Margie doing the "swim exercise" in our basement gym.
Well, it's been quite a while since I made my last post. My apologies. I can't believe I've run out of things to say!
My girl, Margie, has been doing very well at swimming. In our YMCA district championship meet (6 YMCAs), she came in first in the 50 yd freestyle and second in the 50 yd breast stroke and butterfly. She's seeded in the top 8 in these events for the NY State championship that will take place this coming weekend. She has been training hard and I hope she will do well. Stay tuned; I'll report on that next week!
I think that a little bit of her success is due to the "dry land" training that Dad has been giving her. When you think about it, swimming is a strange movement. By that I mean that the movements of your arms and legs don't correspond to "normal" weight training movements. So, to effectively train with weights for swimming requires a little bit of thought. Margie has very strong legs. In comparison, her upper body is weak. So, that's what I concentrated on. In addition to standard "lat machine" pull downs (swimming is basically a pulling movement with your arms), I had her do what we playfully call the "swim exercise." Simply stated, it involves pulling a weight down on the lat machine, but she keeps her arms straight and goes from straight overhead all the way to the bottom with arms straight down in front of her. I looked online for swimming assistance exercises and the nearest I could find to this was some guy doing the same motion with rubber bands. I'm prejudiced, of course, but they don't compare with weights!
I must be doing something right as Margie surprised herself a few weeks ago. She had never been able to do a chin up (she's fairly heavy) and I told her to try one. Up she went with no problem at all. Last week she did two of them. I have set up an incentive program for her and her older brother, Win, where I give them a little reward every time they advance another Level in the upper body exercises in the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program. She just hit Level 2 (Win is at Level 13). But all that is another story...
My girl, Margie, has been doing very well at swimming. In our YMCA district championship meet (6 YMCAs), she came in first in the 50 yd freestyle and second in the 50 yd breast stroke and butterfly. She's seeded in the top 8 in these events for the NY State championship that will take place this coming weekend. She has been training hard and I hope she will do well. Stay tuned; I'll report on that next week!
I think that a little bit of her success is due to the "dry land" training that Dad has been giving her. When you think about it, swimming is a strange movement. By that I mean that the movements of your arms and legs don't correspond to "normal" weight training movements. So, to effectively train with weights for swimming requires a little bit of thought. Margie has very strong legs. In comparison, her upper body is weak. So, that's what I concentrated on. In addition to standard "lat machine" pull downs (swimming is basically a pulling movement with your arms), I had her do what we playfully call the "swim exercise." Simply stated, it involves pulling a weight down on the lat machine, but she keeps her arms straight and goes from straight overhead all the way to the bottom with arms straight down in front of her. I looked online for swimming assistance exercises and the nearest I could find to this was some guy doing the same motion with rubber bands. I'm prejudiced, of course, but they don't compare with weights!
I must be doing something right as Margie surprised herself a few weeks ago. She had never been able to do a chin up (she's fairly heavy) and I told her to try one. Up she went with no problem at all. Last week she did two of them. I have set up an incentive program for her and her older brother, Win, where I give them a little reward every time they advance another Level in the upper body exercises in the K*I*S*S* Fitness Program. She just hit Level 2 (Win is at Level 13). But all that is another story...
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