The Warm Up: Purposeful Ideas

When you are getting in the pool, do you have some warm ups that you go to? Some favourites? Or do you do the same thing every time?

As we’ve said before, warm ups should be purposeful and deliberate, setting you up for a great swim session. Depending on what you want from the session, what your main set looks like, depends on what the warm up should look like.

The Simple Loosener

This type of warm up is where we want to do a little bit of easy swimming, to get used to the water, to find our rhythm, and to generally loosen up before we start.

This type of warm up might be a simple 4 x 100m easy (20s rest). Perhaps a straight 400m. Or even 8 x 50m.

We might do this warm up if we have a ‘pre-main set’ planned for the session (an extension to the warm up where we do some specific work to prepare us for the main set). Or we might do this type of warm up if the main set of the session is an easy / steady type session, an endurance-focused session perhaps.

Building Effort & Pace

This warm up is easy to start with, but gradually ramping up the effort and pace so we are swimming strong at the end.

• A simple 5 x 100m – where each 100m is slightly quicker than the one before.
• 200m / 150m / 100m / 50m – where we increase the pace as the distance drops.
• Or a slightly longer warm up that morphs into a small set, such as 1 x 200m, 2 x 100m, 4 x 50m, 8 x 25m. Again, getting gradually quicker as the distance drops.

This type of warm up starts off thinking about slow, relaxed swimming, holding good technique – but then raises the heart rate so we are ready to go straight into a strong main set.

Part Warm-Up, Part First Set

These types of warm up tend to be a bit longer than the ones above. They give us time to get into our stroke, to ‘find our pace’, to do a short set of work – rather than the stop-start warm up / pre-main set / main set approach.

• A simple 10 x 100m Smooth & Relaxed is a good example. The first few hundreds will be easy, but then you find your rhythm and your pace and can settle in to a slightly quicker pace.
• 5 x 200m Build is similar. The first couple of 200s are nice and easy, but increasing the effort towards the end of the set.
• I like to use the Reducing Rest 100s we’ve spoken about before. 8 x 100m all pretty steady, but reducing the amount of rest we take between each 100m. Start off at 40s rest, then 35s, then 30s etc. You are keeping the swimming times the same, so your stroke doesn’t change, but the effort level increases.

I use these warm ups if we are looking to cover a bigger distance / volume in a swim session. After this type of warm up, we are ready for more of this type of pace work.

Thinking About The Stroke

Some of our warm ups include some mental work, as well as loosening up. Those warm ups where we think about our technique and what we are doing.

We might do a short swim e.g. 4 x 50m or 2 x 100m to loosen up before getting into the ‘thinking part’.

If we want to think about our ‘feel for the water’, we would do a set of 20 x 25m.

• 4 x 25m fists
• 4 x 25m ‘normal swimming’
• 4 x 25m with paddles
• 4 x 25m distance per stroke
• 4 x 25m long and strong

Or maybe we want to think about propulsion.

• 4 x 25m distance per stroke
• 4 x 25m thinking about ‘accelerating the pull’
• 4 x 25m ‘easy speed’ (long, strong and increasing stroke rate)
• 4 x 25m fast

We usually do this type of warm up if we want to go into some fast swimming – some VO2 Max / 8 out of 10 type effort work. This warm up gets us swimming fast with good technique.

Loads More!

There are lots of different types of warm ups, which we may delve further into.

Whatever warm up you decide, try and make it relevant to the work that comes next. Remember, the warm up is there to prepare you for the rest of the session. Use it wisely and watch your swim sessions improve!