Question on warm up

[Hound92]

First of all I am a late in life swimmer. When I start out during a 100m warm up everything seems off and I can't get into a good 3 stroke rhythm (breathing every 3 strokes) without struggling and running out of air.

Then I switch to drills. After 20 min or so of doing drills I'll do a longer swim and can go 200, 400, 800, etc. with complete ease. As a matter of fact if feel like I can keep going indefinitely. Is this common?

Appreciate any responses from you experienced swimmers.

[CoachSuzanne]

100m takes you how long, 2 minutes? 3-4 at most? The body's endurance "system" takes about 20 minutes to get fully functioning and warmed up, this includes Neuromuscular firing patterns, blood flow to the muscles, enzyme rev up to use fats for fuels, recruiting more muscule fibers to do the work in the 20th 100m as compared to the 1st 100m

Every run up a flight of stairs from a cold start and fell compmletely winded at the top? Wheras on another day maybe hikin gin the woods, you are able to easily climb out of a valley or up 3 flights of stairs without hardly a breath at all?

Same sort of thing

Plan on a minimum of 15-20 minutes tune up / warmup before expecting to feel great. If you're lucky you'll feel great right away.

Teh nice thing about focal point practice is that it gives you positive imagery and things to task master during this tune up / physiologic warmup . I'd skip the 100m warmup swim and just start with your drills...it may be more pleasant.

Or 10 minutes on the rowing machine or treadmill to help you relax and get you rheart pumping

[azamy]

Originally Posted by CoachSuzanne

100m takes you how long, 2 minutes? 3-4 at most? The body's endurance "system" takes about 20 minutes to get fully functioning and warmed up, this includes Neuromuscular firing patterns, blood flow to the muscles, enzyme rev up to use fats for fuels, recruiting more muscule fibers to do the work in the 20th 100m as compared to the 1st 100m

Every run up a flight of stairs from a cold start and fell compmletely winded at the top? Wheras on another day maybe hikin gin the woods, you are able to easily climb out of a valley or up 3 flights of stairs without hardly a breath at all?

Same sort of thing

Plan on a minimum of 15-20 minutes tune up / warmup before expecting to feel great. If you're lucky you'll feel great right away.

Teh nice thing about focal point practice is that it gives you positive imagery and things to task master during this tune up / physiologic warmup . I'd skip the 100m warmup swim and just start with your drills...it may be more pleasant.

Or 10 minutes on the rowing machine or treadmill to help you relax and get you rheart pumping

Hello Coach Suzanne - your posts always add to my knowledge regarding swimming and I really appreciate it. A question, how do the competitive swimmers warm up for their events? I believe they are not allowed to swim right before a meet. One of the swimmers I work with has the same problem, he has to warm up to fire at his best and I had no idea how to fix that.

Thanks

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by azamy

Hello Coach Suzanne - your posts always add to my knowledge regarding swimming and I really appreciate it. A question, how do the competitive swimmers warm up for their events? I believe they are not allowed to swim right before a meet. One of the swimmers I work with has the same problem, he has to warm up to fire at his best and I had no idea how to fix that.

Thanks

There is always a warmup period before the meet starts, and if the facility has more than one pool, there is a warmup/cooldown pool as well. If not, everyone is in the same boat. That's why you see swimmers doing all sorts of jumping and swinging their arms before their event.

A good warmup is good for 15-20 minutes. More than 20 minutes and the benefits really start to diminish. Ie if you are racing, plan to finish your warmup within 15 miutes of the event start.

[Hound92]

Thanks Coach. I'll give it a shot

[PanamaRed]

Originally Posted by Hound92

First of all I am a late in life swimmer. When I start out during a 100m warm up everything seems off and I can't get into a good 3 stroke rhythm (breathing every 3 strokes) without struggling and running out of air.

Appreciate any responses from you experienced swimmers.

Think of your body as a massive amount of plumbing with fluids flowing back and forward. When you start exercising the heart pumps faster, but the characteristic of fluids means it will take some time (for me about 8 minutes) before all the fluids are flowing at a sufficient flow rate to provide sufficient oxygen, energy and to remove waste products produced by the cells in producing energy.

