by Admin Mediterra | Sep 24, 2020 | Practice Design
There is some benefit to making parts of your practice quite routine. We want to suggest that you do this with your Warm Up and Cool Down time in each practice. This would lower the amount of new things you need to track in each new practice, and it would allow you to more easily compare and evaluate your body signals at the start and at the finish of practice, from day-to-day.
You will notice that we rarely give a specific assignment for your Warm Up or Cool Down. Since each person will have different needs, we would like you to design this for yourself, following our guidelines.
Warm Up
First, please DO NOT SKIP your warm up time. It is so important to gently bring your performance systems online and coordinated before you increase the intensity of work you require of these systems.
It is recommended that you provide about 8 to 12 minutes of warm up time.
Start moving as gently as you can, letting your body indicate when it is eager to increase intensity. It takes some minutes for the tissues to loosen, the bio-chemistry, the motor, and the cardio-vascular systems to prepare for your main work. The better your tune-up, the more you can accomplish in your main sets.
You may do what we call a Silent Swim for the first 300 to 600 yards or meters. If you are comfortable to do so, we recommend that you swim continuously, but as gently as possible at first so that it is not difficult for the body.
A Silent Swim is where you swim in such a way to make the least amount of noise, splash, waves, or turbulence in the water around you. It gives an assignment to every part of your body to work together toward this single, sensory objective.
Then you may add next 200 with a variety of stroke styles (like breaststroke and backstroke) to work your joints in different movement patterns.
And you may do a short interval set where you change the tempo of your stroke.
An Example Warm Up
Silent Swim for 200
4x 50 of alternate stroke styles (no freestyle)
4 rounds of:
- 3x 25
- 10 seconds passive rest between each 25
- Repeat #1 at gentle stroke tempo
- Repeat #2 at moderate tempo
- Repeat #3 at brisk tempo
Cool Down
This is when you will review some focal point that you worked on today. Choose one focal point from today’s assignments and use that during this final swim.
Swim 200 to 300 (continuous or in pieces) in what I call ‘Pure Pleasure’ swimming mode. With a calm effort level, choose a tempo that is very comfortable, tune in to your focal point and swim with the goal of using that focal point to make the swim as pleasurable as you know how to.
You are certainly welcome to add other activities to your Warm Up and Cool Down time, if those are enjoyable and productive.
If you feel an unpleasant urge to add more to these we would challenge you to search for the justification of those activities – note whether they clearly contribute to the skills and enjoyment you are trying to build. If those activities don’t contribute clearly to your main goals, consider using your precious time in the pool for other activities that will.
by Admin Mediterra | Sep 24, 2020 | Practice Design
The first objective I have in swim practice is to bring my body and my mind into the water. The next objective is to bring my mind into my body. The third objective is to bring all my internal systems online and into a unified, cooperative state for higher performance. Then I am ready to work for the day.
If I cannot achieve this unified state within the normal time frame it usually indicates that I am fighting an illness and need to get out to rest for the day. Or it may be that I should remain in this Tune-Up process longer.
Silent Swimming is a very useful activity in Tune- Up (a.k.a. Warm Up) for accomplishing these objectives.
I recommend at least 8 minutes for this. 12 minutes is about minimum for myself.
Basically, the task is to produce as little noise, splash, bubbles (= lowest turbulence) as possible. It is not about moving slow, but rather it is about moving gently and that usually compels us to start slow and wait for the systems to unify and tell us when its time to turn things up. This is based on the premise that our bodies really do want to work hard and perform at highest capacity. The body has inbuilt wisdom for how to get there each day and a signal language through which it communicates that wisdom. We need to learn how to read those signals and respond cooperatively.
Silent Swimming is an exercise, or more so a discipline, in listening and responding to those signals.
