Warmup

Hey! It's "Talk Like a Pirate" Day! Arrrgh.

I doon't have time to upload it right now, but thar will be a pirate movie trivia quiz coming soon.

In the meantime, let's talk about warming up.

When I was a teenager, I liked to work the warmup set harder than anyone else, especially if it was a straight freestyle swim. Once, when I was 17 (OK, maybe 18), I actually set a PR for the 400m during warmup. I beat that time at the next meet, but for a few weeks, my first 400 meters of practice were my fastest, ever.

But oh, how times have changed! Now it seems to take forever for me to loosen up when I begin my exercise. It doesn't matter how hard I work -- when I first get into the swimming pool, I'm gonna go slow.

Since discovering this problem, I've tried to figure out the most efficient way for me to shorten the process, and to get myself up to workout speed quickly. But it's been easier to determine what does NOT work. After substantial trial and error, I have become absolutely certain that the following things do NOT help me warm up, and in fact are severely detrimental to the process:

• Kicking


• Stroke drills


• Butterfly


• Long discussions while standing in cold water

At yesterday's practice, it took me a full hour to loosen up and begin to swim at my normal pace. You may think it's strictly an issue of water temperature, but at this particular workout, it was plenty warm.

No, it's just that I didn't swim the right things at the beginning of workout. What ARE the right things, you ask? Well, I think I've narrowed it down to two things. I warm up best (and quickest) when

• Drafting off someone


• Pulling (especially with paddles)

The drafting solution presents its own problems. Some people don't enjoy having anyone leech off them, and you want to respect that. But a more common problem is that folks I'll be compatible with later in the workout are simply too fast to keep up with when I'm in this pre-warmup slothful condition. Nobody wants to slow down and dog it just because their geriatric lanemate is too stiff to move like a real human at that point in the practice.

But doing a pull set seems to work for some reason. I suspect that it's partially psychological, since it's just more fun to crank it up with the paddles on. At the same time, I do need to recognize that I have problems warming up in running, too, so I think it's fair to assign my legs the blame for the majority of the problem. If I were a focused and committed athlete, I'd probably do some spinning on my bicycle trainer before either running or swimming, just to get the ol' legs properly lubricated.

But no, that's probably not going to happen. For now, I'll just try to do a pull set early in practice.

So my question for you is this: What helps you get warmed up the quickest? What are your favorite sets or drills with which to start swim practice? Are you one of those people who shows up late (after warmup), but still jumps right into the main set at full speed? Or are you more like me, and need to sorta ease your way into it?

Let me know. In the meantime, I hope the scurvy dogs o' the world will let ye be, terday, and that everthin ya dew is spectacularrrrr!