Poliquin on Swimming
by Kim Goss
March 10, 2008

There are several sports in which weight training, even today, is not completely accepted as a valuable method of conditioning. Baseball was one such sport, with coaches at all levels believing that barbells and dumbbells would make players throw and bat slower and would bulk them up so much that they would get muscle-bound. But that changed, and now bodybuilding magazines are read by baseball players almost as much as the latest issues of Bat and Ball.

Another sport that has been slow to embrace the value of weight training is swimming, and even today many swim coaches cannot see beyond any dryland training other than stretching and perhaps a few sets on an isokinetic swim bench. Charles Poliquin was working with the Canadian swim team from 1986 to 1988, and during that time he was in great demand as a guest speaker in the swimming community, giving lectures worldwide, and was hired as a consultant for the Australian National Swim Team through the Australian Institute of Sport. However, it should be noted that soon after Poliquin left the Canadian team, they went from having 12 swimmers ranked in the top five in the world in various events to having just one in the top five.

Back in the late '80s and early '90s when I was strength coach for the Air Force Academy, I consulted regularly with Charles Poliquin about his ideas for training swimmers so I could implement them with my athletes. Not only did my athletes become strong, with many of the women able to power clean and bench press over 60 kilos and several men jerking over 115 kilos, they both also did exceptionally well in their conference and the women made their presence felt in national competitions. In fact, several of their success stories were published in Bigger Faster Stronger magazine.

Charles allowed me to record one of our conversations about his training methods for swimming. At the time of this interview, American swimming was struggling in international competition. In 1984 the US team won 21 gold medals, but in 1988 they dropped to only eight gold medals. Here, for the first time ever, is the transcript of that conversation.

KG: What is the major problem with most American swimming programs?

CP: They copy programs of countries whose athletes were chemically enhanced.

KG: Whose program should they use to model their training after?

CP: Australia and England are the leaders in the ethical application of sport science to swimming.

KG: What is your opinion about the large aerobic base that is an integral part of so many swimming programs, even for the sprint events?

CP: Aerobics are performed for too long and too often, which produces a high level of cortisol. Again, some of these programs are based upon the workouts of drug-assisted athletes. Drug use is so widespread that I believe that many professional bodybuilders could put on even more muscle mass if they drank the urine of these athletes! Seriously, drugs enable swimmers to perform a lot more volume in their training and get away with large amounts of aerobic training, so the design of their workouts is way out of whack compared to what a drug-free athlete can handle.

KG: Do you have any guidelines about how long to perform aerobic training for a swimmer who is not drinking the urine of these drug-assisted athletes?

CP: About 6-8 weeks, twice a year, is a good general guideline. I say this because it only takes about 6-8 weeks for the aerobic energy system to plateau, and you can maintain your aerobic conditioning by just training it once a week; so why spend so much time trying to improve it 8-10 months out of a year? Case in point: Myriam BÈdard, a three-time Olympic medalist and world champion in biathlon I trained, does not do as much aerobic work as most North American sprint swimmers.

KG: What do you do after the 6-8 weeks of aerobic training?

CP: Focus on another energy system.

KG: Why can distance swimmers train longer than distance runners even though they are both endurance sports?

CP: The eccentric component in swimming is comparatively compared to distance running, which is why you don't get sore. If you don't get sore, you don't have to recover so much.

KG: How do you set up a periodization program for swimming?

CP: I like using a 12-week cycle, starting with single-joint exercises to offset any muscle imbalances developed from training for the sport.

KG: With the intensification/accumulation cycles that you use for strength training, which phase do you work first?

CP: For swimming you should always work power before you work capacity; that is, start with a speed base. Americans work backwards - they learn perfect technique with slow speeds. Then when they swim in a race, they can't swim at high speeds because they did not train at high speeds.

KG: How important is strength training to a swimmer?

CP: Ask yourself, "Why do men swim faster than women?" Because they're stronger. As far as hydrodynamics is concerned, the female body is better, which is why the European women who took drugs to become stronger did so well - they had the best of both worlds going for them.

KG: Do you have any interesting success stories about the value of strength training with swimming?