In Silent Swimming you may start out gently and increase tempo as you feel your body relaxing, the joints loosening up, the tissues starting to slide and yield to a full range of motion. Blood will migrant to the areas of your body that need to work. Heart rate and respiration will increase and come into a working rhythm. Your attention to your nervous system and especially to the surface of your skin will awaken and focus. Energy production will turn up and urge you to use it.
by Admin Mediterra | Sep 24, 2020 | Practice Design
It is typical in conventional swimming to have totally different practices every day to prevent boredom. But making new decisions every day takes more energy, and having different practice patterns every day makes it difficult to carefully measure small improvements in quantities and qualities from practice to practice. We recommend that you keep a fairly consistent practice structure, and keep some parts of the practice (like Warm Up and Cool Down) routine. We also encourage you to repeat some of the exact same practice sets over a series of practices so that your body has time to adapt to the challenge and you can more easily notice (and be encouraged by) those small improvements. These practices present very specific puzzles for you to solve that are just within reach of your abilities… if you concentrate. And by concentrating on the puzzle, time disappears and practices become intriguing.
Typical Practice Structure
Our kind of practices may follow this pattern:
- Warm-Up (what we like to call “Tune-Up” in TI), 8 to 12 minutes long
- Main Set 1 (choose a skill assignment), 5 to 15 minutes long
- Main Set 2 (optional). 5 to 15 minutes long
- Main Set 3 (optional), 5 to 15 minutes long
- Cool-Down, 5 to 8 minutes long
To keep things simple and focused on what is necessary, we recommend a simple, routine for the Tune-Up and the Cool-Down. You may change this if you like.
Depending on your time and energy available, you may choose 1, 2, or 3 or more Main Sets for your practice.
For each Main Set you will be assigned one skill project or you may choose one if not given. If you are designing your own practice, we recommend that you change your skill focus every 15 minutes. Having more than one skill project for practice is good.
A Level 1 practice can be anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes from start to finish. It is better to have a short practice with high quality and practice more frequently in the week, than to do long practices, with less quality, less frequently.
by Admin Mediterra | Jun 4, 2020 | Preparation
There is an overwhelming amount of information and opinions out there on stretching before and after running. In general, we think most bodies are going to appreciate doing some sort of warm up. But what should you do for your body?
In some of our live training sessions we may explore dynamic and static stretching exercises. And you may have some that you use already. You may also review some trusted sources on the internet. You may contact a trainer at your fitness club to get personalized instruction on how to develop a routine that fits your needs.
First, be very conservative about starting new stretches, and in how far and how much you do. Though helpful in the long-term, immediately your body may react protectively by tightening up even more. Stretching needs to be done with some understanding of technique and feedback from the body.
Should One Stretch Before Practice?
I would recommend using dynamic stretches that help the body parts move through their full active range of motion, with activities that simulate parts of the running motion.
Some joints need to become more stiff and stable for running – knees, lower back and neck. Some joints need to become more soft and mobile for running – ankles, hips, shoulders.
If there are parts of your body that are short and tight, then it may be better to follow a stretching routine for those at times apart from your running workouts, so that once they are stressed by the stretching, they have time to repair and recover before you make them work in running. If they are stretched beyond current limits and strained just before going running, it is possible for them to tighten up even more out of an automatic protective response, which could actually end up causing more strain or injury.
Dynamic stretching in patterns that simulate running mechanics will move your tissues through their current active range of motion and the body will respond by filling with blood and loosening up to the range you are current capable of.
Should One Stretch After Practice?
This is a very common question, but not easy to answer for each person’s individual needs and response to workout stresses. Remember that tightening of muscles is a protective response – sometimes that should be left alone and sometimes that should be coaxed into loosening up. After the activity, loosening up is generally a good idea.
The first needs after a work out are:
- To let tissues loosen up, vascular system to open up,
- To encourage the body to flush waste products from the system,
- To reduce inflammation, and
- To remove stress on joints and tissues.
Some stressed muscles, and tissues may react negatively to stretching after a workout, while stretching might help others open up the flow of waste move out.
