Pretty sure about that... those moves with the free weights are just too much for any articulation they may still have lol.. It's just too much for young people.
I think that both teams would place very highly in your area after all Saint Xaiver won the NISCA dual meet national championship last year and Saint Charles wasn't far behind. Ohio swimming has enjoyed a continues tradition of excellence and consistently ranks among the top states for high school swimming. Its a continued comittment to excellence and hard work, like Saint Charles demonstrates, that sets Ohio apart form the majority of states.
the things that um doesnt realize is that even though the times were off in a duel meet it was indeed, a high school duel meet. so no best times, no taper, and hopefully no fast suits brought out. so comparing from that is just wrong. look at how fast ohio's state meet always is and compare from that. ohio is always deep in state competition.
...and by "pull under the bar" I mean have your swimmer pull his elbows through further, so they swing forward and upwards...by the end the weight will be resting on his shoulders instead of his wrists, and he will look like he's in the starting position for a front squat.
This is really important for when they start moving up in weight. If you look closely at the youtube video posted earlier, at about 0:07 you can see the weight of the bar pressing into the man's shoulders. That's what your swimmers' finishing positions should look like.
THANK YOU to ST. Charles Prep and to floswimming for producing this video. I think what you are doing is great for the sport, and I'm sorry for the senseless comments posted below.
I think it's a great idea for high school swimmers to be in the weight room doing these kinds of lifts. I was a football player in high school, and I started learning how to do cleans at age 16. At age 23, I'm still working on my technique, and it's by no means perfect. I will say that the lifting that I had in high school gave me tremendous benefits in college, where I was a 9-time DIII All-American in the sprint freestyle events. Many of my teammates in college had never heard of a power clean before coming to college. It took my teammates about a year to two years to learn the technique properly. Our strength coach had them learn by a progression of "snatch pulls", "power shrugs", then "shrug + clean" combo's
I will point out, as others have done already, that your swimmers do need to keep working on their clean technique. The kids need to "pull under the bar" and finish by standing upright. The youtube video posted earlier demonstrates this well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTLxmMfErmE
Anyhow, Thank you again for showing this. I will show this video to my former high school coach, as it is very instructive.
I agree with you when you say that getting the guys into the weight room at age 12 or 13 is a good thing to do. this, as you said, gives them time to learn the technique and then crank up the weight. but, most big time coaches are against doing any kind of overhead motion such as snatches and overhead squats, so you might want to do a little more research on those as far as how they affect their shoulders when combined with the amount of stress they already receive in the water.
I like the video of some actual weight workouts from some High School Teams, although I do not agree with cross fit. I would put any weight program in the country up against my teams. We do full cleans, snatchs, power and split jerks, over head squats, you name it we do it. Weight workout are essential in developing a high performance athlete, especially a swimmer. You have to learn the lifts early so that a solid year or two can be spent focussing only on technique, and then a few years working out with heavy weight. I start my kids in the weight room at 12 or 13. For those who say that this is to early in development or whatever, my team is owned by a hospital and there is tones of evidence out there supporting that starting kids in the weight room during maturity is highly effective! Would love if garet ever made his way down to Louisiana and could video some of our weight workouts. I just took over my team 2 years ago so more than likely no one will have heard of us, but in 2010 I will have a guy in the top 50 recruits!
Yea icelander, definitely no hard feeling here brother.
Personally I wish I had been on a dryland program like this in high school. I didn't get serious in the weight room until I got to college, and with 2 and a half years of that under my belt I've seen dramatic time drops. Keep up the great work St. Charles coaches, these kids are being set up to succeed at the NCAA level.
Brian did a great job explaining the practice but I wanted to add a few comments to help coaches looking to bring weights to the high school level as that is the purpose of Floswimming. As most high school coaches know, we are limited on the time we have in the season - at most we have 4 months from the beginning to end to condition athletes and make them faster swimmers. There is no pre/post season for HS, maybe club but not HS, so we’ll just look at what we do for a 4 month season.
