For day-to-day, life stretching is important to keep your muscles flexible,
strong and healthy. Without stretching our muscles will shorten and as a result
we'll begin to feel tight. When it comes to sport, stretching is vital to maintain
a good range of movement and to prevent injuries from happening. And as swimming
uses pretty much every muscle in your body, you've got to find time to do lots
of stretches within your training routine. Therefore in this week's video
from Propulsion Swimming, we're going to give you five upper body stretches that
it's key swimmers do on a regular basis.
The first stretch is for one of the biggest muscles in the body, your chest.
Stretching your chest or your pecs is a good idea for everyone to do. That's
because it can help improve your posture as well as increase the range of
movement in and around your shoulders. So for this exercise you're going to need a
small towel to help you perform it correctly.
You then raise your arms up behind you as high as you can go to feel the
stretch in your pecs. Not only does this stretch your chest out but also your
anterior deltoids which are the front of your shoulders. Try to keep your body
upright when doing this to make sure the stretch is effective and doesn't cause
any injuries. And also to avoid injuries, raise your arms up gently behind you
rather than doing any sort of jerking motion.
The second stretch I'm gonna give you is for your lats. There are a number of ways
you can stretch out your lats but seeing as we're doing stretches specifically
for swimmers, this is the way that we'd recommend doing it. First of all, get
yourself in a streamline position, whether it's standing up or lying on the
floor, either way is fine. You then, whilst maintaining the streamline position, lean
sideways until you can feel the stretch down the side of your body. Doing it in
this way not only stretches out your lats but also your obliques. To get
maximum benefit from this stretch you must push your chest out and keep your
body posture straight. Leaning forwards or backwards will lose effectiveness of
the stretch completely.
The third stretch your gonna need to perform is for your deltoids in your
shoulders or more specifically your posterior deltoids. This is a common
exercise that most people should know and swimmers should be performing it
after every session especially if they've worked hard. To perform this
exercise correctly reach one arm across your body and use the other arm to lock
it in place. Then slowly pull your arm towards your chest as much as you can.
You should feel a stretch in the back of your shoulder. Remember when doing this
stretch that you don't pull your arm towards your chest
touching any of your joints such as your wrist or your elbow. This will put
unnecessary pressure on your joints when doing this stretch which may lead to
injuries. Pull with your arm either placed on your forearm or your tricep
and remember to stretch equally on each side.
Stretch number four is another stretch that swimmers should be performing after
every session and it's one for your triceps. Your triceps are the biggest
muscle in your arms and they help with arm extensions at the end of your
swimming stroke. So you need to place the palm of your hand on the back of your
neck with your elbow pointed towards the ceiling. You then use your other hand to
gently push your elbow lower to move the palm of your hand from your neck further
down your spine. If you don't feel this stretch too much you can do it slightly
differently with a small towel. So you hold the towel at each end and place one
hand on your neck similar to the previous way and with the towel dangling
down behind you, use your other hand to pull down on it which will hopefully
allow you to feel the stretch in your tricep.
The final stretch in this video is for your upper back and more specifically
for your rhomboids. Similar to chest, your rhomboids are key to posture and range
of movement. This means that stretching them is key
for swimmers especially if they want to reduce drag when swimming through the
water. There are a few effective ways that you can stretch your rhomboids but
this is the one that we choose. To begin with stretch your arms out in front of
you and interlock your fingers so both hands are together. You then
reach out as far as you can so you can feel your shoulder blades stretching
apart from each other. To feel the stretch even more gently bend your head
forwards so your chin is tucked in towards your chest. As a general rule of
thumb all of the stretches that you've seen in this video should be performed
at 20 to 30 seconds before you relax or change side. It's also important to
remember to breathe normally as you stretch. If your breathing is shallow or
hurried your muscles won't be as relaxed as they could be. As there are loads of
stretches that swimmers can do this is going to be one of many videos we are
going to produce for you. So be sure to SUBSCRIBE to the Propulsion Swimming
channel to check them out in the near future. For now, I will see you on the
next one.