3 Dryland Training Considerations for the High School Senior (Incoming Collegiate Freshman)
The injury statistics for collegiate freshmen swimmers are astonishing. A 2009 study by Wolf, Ebinger, Lawler, and Britton observed 94 collegiate swimmers for 5 years. The study found that 56% of freshman athletes suffered an injury during their first year of eligibility. Additionally, 38% of all injuries resulted from activities outside of the pool including strength training.
This article aims to provide three actionable items to help prepare a high school senior for collegiate athletics and avoid falling into the injury statistics.
The fundamental movement patterns consist of: Push, pull, squat, hinge, and lunge. Mastering these are equivalent to learning the alphabet. A writer cannot write words without letters, sentences without words, and paragraphs without sentences. Human movement is the same.
An athlete will struggle to perform advanced exercises safely if the fundamental movement patterns or not mastered.
I spent six years involved with collegiate strength & conditioning in some capacity. In that time, I learned a lot including the positive and negative logistics of collegiate S&C. Unfortunately, a single strength coach may oversee anywhere from 50-200 athletes in a given season. This makes it logistically difficult to write programs that fit the needs of each athlete, meaning it is possible for an athlete to have exercises prescribed that are too advanced for them.
By mastering the fundamental movement patterns, two things occur. First you allow the strength coach to easily progress exercises. In turn, you can improve your performance faster and safer.
Second, you significantly reduce your risk of injury. At any given training session, a strength coach may be coaching 20-40 athletes. This makes it virtually impossible for a coach to be supervising every single movement an athlete performs. Learning how to move well increases the likelihood of performing exercises correctly without 24/7 supervision.
While the efficacy of these exercises can be debated until the cows come home, I recommend learning these because they are some of the most commonly prescribed exercises in collegiate S&C. If you join a collegiate swim team with a S&C program, chances are extremely high that you will be performing at least one of these three.
Learning and PROGRESSING these movements ahead of time will give you a huge advantage in collegiate athletics.
It is understandable to take a break after your Summer Championship meet before heading into collegiate swimming, but the worst thing you can do is do nothing.
As a general rule of thumb, you want to maintain an Acute to Chronic Workload Ratio (ACWR) between 80-130% (Gabbett, 2016).
ACWR described simply is a mathematical ratio of your current week’s workload divided by the average of the previous four weeks.
I’ve provided an example in the table below. This can also be calculated for dryland by calculating sets X reps X load.
Weekly Volume
Week 1 Total Volume
40,000 Meters
Week 2 Total Volume
35,000 Meters
Week 3 Total Volume
35,000 Meters
Week 4 Total Volume
30,000 Meters
Week 5 Total Volume
28,000 Meters
Week 1-4 Weekly Average Volume
35,000 Meters
Week 5 Total Volume
28,000 Meters
ACWR (wk1-4 AVG/wk5 TOTAL)
80%
Gabbett, T. J. (2016). The training—injury prevention paradox: should athletes be training smarterandharder? British Journal of Sports Medicine, 50(5), 273–280. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2015-095788
Wolf, B. R., Ebinger, A. E., Lawler, M. P., & Britton, C. L. (2009). Injury Patterns in Division I Collegiate Swimming. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 37(10), 2037–2042. doi: 10.1177/0363546509339364
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