Over the last four years at St Charles we have evolved the strength and conditioning program to coincide with our practice and conditioning in the water. We use sports specific exercises that require multiple muscle groups in their movements which aids in core stability and athleticism of these young athletes. We stay away from 1RM’s and focus on endurance/ event specific lifts as our sport last longer than a few seconds and repetitive strength is imperative for swimmers. This is the hardest concept for male HS athletes to grasp as they want to bulk up, mainly do to hormones and girls (You know coach, “Curls for Girls”). Keep in mind swimmers benefit from lean, flexible muscle mass.
The first 4 weeks we focus on fundamentals and strength, 2-3 days lifting with one day on power and explosive exercises. We begin with safety in a weight room, how to properly load and unload weight, proper form, and most importantly spotting and how to safely dump weight in an exercise. As any athlete or coach should know form is not perfect in the first 4 weeks it is continued to be built upon throughout each season (If we waited for perfect form our season would be over and for some athletes so would their 4 years). Staying away from 1RM’s and using lighter weight you avoid injury while coaching better form – the same is true for in the water.
The next 4 weeks we begin training for endurance 2 -3 days with one day focused on power and explosive exercises. We circuit train for time one round per station again focusing on exercises with plenty of rest between stations. We have core, weighted exercises and body weight exercises at our stations. Weight is dropped to 60-70% of first 4 weeks as the athletes focus on controlled exercises pushing through lactic acid build-up. These 4 weeks coincide with the yardage increase these athletes receive in the water over the holiday season – if your state swims in the winter.
The last 4-8 weeks depend on the athlete’s strokes, distance, and their championship meet. For JV swimmers, their season ends earlier than our State swimmers, who will train the full 8 weeks. This stroke specific training focuses on power with endurance lifting based on goal splits. They will lift for less time than our endurance phase but for more sets (depending on distance). This enables the athletes to load more weight and focus on stroke counts with weight. Like in the water we taper the athletes back the closer they get to their championship meet, we continue lifting right up to the week prior to that meet.
I tried to keep it short but I hope this helps individuals see how we weight train in 4 months and how we progress our swimmers as athletes. You saw week 3 on a race day in this video; Garrett you are welcome back at week 18 to film our form for disbelievers! If you’re curious about our results, we have never had an athlete injured in the four years we’ve used weights and our athletes do not break down throughout the year, we continue to see individuals PR throughout the season.
I am open to ideas...like say..the ones presented by a credible source like Church.
"Sad" is someone who supports this hating culture of people who feel like they are entitled to talk down about others who want to share.
This feedback is not constructive...it is arrogant.
Read the posts of the people you agree with and look at what is said...hopefully you will understand...
There are people 'hating', but they are correct, so I don't see the problem with it. There is nothing less productive and sad then posts like "Please Um", who are sarcastic and not open to ideas that would help a small team like St. Charles who are doing things that are unproductive, like heavy upper body lifting in high school with bad form.
If we are giving gold stars out to the most constructive posts, anonyous coward and swim holm get 5 stars for posting those technique video clips. $20.00 says that St. Charles DL technique gets better because of the constructive feedback they are recieving. Another $20.00 says that other High School coaches are less likely to have there workouts recorded, because of the abuse St. Charles recieved.
hhmmm no perfect swimming technique video to display... I didn't see that one coming... oh no wait ... i did...
It is so easy to complain...so hard to back it up....
Somebody was saying that form doesn't matter because the kids are fast. Um, looking at their times, St. Charles and St. Xavier wouldn't be in the top 10 teams in our high school section, even if they combined their teams.