Imagine a bucket of water, put a spoon in it and start stirring, it will take some time before the water even starts moving and more time before it is moving as fast as you want. And when you stop stirring the water does not stop it keeps going and the speed slowly degrades. This is the principal of warmup and cooldown.

A lot of people talk about their second wind, what it really is all about is fluid flow through the blood vessels have finally matched the flow rate dictated by the heart pump.

This concept is why it is dangerous or detrimental to go to 100% exertion without a warm up.

[Hound92]

That definitely makes sense. It's been a few years but I used to run marathons and was diligent about warm-up and warm-down on runs. Not sure why I thought that swimming would be any different but will start applying the same principles.

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by PanamaRed

Think of your body as a massive amount of plumbing with fluids flowing back and forward. When you start exercising the heart pumps faster, but the characteristic of fluids means it will take some time (for me about 8 minutes) before all the fluids are flowing at a sufficient flow rate to provide sufficient oxygen, energy and to remove waste products produced by the cells in producing energy.

Imagine a bucket of water, put a spoon in it and start stirring, it will take some time before the water even starts moving and more time before it is moving as fast as you want. And when you stop stirring the water does not stop it keeps going and the speed slowly degrades. This is the principal of warmup and cooldown.

A lot of people talk about their second wind, what it really is all about is fluid flow through the blood vessels have finally matched the flow rate dictated by the heart pump.

This concept is why it is dangerous or detrimental to go to 100% exertion without a warm up.

I'm a little confused by your analogy. It may be functional, but I always try to comment on physiology aspects to prevent any mis interpretation of various analogies proposed.

Forgive me therefore if I am reading too much into your post...you may be saying the exact same things, just using an analogy that a swimmer can relat to better as opposed to the physiology I'm about to propose here...

the blood simply follows a pressure gradient, the blood goes where the blood vessels direct by getting larger or smaller in diameter. Blood vessels open and close in response to changes in demand by the muscles. A 100% exertion from no warmup uses only a relative handful of motor units, and therefore only a small portion of muscles are asking for blood as the body hasn't realized it's time to start doing physical work yet.

As the brain sends more signals to perform a certain action, more and more motor units are recruited. A motor unit is a single bundle of muscle fibers getting a signal from a single neuron in the brain. These demands from the brain to the motor unit then allow the muscle to "ask" for more blood by dilating the blood vessels in that area.

at the same time the body begins diverting blood flow from uneeded areas (ie the gut/kidneys/liver) by contracting blood vessels.

In addition to that the heart's strength of contraction is dicated by the amount of stretch in the ventrical. Early on in exercise, since the body has not yet demanded a lot of blood, not a lot of additional blood is flowing, ie the rate has not increased because the blood vessels are not dilating yet.

As the muscle's blood vessels dialate blood flows to the lowest pressure areas (now the muscles) and increased amounts of blood per unit of time are returned back to teh heart. This stretches the heart muscle and makes the next contraction more powerful...sending a higher volume of blood at a higher pressure flow to those muscles as they continue to demand oxygen.

It has little to do with the momentum of moving fluids around and the characteristics of the blood itself and everything to do with the chagnes in vasodilation, blood return and the stretch-contraction relationship of the heart.

It's not really all that dangerous to go 100% on no warmup...you just won't go very fast. Do the same effort 20 minutes into it and many more muscles have been recruited for the same activity. (A higher risk is getting a possible injury from going too hard to soon), but mostly warmup is performance related.

Cooldown is needed to allow the blood vessels to the muscles to slow down (due to constriction) so that blood can again be redirected to the areas that were shut down. AS the blood flow to the muscles slows down, the blood returned to the heart decreases, the heart doesn't pump as hard and the heart rate slows due to lack of peripheral demand...so now all your blood is happily flowing back to the kidneys, liver and gut to digest that post race meal you're enjoying.

[Richardsk]

[http://www.swimmingscience.net/2013/...mance.html?utm

I think this article may be of interest.