CP: In Canada, there was a diver who won the nationals in the 50 meters by doing the following: diving and strength training. After he won the nationals, he was taken under the wing of a coach who, it was expected, would make him even better. In fact, when he started regular swimming programs, he regressed and as a result got out of the sport.

KG: Are there any general guidelines you have about what type of strength training is required for an individual swimmer?

CP: I would go by muscle mass; if the athlete has lots of muscle, focus on relative strength. Also, the shorter the distance of a race, the more intramuscular training is needed.

KG: How much time do your workouts take?

CP: Not long, maybe an hour. In the phase where you want to get strong: maybe four hours per week - twice upper and twice lower. Competitive season: once a week.

KG: What are the best upper-body exercises for swimming?

CP: Chins and dips - the pectorals and latissimus dorsi are prime movers in swimming. One great exercise is performed on gymnastics rings; it can be described as a single movement, progressing from a pull-up to the finish of a dip, which mimics the muscle action used in swimming. I also like the Nautilus pullover machine because it has a matching strength curve for the muscles involved.

KG: What about leg exercises for swimmers? Would you have a swimmer squat?

CP: I found that leg-dominant athletes usually have good starts and turns, but the problem with exercises such as squats is that they recruit so many motor units that you gain hypertrophy. I was in a swimming training camp in Florida and tried an experiment. First, consider that with my muscle mass I have the buoyancy of a crowbar. But I found that if we were allowed to start by kicking away from the wall in the crawl, I could beat all the swimmers by a length, but of course they would catch up to me. Nevertheless, this experiment showed me that leg strength can be a big advantage in swimming, as long as it's not overdone.

KG: Are special abdominal exercises important to a swimmer?

CP: The abdominals are of critical importance to a swimmer, but they are often neglected by these athletes. This is because the abdominals are the link between the force transferred by the lower body to the upper body.

KG: Is it OK to use resistance-training methods in the water, such as swimming with hand paddles?

CP: Only if you do part of the stroke; otherwise you will mess up stroke mechanics.

KG: What is your opinion of isokinetic swimming benches?

CP: At best, they are counterproductive because they destroy motor patterns. With the Canadian national swimming team in Montreal the relationship between power scores in the benches and swimming was completely inverse; that is, the better swimmers performed on the swim bench, the worse they performed in the water. You might say that the swim bench is a great way to screen athletes for the sport, in that you would favor the athletes who achieved the poorest results on the swim bench.

KG: Have you seen any impressive lifts by swimmers?

CP: I saw Victor Davis, world record holder in breast stroke, bench press 140 kilos. I also saw Allison Higson, world record holder in breast stroke, do 12 supinated chins with a 25-pound dumbbell with impeccable form. She was only 15 years old at the time.

KG: Are there any differences between weight-training for male swimmers and weight-training female swimmers?

CP: Women are not as obsessed with the weight on the bar as much as males are, and as a result women tend to overload better through technique and controlled tempo of execution.

KG: Plyometrics is the hottest training method among strength coaches. What value does it have for swimmers to improve their start off the blocks?

CP: Very little, because there is no elastic component at the start. Yes, there is a countermovement, but it is very limited. And if you did develop a specific plyometric exercise for the start, how would you overload it?

KG: What about the countermovement that occurs when kicking off the walls to change directions? Wouldn't plyometrics help there?

CP: The water slows you down too much, reducing much of the plyometric effect. The velocity of the turn is too slow compared to ground-based activities, and research in this area has demonstrated that the length of the stretch-shortening cycle must exactly mimic the activity to increase the performance.

KG: What do you do in the weightroom to prevent "swimmer's shoulder?"

CP: Most cases of swimmer's shoulder are caused by improper muscle balance between the scapulae retractors, shoulder extensors, external and internal rotators of the humerus.

KG: Any general advice for tapering for swimmers before a major competition?

CP: Three weeks for long distance events, 7-10 days for sprints.

KG: Will there ever be another Mark Spitz, the swimmer who won seven gold medals in the 1972 Olympics?

CP: Until recently you would see phenoms such as Mark Spitz, or Eric Heiden in speed skating, who could win all the events. Those days are gone, as these sports are now dominated by specialists who know how to train.

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