Granted, Im in Socal, but my team doesn't lift at all and we would have gone 1-2-3 in every event at the Catholic showdown. Maybe they should focus on abs and legs, like we do in dryland, instead of upper body strength, which is really ridiculously overrated in swimming. Just trying to help.
there are a billion videos on youtube of how to actually do a clean, but here is a pretty good one of a guy that isn't a gigantic roid head. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTLxmMfErmE
in response to 'wow garrett", perfect weight lifting technique is much easier to achieve than swimming technique because most weight rooms have mirrors all over the place, if you have proper teaching and if you slow it down a little bit and focus on what you are doing, you should be able to lift with perfect technique no matter who you are. Now, in response to the actual Garrett, check out the guy in the hulk hogan pants at 1:40, the way he is spreading his legs apart and only bringing the weight half way up his chest is very poor technique. that's just one of several things that I could point out. The main thing I see with close to every single guy in there is that none of them are bending their knees at all as the weight reaches the top of the lift. they should bend their knees and 'catch' the weight and then stand up with it, you get the effect of a front squat at the end of the lift if you are doing it right. also the way they let the weight fall at the very end and catch it with their back is horrible.
Peter also hit it right on the head here " I think they are more looking for intensity and explosive power while incorporating as many muscle groups as possible."
Take it down a couple notches.
I am throwing the first flag!
ps. I agree there is some bad technique here...but someone show me video of "perfect stroke" for a swimmer and I will send in some video's of "perfect technique" weight lifting. Neither is happening... People just need to hate...
also I really like the kipping pullups and kipping reverse bench along with other exercises to help kids learn to use their whole body to lift their body weight initiating from the legs throught the hips to the shoulders and arms instead of initiating from the small muscles of their arms and shoulders to try and drag their legs through the water. I think it really helps them transfer that concept from the weight room/dryland into the water.
Just a little clarification...
-most weight used - 95lbs (green weights on each end are 25's)
-crossfit style workout - 10 rounds 3 cleans, 3 pullups, 3 pushups on 2 minutes taking 10 seconds off each round.
-we used this as a warmup before a long yoga session and didn't go very hard in true crossfit style because of a big dual meet with St. X the same day.
-we lift twice a week, dryland one morning a week, and true crossfit style workout once a week. (this morning was a dryland morning and used a crossfit style warm up)
-finally, most of these boys are learning. We do A LOT of teaching and reinforcement for correct technique every single day. As with swimming techique (and I assume the haters don't have much experience working with teenagers), these kids have a very difficult time with body awareness to make changes to their techniques. We are very aware of this and careful in allowing any kind of heavy weights to be lifted without proper technique. We have found that the lifting has very much helped our kids with body awareness improving their lifting technique and swimming technique and been very successful in preventing and avoiding many common injuries.
I think the real difficult thing for me to see is coaches who do no strength training, prehab, or technique work and then give repeat 200 sets all season long until their kids have weak backs, torn up shoulders, unbalanced quads (from all breast kicking and no free kick), strong quads with weak hamstrings also causing knee problems.....form of child abuse?
A kipping pull-up is a very controlled movement that requires a level of explosiveness combined with a level of athleticism/coordination which is perfect for swimming. It will not injure anybody any more than any other weight room activity.
I do agree that there is a time to isolate muscle groups and strengthen them with slow, controlled movements, but I don't think that is what they are trying to accomplish here. I think they are more looking for intensity and explosive power while incorporating as many muscle groups as possible.
Explain where their form goes wrong. The majority of them are initiating the movement from their legs, keeping their backs straight, and in fact locking out their elbows under the bar: example 1:30 into the video. If you have a serious concern for young weightlifters why don't you give us the proper critique instead of a "girls lift more" gutless jab?
Good point, sort of. when I said "actual", i was in fact referring to exercises such as cleans, but these guys (as stated by like 30 people on this thread) aren't even close to having proper technique. If some young guy with little experience were to watch this and then go try to duplicate their exact technique in a weight room, he would likely injure himself quite badly. I am not hating on you garrett, your efforts to get as much footage as possible are second to none. but the way these guys are lifting is unsafe
Please, how can the same person who asked for an "actual weight workout," on a previous WWW then rip on the guys doing exactly that? You're a tough Texan to please.
