardage, as I have over the past 3 months. I’ve gone from averaging 30K/wk up to 44k/wk, so I think my soreness is well warranted:)
44k/wk X 4 wk = 176/month. Yikes. What the hell event(s) are you training for? You have to be swimming doubles to get in that kind of yardage. And yes soreness is a natural outcome of going from 30k/wk to 44k/wk.
USMS has a contest to see who can swim the most in the calendar year. Currently I’m in 6th place out of about 3100 entries, and the leader is averaging about 12,600 yd/day, about twice my daily average. So, really I’m just a slacker:)
The weakest part of your body that you engage when you’re swimming.
I have strong lats and weak shoulders/arms so it’s different than someone with strong shoulders.