Maintenance
Warm-Up
Important to do before activities in order to improve performance and reduce injury
A Warm-up is an important routine to do before doing any kind of exercise or stretching, especially stretching. A thorough warm-up should take about 5-20 mins depending on the intensity of the activity afterwards, for example, if you are about to sprint, a good 20min warm-up often longer is required to make sure all muscles are fired up and warm. In contrast, if you are about to start an endurance event, then a shorter warm-up is required, as your muscles will be working at a very sub-maximal level so injury is far less likely from a sudden burst of power and movement. This is a general rule and there are some exceptions eg. heavy weight lifting, competitions etc..
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Ideally, a good warm-up will leave you with a slight sweat and elevated heart rate around 70-80% of your max heart rate. This will ensure blood is flowing to all your muscles, keeping them oxygenated and heated. Testing mobility from dynamic stretching and general mobility movements are also preferable, a more mobile athlete is less likely to suffer industry from overstretching and strain on joints. In particular, leg and hip mobility drills can be very beneficial due to their importance in good technique and body position when doing almost all sports.
If you are doing stretching as a part of a flexibility session where there has been no prior movement, then a shorter higher intensity warm-up can be used to save time. For example 20 burpees and then mobilising and using the muscles you plan to stretch. Eg, calf raises before stretching calves, controlled shoulder swings before stretching the delts, you get the idea. Hot water also is good for warming up, stretching in a hot shower is my favourite way to stretch out cramped or particularly tight muscles that are hard to move.
Cool-Down
Used to reduce recovery time after training or exercise
Cooldowns are used to ease muscles into a resting state, lower heart rate in a controlled matter, reduce Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness and re-oxygenate muscles after working in an oxygen scarce environment. There are many ways of cooling down, as listed below:
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Just stopping: Just stopping is the easiest way to cool down, as not exercising will return you to a non-exercising state however this is possibly the worst way to cool down, it is most prone to causing injury, DOMS and least effective at lowering heart rate. Don't do this.
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Standard cool down: Technically on the spectrum of active recovery, the most common and intuitive way to cool down, slowly reducing intensity over a period of time in order to help ease the body back into a resting state. There is nothing particularly wrong with this type of cool down however there are more effective methods to achieve better results. However, if you are to pick an easy warm down to do, let it be this one, not just stopping.
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Active recovery: Active recovery is when you keep moving at a degree of intensity while toning down your overall exertion in order to get back to a resting state. For example, cycling for 10 mins on the bike after leg day at an easy intensity. There are many ways of which to do active recovery, my favourite and a technique to be found most effective for athletes is an intermittent intensity method. It returns you to a resting state faster than almost all other types of cooldown. An example of what this would look like would be the 'red zone cooldown', over 200-400m of a cooldown, swim in a relaxed and easy manner until you reach the flags, while within the flags increase pace considerably near to a sprint focusing on getting a technically perfect turn and not breathing on breakout. Once you leave the flags return to relaxed swimming once again.
As long as over a period of time you keep moving with an overall ever-decreasing intensity, it counts as active recovery. However, varying the intensity within that frame has shown to be more beneficial than a liner decent.
Rolling and Stretching
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Massaging your muscles and fascia is a very effective method of maintaining good muscular function to encourage tissue recovery and discourage knots, cramps and other injuries that can occur from sore tight muscles. Doing such exercises and routines every day or every other day can help enormously fo those of you prone to small reoccurring industries and twinges, in particular, that then can lead to larger more persistent or damaging injuries.​ For those of you unfamiliar with that fascia is. Fascia is a layer of fibrous connective tissue that covers and connects your muscles, like a weird elastic fleshy net (it gets a lot more complicated, but for now that's all we need to know). Over time this fascia can become tight and restrictive if not properly stretched. Tight fascia can cause reduced mobility, cramps and differed pain eg. tight fascia on foot can cause pains in tightness in areas of the Achilles, leg and lower back. Rolling is a very easy and effective way to keep on top of this.