Good stuff. How heavy? Someone below thought 135 lbs. Not me, I think less than 100 lbs. I've been using kettlebells lately and I feel like the Hulk now. I recommend the kettlebell to anyone wanting to build explosive power.
Crossfit is the answer. Increasing work capacity across broad time and modal domains will undoubtedly increase athletic capabilities for any athlete in any sport at any level. There is simply no argument to be made in opposition to this statement. Performing highly technical movements at high intensity under heavy loading (read muscle strain) is exactly what most coaches strive to do in swimming practices. Why not complement this in strength training exercises? What an advantage to approach races knowing that you can maintain high intensity under heavy muscular stress!! Is this not what we strive to do during the countless hours in the pool?
Once we all take a step back and look at this from a technical and scientific standpoint and open our intelligent minds to the idea that different is not always bad, I think we can all agree that this is indeed the answer and the direction that swimming, and athletics in general is moving.
Crossfit strives toward "better" movements. In this case what may be different to most, is indeed a "better" movement. Kipping pull ups are a better, more efficient recruitment of muscle fibers to accomplish the most work in the least time while exerting the least amount of effort. This is what we strive to do in the pool! I challenge anyone out there to train their bodies in this fashion. Master the Olympic lifts, Overhead squat, kipping pull up, L-sit, and muscle up and marvel at the improvements to your swimming abilities.
Darren - hang cleans certainly are hard to learn. I'm currently a college senior swimming for a D1 team and it took us until late November to put together the movements... even then our strength coach was there to make sure we were doing it correctly. We went through almost 8 weeks of front squats and high pulls to build up to hang cleans. We also do some other "advanced" exercises like overhead squats, snatches, and as I said, front squats and high pulls. To be exposed to these things at a younger age is great and will help them tremendously in their college careers.
Good workout, but as most people said earlier, most of those things have horrendous cleaning technique. The hang clean is designed for explosive power, so doing them incorrectly but quickly isn't as productive as a little bit slower but correctly.
Also I agree with whoever said you should put up some mid distance workouts from texas, florida, uva, or other similar schools. Don't get me wrong I love WWW, but all the sprint workouts are getting a little repetative. The majority of swimmers aren't 50 and 100 freestylers, so let's get some other stuff up here!
In swimming you are not using any specific group of muscles separately but this is not swimming. purpose of the gym is to separate muscle groups and work specifically on them. In this case upper body. So there is no need to make it easier by doing it with help of hips and legs. As in a swimming I think that control of the movement is really important so why not control of the movements in the gym? As I said before, great exercise and those boys seems vary capable and strong but once you're injured it is hard to go back in hard work.
Proper form on cleans, or any olympic lift for that matter, is difficult to learn, especially if you come from an athletic background that doesn't emphasize those movements. I never learned any olympic lifts in high school or college, I am trying to learn them now so I can start to make up my own "crossfit style" workouts, and the only thing I can even attempt right now is deadlifts.
Kipping pull-ups, dead hang pull-ups, L-pull ups, wide grip pull-ups, close grip pull-ups, palms out pull-ups, etc, etc, all have their place and are all good tools to use while trying to acheive a certain fitness goal. The way I look at it, is you do kipping if you're going to crank out pull-ups. Say if I was going to do 100 pull-ups, I would probably kip the whole way, but just 10 pull-ups, I would probably do a dead hang PU.
As for the hang cleans, I think I would Probably, tell them to drop the weight and work on their form. Doing that much weight, with what they were doing could result in back/shoulder injury. It looked like they were doing 135# hang power cleans. They were struggling to get the bar up, and just muscling it up to their chest, then immediately droping it. There was no drive from the hip, shoulder shrugg, high pull, and then didn't finish the exercise with their elbows up and body in full-extension. (rack) At such a heavy wieght they could get hurt, maybe doing 45# or 65# hang cleans first and getting a proper full range of motion would be more beneficial. Then building to heavy weights from there. You wouldn't teach them to strokes incorrectly just so they "get through it" would you?
this might help http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/cfj-nov-05/hang-clean.wmv http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/cfj-nov-05/hang-power-clean.wmv http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFitAgainFaster_CJTechnique.wmv http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_BurgTrainingTheClean.wmv
btw, I'm a huge fan of crossfit, and have been doing that style of training for some time now.