Beneficial after-workout activities may include:
- walking
- gentle swimming
- walking in deep water (works better than compression clothing)
- alternating cold and hot water immersion
- gentle rolling on a foam roller
- some yoga moves
by Admin Mediterra | Jun 4, 2020 | Preparation
Every body is different in its needs, to some degree. Yet, every body, especially as those bodies get older, will appreciate having a good warm up. As a matter of fact, the better the warm up, the better your body will be able to do the hard work of the main training ahead.
Likewise, cool down is important because it allows the body a way to gradually shift out of the exercise mode, allowing tissues, fluids, and temperature to adjust smoothly. Abrupt shifts from exercise to sedentary activities can be surprisingly hard on the body.
We recommend that you keep the same routine for your warm up from practice to practice. This will make it possible for you to sense the starting condition of your body from day to day. If some factor from the day or hours before could affect your performance, you will likely be able to notice signs of this in your body during warm up and compare to the way you have felt on other days, doing the exact same warm up activities.
By keeping your warm up and cool down routine the same, this will reduce the amount of planning and thinking you need to do for each practice.
Design Guidelines
Make your warm up 10 to 15 minutes long. Never skip your warm up.
Make your cool down 5 to 10 minutes long. You might skip your cool down if necessary but you might pay a price in a longer recovery.
Warm Up Routine
5 to 15 minutes of preparatory exercises.
Then 3 to 5 minutes of brisk walking.
Then 5 to 8 minutes of gentle jogging.
Allow heart rate to increase gradually, with gradually more vigorous activity.
Provoke an increase core temperature, particularly on cool days, so that you feel warm all over your body by the time you begin your main practice activity.
Cool Down Routine
5 minutes of gentle jogging.
5 minutes of walking, transition from brisk to gentle.
by Admin Mediterra | Jun 4, 2020 | Preparation
To prepare the body for running we recommend some Pre Run Preparatory Exercises.
Overview
Before your run you need to prepare the mobility for these regions of the body, in this order of priority:
- Spine
- Hips
- Ankles
- Shoulders
The spine is the main component in your relationship with gravity and conductor of the forces flowing through your body from running. Then your hips and legs are prepared to work with the spine. The mobile shoulders (and arms) play a key roll in helping you use rotation and transferring force from side to side in the running motion.
We want to thank Melissa Melone, head trainer at Courthouse Fitness West Salem for teaching and demonstrating this routine for us.
There are three layers to this routine:
- 5 Minute Routine
- 15 Minute Routine
- 30 Minute Routine
The times given here are just approximate, but give you an idea of how much time you need to do them.
If you have only the most limited amount of time for your run do the 5 Minute Routine, at least. It is meant to help you prepare the spine, hips and lower legs in the most basic way to get those loosened up and toned for your run. If you have more time then do the 15 Minute Routine.
And, on your rest day (from running), or after a light or moderate workout, you may do the 30 Minute Routine to condition your body more thoroughly.
First, here is the outline for each routine, including a link to the instructions for each one.
When you are first learning these exercises you may do them in order on the list and go through them just once. Later on, once you are familiar with them, you may go through the list on 2 or 3 cycles, with a certain number of repetitions for each. You will feel more loose and ready on each cycle.
Caution
In your pre-run preparatory exercises you are preparing your joints and tissues to work within their current range of mobility. Do not stretch them in a way that causes them to hurt and thereby tighten up. Instead, you are ‘flexing’ those joints and tissues so that they relax and loosen up and prepare to work in their current capabilities.
If you need to increase mobility in a joint or make certain regions of tissue longer, then you may do careful stretching away from your run times. This way the stress on those tissues caused by deeper stretching will have time to heal and adapt before you go running again.
Routines
5 Minute Routine
15 Minute Routine
Do all the exercises of the 5 Minute Routine, and
- Runner’s Stretch
- Runner’s Stretch with 90 T-Spine Rotation
- Walking Hip Cradle
- Walking Hip Circles
- Walking Lunge with ‘Hands in Prayer’
- Lateral Lunge Walk
- “Inchworm” Walk Out To Plank-and-Pushup
- Air Squat To Stand
