Go back to school! Erase the smelly, crowded hallways of your high school from your mind and imagine yourself under the Islamorada sun in a clear pool ready to absorb knowledge that will enable you to swim faster. Swim School from Gary Hall Sr. of The Race Club is about lifelong enjoyment of the sport. It’s always more fun to swim to your potential.

Yoga is one of the best forms of dry land training for swimmers. In 2008, all of our Race Club swimmers training for Beijing Olympic Games incorporated two Vinyasa yoga sessions per week in which movement is synchronized with breath. The swimmers liked yoga and felt that they benefitted from these sessions. In 2008, Olympic swimmer Rebecca Soni abandoned her traditional strength training and stretching routine in favor of doing yoga. As a result, she felt stronger in breaststroke and swam faster.

Yoga can help swimmers in several different ways. First, it improves flexibility of key joints used in the swimming motions. Second, it can help reduce the chance of injury from overusing selected joints or muscles. Third, it can help build strength and stamina in the core, upper body and legs, depending on how it is done. Finally, it helps improve breathing, relaxation, recovery and mental training, all needed to become a better swimmer. Yoga is more than exercise. It helps improve health and lifestyle.

There are so many different types of moves in yoga that one cannot really refer to the benefits of yoga without being more specific. Consequently, we have developed different Vinyasa yoga workouts for swimmers that focus on three different areas of strength; core, shoulders and legs. This first yoga #Swimisode will focus on strengthening shoulders and features Race Club Olympic and world-class swimmers, led by Race Club coach Amy Hall.

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