Rolling
Rolling is a useful tool for recovery and manipulation of muscle tissue and fascia
Rolling is essentially just taking something roundish and pushing it around your muscles to relieve tightness. They help stretch fascia (usually superficial fascia), relieve lactic acid buildup and roll out your muscles. There are a few types of roller available to get. Most commonly there is the foam rollers that come in 2 varieties, smooth rollers and dimpled/massage rollers. I prefer smooth rollers due to them being more effective at moving lactic acid from muscles (reducing DOMS), stretching the superficial fascia (self Myofascial release) and promoting muscle cell recovery. Dimpled rollers are better at massaging muscles more deeply than a smooth roller can and are often more common to find.
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Handheld rollers are another group that have become popular. They are just plastic rolling pins with some protrusions on them. If you are cheap like me, then you can buy a normal rolling pin, they work pretty well. These are better for smaller muscle groups you cannot use a foam roller to reach as easily, forearms, lats and the like. It's a nifty thing to have.
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Balls. There are lots of types of balls, the main two types are small hard balls like hokey and golf balls, with the other being squishy spikey balls like massage balls. Hokey and golf balls I find helps a lot with stretching the soles of your feet from tightness and knots in large muscle groups that require a bit more force to get to. The small area of pressure is very effective at going deeper into tissue than a roller or your hands. Spiky balls AKA Massage balls are a more popular ball to have. They claim to be effective at breaking up knots in muscles and other very tight muscles. Large muscle groups like hamstrings and glutes will get more from spiky balls due to their large size and being awkward to massage deeply. However, they are not very good for small muscle groups and can be quite uncomfortable to use.
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Overall, use of rollers such as these can be great for those of you prone to tightness, lactic acid buildup or have lots of small niggles that need to be kept on top of. If you had to get one I would recommend a foam roller of some kind preferably smooth. For those of you who run a lot or do other sports that place repetitive strain on small muscle groups, a ball of some kind is also very useful to have.
Stretching
Important for all activities in order to improve performance and reduce injury
Fortunately, everyone knows what stretching is and have done it at some point. Therefore this section will go over how to optimise your stretching routine rather than listing the stretches you should do, as finding a list of stretches is very easy. Unfortunately, there seems to be no major consensus between people as to how long you should stretch for, how intense the stretch should feel or when you should stretch. Therefore the following recommendations will be my best-educated choice for recommendations, but as always if you think its sounds silly, search it up and ask physios and coaches you know for their opinion and some other ideas to use.
Static stretching:
When should I stretch?
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Stretch during cool down after exercise, do not stretch before exercise as this hinders the athletic performance for powerful or strength-heavy movements. If you need to stretch muscles before exercise to make pain manageable or reduce injury risk do so but do not hold the stretch for any longer than necessary.
How Long Should I stretch for?​
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Hold stretches for 20-45 seconds. Range varies with the size of muscle and tightness, for example, hamstring stretches should be held for longer than tricep stretches, and a tight muscle should be stretched for longer than a not tight muscle.
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Do not hold a stretch that that muscles maximum range of motion as this can use damage and tearing, make sure the stretch is still comfortable enough to hold and feel beneficial not as if it is penance for being immobile
Dynamic Stretching
Dynamic stretches are controlled movements used to lose, mobilise and prepare the body before exercise. Controlled twists, swings lunges and squats are some examples. There is no time limit for these kinds of stretches, just perform them until you find you have benefited from them. In Particular, I would suggest the use of leg swings and lunges for swimming breastroke and twisting movements for backstroke as these are very beneficial for reducing the chance of industry and increasing mobility in stroke-specific areas such as the backstroke rotation.
Strengthening
Prevent injury and improve performance by having strong stabilising muscles that are prone to strain and tares
The strengthening of certain small muscle groups can be very beneficial to both overall development and the reduction of injury chance. Two main examples of these muscle groups that most people would benefit from training would be the rotator cuffs and the transverse abdominis. Most people will have other muscle groups that they need to train more often than others to sort imbalances and correct postural problems. The use of technique correction, therabands and conventional weights can be used to strengthen these muscles it all depends. If you would like to know more about what exercise can strengthen certain muscle groups there are many great sources linked on the website under Physical conditioning you can look at for help or ask a physio, or ask myself and I will try to give the best answer I can. Below are some instructional videos for both rotator cuff and transverse abdominis training:
Rotator cuffs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1hIHwLsiq8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSZx4adyiGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR1W79AWOag
Transverse abdominis: (Just sinch stomach as you do any ab exercise to work this muscle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8O04WLXFt8