How long do you spend at the gym each week?
If you are a competitive swimmer, gym work is a vital part of your training plan, but if you are a master’s swimmer, amateur or triathlete, the time you spend at the gym is time taken away from other activities.
Choosing the right training plan could help you save time through shorter but more effective training sessions. A balanced training plan can increase your strength and power without any noticeable increases in body mass. This will not only improve your performance, it will also help prevent injuries.
We all know that it is not easy to find time to devote to gym work in addition to training sessions in the pool (or out running and on the bike!). Nevertheless, the right kind of strength work – more precisely explosive strength – will allow you to make enormous improvements while investing only a small amount of time and without feeling exhausted.
The key is to concentrate on quality without focusing too much on quantity and without over-exerting.
The conventional approach to gym work is to perform between 1-3 sets x 6-10 reps “to exhaustion” (i.e. until you cannot do even one or more rep) working most muscle groups.
This method certainly produces results, but it also causes considerable…
