Warm-Up Tips

Warm-up.  A proper warm-up may do more than just increase body temperature, which makes the muscles more pliable, and brings more blood (and therefore oxygen and nutrients) to the muscles when swimming.  It also appears that warming up helps improve the efficiency of the nerves that control your muscles. A study compared a group of swimmers who warmed up by actively swimming (active warm-up) compared to a group that warmed up by using a heated room, hot tub or hot shower (passive warm-up).  The active warm-up group performed better than the passive warm-up group during their first event. 

What? No warm-up pool?While it is best to actively warm-up for your race, your body will benefit from staying warm if you don’t have access to a warm-up pool. One finding of the study may help you in between events when you have no access to a warm-up pool.  The researchers found that there was a greater performance benefit to keeping the body warm in-between events.  When there is no warm-up pool, this can be accomplished by taking a warm shower, or just wearing your team warm-ups.

Warm-down.  Several research studies have looked at the effects of warming down.  Resting after an event by just sitting or lying down is known as passive recovery.  Active recovery is when you perform exercise during a recovery period, such as when you swim down after your event.  Did you ever wonder how fast you should swim during your warm down?  Researchers found that it is better to swim at a faster pace during warm down than to just cruise and splash around.  It was found that warming down at a pace that is equivalent to your lactate threshold will help you recover more quickly and will result in better performance in your next event. If you don't have a high-tech lab at your pool to figure out how fast you have to swim to reach your lactate threshold, a good estimate of your lactate threshold would be to swim at the fastest pace which you could steadily hold for an hour.