As for form corrections I like the way Marsh's group and Sean's group at MAC and KING were performing pushups with the straight spine from tailbone to back of the head. This concept is also emphasized alot by Quick and I remember it in his posture/line/balance dvd. I cannot say that this prevents injuries further, because I see many other non-swimming athletes doing them with a sort of natural curve in the back. Controlling ones position in the water is key and although that cannot be learned on land, more control on land probably means more potential in the water. Again it does look like some of the athletes are aiming for the straight spine before fatigue sets in.
I have done hang cleans myself for only about a year now, but I have found that the best powerlifters are dropping the butt and bending at the hips and knees proportionally when getting under the bar. I do not expect these athletes to know that since it looks like their goal is to CLEAN the bar up to the upper chest, but again as they are becoming fatigued (like I do :)) they are not cleaning the bar as high and consequently need to proportionally bend at the hips and knees more instead of JUST bending the KNEES more and keeping the hip bend static no matter how fart they drop. As fatigue sets in and higher weights/reps are achieved I have found it challenging to keep the hips bending myself. When I attempted my first 200lb hang clean press which was 20lb more than I ever did I had for that looked exactly like theirs and failed. Next time I progressed up to 200 slowly and learned how to "drop the hips" and it was VERY EASY to clean the 200lbs, pressing was another story haha.
I realize the amount of time needed for technical improvements is hard to accommodate, but I always find that the kids I have coached are more than excited to have ways to improve outside of group workouts. For instance the pushup with a straight back, I suggest to do with someone watching 10 reps non stop at any speed making sure their spine is perfectly straight, if they are very weak I recommend doing them on their knees on a towel or carpet.
Also at practice I make sure to give tips about all possible factors that change the technique. For the pushup I may que them in on the distance between the feet and the hands changing their posture, their head position, the curve of the neck, how high they push up, and anything that could give them more control over their technique.
Again great highschool workout, it's no wonder they swim as fast as they do!
Sure technique can't always be perfect during an intense workout like this. I do think that improved technique on just about all of the exercises would make it harder and initially cause them to accumulate less reps, it would obviously prevent injuries. Also, training through the proper range of motion gets my heart rate much higher for each rep and probably more desirable for this type of training than a lower heart rate.
In any case this workout looks great and the athletes are performing superbly. Hopefully they have technique maintenance regularly to help them progress and achieve higher weights/reps. These guys are pretty fast so can't diss this workout too much :)
u should go to the Bolles school, n see what they do over there! they seemed pretty strong overall at Junior National last weekend. I think it'll be interesting to watch how they practice.
I'd disagree, it is hating. Simply pointing out that form is wrong adds nothing to the conversation. Please enlighten us as to what is wrong with the form oh wise and anonymous one.
They are benefiting from weights and dryland, and as a high school swimmer that moved to the college level myself, I wish some one would have corrected my form before I came to college and had to start over again. It's not hating it just the truth.
All I can say is way to go. This is a high school program, not college, and think about most of the people reading this site are working with athletes just like these guys. High school males benefit from weights so much its incalculable. This is a real workout, really creative, and all of you haters need to find another place to leave your comments. I'm tired of people who probably do less and know less about swimming than these coaches leave critical comments. Good job coach, as a high school coach myself I understand how much work goes into adding weights into your program for you and your swimmers. Good luck this season
When in swimming do you use only your arms with everything else stationary? In my opinion using hips and legs in a pull up give you the ability to explode and bring your chest up to the bar. Doing slow pull ups with no hip and leg incorporation just doesn't seem swim relevant to me.
