Russian Dry-Land Training
If you’ve spent time with me, you know I’ll often say that the swimming world is massive, with many options on how to train swimmers. Naively, many American swimmers believe our system of training is the best there is. Yes, we do produce some great swimmers, but so does the rest of the world. Not in the same numbers, because our population base is larger than most, plus we have excellent training facilities, plus our college system (the NCAA) is like a swimming factory, producing large numbers of elite-level swimmers yearly.
Russian breaststroker, Yulia Efimova, is an example of an elite-level swimmer from another country. She is the winner of three Olympic medals and a six-time world champion. She recently went on Instagram to demonstrate one of her astounding dry-land routines. Here is her Instagram TV video, posted to YouTube:
Over the next four weeks, your challenge is to repeat her routine and send me a short video of yourself in action each week (so four videos over four weeks). As you can see, her method is incredibly challenging and risky, so you must go easy. Take “baby steps” and modify the exercises where needed. By modify, I mean break it down into pieces and do the simple parts first. Bottom line, your health, and safety is the most important thing to me. If you can’t perform an exercise at all, that’s okay. You should also spend at least fifteen minutes of warm-up before starting. Do some cardio work to heat your muscles then stretch out your entire body. When you’re finished with that, you’re ready to start. If you have any questions, please contact me before trying any exercise. Good luck, and have fun!
- Exercise 1: BR Pull
- Exercise 2: FL Pull
- Exercise 3: BK Pull
- Exercise 4: FR Pull
- Exercise 5: Pump Ups
- Exercise 6: BR Kick Stand Ups
- Exercise 7: Wave Action BR