Good video... however... there is way too much walking around... those guys need to move quicker to each station. They didn't even look tired. And I didn't see anyone throw up or pass out... That's true crossfit style.... "do work till you can't "do work" anymore
hey not bad for a high school... but technique in all drills is terrible.. i don't want to say a bad things cause they are working hard but that kind of lifting and chin-ups are going to make a lot of injuries and maybe stop some great swimming careers....isn't it better to work with a less weight and with proper movements and not use so many hips and legs in chin-ups.
While I will agree that this is not the best or most innovative WWW, it offers a good look into some high school weight training- something a lot of high school athletes don't get to see a lot of. Many high school swimmers are forced to weight train with other sports in programs not designed for swimmers. This is a good way to introduce some of the younger swimmers to weights. But please fix that hang clean technique!
those were the worst hang cleans i have ever seen. NONE of the kids have proper technique and they don't get their elbows under bar to complete the exercise. technique should come first, before cranking out fast reps
Strength Coach Josh Pintar puts the guys through a CrossFit style weight session where the reps and time "on" decreases by round as the rest or "time off" increases. This workout took place on Friday, December 5th... The day of SC's dual with St. X.
Ok, I've been pretty good about releasing a workout a week so I figure for the sake of alliteration I should start doing a Weekly Wednesday Workout. What do you think?
Morning Weights
and more time spent doing the cleans right
sweet video by the way
This is really important for when they start moving up in weight. If you look closely at the youtube video posted earlier, at about 0:07 you can see the weight of the bar pressing into the man's shoulders. That's what your swimmers' finishing positions should look like.
I think it's a great idea for high school swimmers to be in the weight room doing these kinds of lifts. I was a football player in high school, and I started learning how to do cleans at age 16. At age 23, I'm still working on my technique, and it's by no means perfect. I will say that the lifting that I had in high school gave me tremendous benefits in college, where I was a 9-time DIII All-American in the sprint freestyle events. Many of my teammates in college had never heard of a power clean before coming to college. It took my teammates about a year to two years to learn the technique properly. Our strength coach had them learn by a progression of "snatch pulls", "power shrugs", then "shrug + clean" combo's
I will point out, as others have done already, that your swimmers do need to keep working on their clean technique. The kids need to "pull under the bar" and finish by standing upright. The youtube video posted earlier demonstrates this well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTLxmMfErmE
Anyhow, Thank you again for showing this. I will show this video to my former high school coach, as it is very instructive.
Personally I wish I had been on a dryland program like this in high school. I didn't get serious in the weight room until I got to college, and with 2 and a half years of that under my belt I've seen dramatic time drops. Keep up the great work St. Charles coaches, these kids are being set up to succeed at the NCAA level.
Over the last four years at St Charles we have evolved the strength and conditioning program to coincide with our practice and conditioning in the water. We use sports specific exercises that require multiple muscle groups in their movements which aids in core stability and athleticism of these young athletes. We stay away from 1RM’s and focus on endurance/ event specific lifts as our sport last longer than a few seconds and repetitive strength is imperative for swimmers. This is the hardest concept for male HS athletes to grasp as they want to bulk up, mainly do to hormones and girls (You know coach, “Curls for Girls”). Keep in mind swimmers benefit from lean, flexible muscle mass.
The first 4 weeks we focus on fundamentals and strength, 2-3 days lifting with one day on power and explosive exercises. We begin with safety in a weight room, how to properly load and unload weight, proper form, and most importantly spotting and how to safely dump weight in an exercise. As any athlete or coach should know form is not perfect in the first 4 weeks it is continued to be built upon throughout each season (If we waited for perfect form our season would be over and for some athletes so would their 4 years). Staying away from 1RM’s and using lighter weight you avoid injury while coaching better form – the same is true for in the water.
The next 4 weeks we begin training for endurance 2 -3 days with one day focused on power and explosive exercises. We circuit train for time one round per station again focusing on exercises with plenty of rest between stations. We have core, weighted exercises and body weight exercises at our stations. Weight is dropped to 60-70% of first 4 weeks as the athletes focus on controlled exercises pushing through lactic acid build-up. These 4 weeks coincide with the yardage increase these athletes receive in the water over the holiday season – if your state swims in the winter.
The last 4-8 weeks depend on the athlete’s strokes, distance, and their championship meet. For JV swimmers, their season ends earlier than our State swimmers, who will train the full 8 weeks. This stroke specific training focuses on power with endurance lifting based on goal splits. They will lift for less time than our endurance phase but for more sets (depending on distance). This enables the athletes to load more weight and focus on stroke counts with weight. Like in the water we taper the athletes back the closer they get to their championship meet, we continue lifting right up to the week prior to that meet.
I tried to keep it short but I hope this helps individuals see how we weight train in 4 months and how we progress our swimmers as athletes. You saw week 3 on a race day in this video; Garrett you are welcome back at week 18 to film our form for disbelievers! If you’re curious about our results, we have never had an athlete injured in the four years we’ve used weights and our athletes do not break down throughout the year, we continue to see individuals PR throughout the season.
I am open to ideas...like say..the ones presented by a credible source like Church.
"Sad" is someone who supports this hating culture of people who feel like they are entitled to talk down about others who want to share.
This feedback is not constructive...it is arrogant.
Read the posts of the people you agree with and look at what is said...hopefully you will understand...
wow you are amazing...maybe you should do the next WWW. We could all learn something...
Come on Garrett...can we start the flag system now?
hhmmm no perfect swimming technique video to display... I didn't see that one coming... oh no wait ... i did...
It is so easy to complain...so hard to back it up....
Granted, Im in Socal, but my team doesn't lift at all and we would have gone 1-2-3 in every event at the Catholic showdown. Maybe they should focus on abs and legs, like we do in dryland, instead of upper body strength, which is really ridiculously overrated in swimming. Just trying to help.
Great workout!
Take it down a couple notches.
I am throwing the first flag!
ps. I agree there is some bad technique here...but someone show me video of "perfect stroke" for a swimmer and I will send in some video's of "perfect technique" weight lifting. Neither is happening... People just need to hate...
-most weight used - 95lbs (green weights on each end are 25's)
-crossfit style workout - 10 rounds 3 cleans, 3 pullups, 3 pushups on 2 minutes taking 10 seconds off each round.
-we used this as a warmup before a long yoga session and didn't go very hard in true crossfit style because of a big dual meet with St. X the same day.
-we lift twice a week, dryland one morning a week, and true crossfit style workout once a week. (this morning was a dryland morning and used a crossfit style warm up)
-finally, most of these boys are learning. We do A LOT of teaching and reinforcement for correct technique every single day. As with swimming techique (and I assume the haters don't have much experience working with teenagers), these kids have a very difficult time with body awareness to make changes to their techniques. We are very aware of this and careful in allowing any kind of heavy weights to be lifted without proper technique. We have found that the lifting has very much helped our kids with body awareness improving their lifting technique and swimming technique and been very successful in preventing and avoiding many common injuries.
I think the real difficult thing for me to see is coaches who do no strength training, prehab, or technique work and then give repeat 200 sets all season long until their kids have weak backs, torn up shoulders, unbalanced quads (from all breast kicking and no free kick), strong quads with weak hamstrings also causing knee problems.....form of child abuse?
A kipping pull-up is a very controlled movement that requires a level of explosiveness combined with a level of athleticism/coordination which is perfect for swimming. It will not injure anybody any more than any other weight room activity.
I do agree that there is a time to isolate muscle groups and strengthen them with slow, controlled movements, but I don't think that is what they are trying to accomplish here. I think they are more looking for intensity and explosive power while incorporating as many muscle groups as possible.
Keep up the good work.
Once we all take a step back and look at this from a technical and scientific standpoint and open our intelligent minds to the idea that different is not always bad, I think we can all agree that this is indeed the answer and the direction that swimming, and athletics in general is moving.
Crossfit strives toward "better" movements. In this case what may be different to most, is indeed a "better" movement. Kipping pull ups are a better, more efficient recruitment of muscle fibers to accomplish the most work in the least time while exerting the least amount of effort. This is what we strive to do in the pool! I challenge anyone out there to train their bodies in this fashion. Master the Olympic lifts, Overhead squat, kipping pull up, L-sit, and muscle up and marvel at the improvements to your swimming abilities.
Also I agree with whoever said you should put up some mid distance workouts from texas, florida, uva, or other similar schools. Don't get me wrong I love WWW, but all the sprint workouts are getting a little repetative. The majority of swimmers aren't 50 and 100 freestylers, so let's get some other stuff up here!
In swimming you are not using any specific group of muscles separately but this is not swimming. purpose of the gym is to separate muscle groups and work specifically on them. In this case upper body. So there is no need to make it easier by doing it with help of hips and legs. As in a swimming I think that control of the movement is really important so why not control of the movements in the gym? As I said before, great exercise and those boys seems vary capable and strong but once you're injured it is hard to go back in hard work.
As for the hang cleans, I think I would Probably, tell them to drop the weight and work on their form. Doing that much weight, with what they were doing could result in back/shoulder injury. It looked like they were doing 135# hang power cleans. They were struggling to get the bar up, and just muscling it up to their chest, then immediately droping it. There was no drive from the hip, shoulder shrugg, high pull, and then didn't finish the exercise with their elbows up and body in full-extension. (rack) At such a heavy wieght they could get hurt, maybe doing 45# or 65# hang cleans first and getting a proper full range of motion would be more beneficial. Then building to heavy weights from there. You wouldn't teach them to strokes incorrectly just so they "get through it" would you?
this might help
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/cfj-nov-05/hang-clean.wmv
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/cfj-nov-05/hang-power-clean.wmv
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFitAgainFaster_CJTechnique.wmv
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_BurgTrainingTheClean.wmv
btw, I'm a huge fan of crossfit, and have been doing that style of training for some time now.
I have done hang cleans myself for only about a year now, but I have found that the best powerlifters are dropping the butt and bending at the hips and knees proportionally when getting under the bar. I do not expect these athletes to know that since it looks like their goal is to CLEAN the bar up to the upper chest, but again as they are becoming fatigued (like I do :)) they are not cleaning the bar as high and consequently need to proportionally bend at the hips and knees more instead of JUST bending the KNEES more and keeping the hip bend static no matter how fart they drop. As fatigue sets in and higher weights/reps are achieved I have found it challenging to keep the hips bending myself. When I attempted my first 200lb hang clean press which was 20lb more than I ever did I had for that looked exactly like theirs and failed. Next time I progressed up to 200 slowly and learned how to "drop the hips" and it was VERY EASY to clean the 200lbs, pressing was another story haha.
I realize the amount of time needed for technical improvements is hard to accommodate, but I always find that the kids I have coached are more than excited to have ways to improve outside of group workouts. For instance the pushup with a straight back, I suggest to do with someone watching 10 reps non stop at any speed making sure their spine is perfectly straight, if they are very weak I recommend doing them on their knees on a towel or carpet.
Also at practice I make sure to give tips about all possible factors that change the technique. For the pushup I may que them in on the distance between the feet and the hands changing their posture, their head position, the curve of the neck, how high they push up, and anything that could give them more control over their technique.
Again great highschool workout, it's no wonder they swim as fast as they do!
In any case this workout looks great and the athletes are performing superbly. Hopefully they have technique maintenance regularly to help them progress and achieve higher weights/reps. These guys are pretty fast so can't diss this workout too much :)
The kipping pullup
St. Charles is getting some LOVE on this thing. I like it... Keep it up Boys.. I love the flex and the music sequence at the beginning!!!!
When in swimming do you use only your arms with everything else stationary? In my opinion using hips and legs in a pull up give you the ability to explode and bring your chest up to the bar. Doing slow pull ups with no hip and leg incorporation just doesn't seem swim relevant to me.