I did lots of medicine ball work. With myself and some athletes. I noticed lots of big differences. Better verticles, better starts, and farther throws too. big fan of medicine balls. Over all a lot more explosive. noticed a lot more strength in the lower back too.
with time became a lot more explosive though the concentric amd eccentric parts of the movements.
Ok: TWO big fans of medicine balls. Some of the improvements I have seen in swimmers are the better quality of movement on ground expressed by a progressively better ability to go through absorption and production ( just as you state!) and the ability to apply force faster in the water,which translates in higher stroke frequencies without substantial losses of efficiency.
I ahve seen this happening with swimmers actually raised in our programs, as well as in swimmers coming in later. Without EVER touching this parameter in pool training, their stroke frequencies ALWAYS improved,along with their sprint times.
By the way, NV what kind of volume ranges and frequency of medball (multiple response) work you found actually appropriate to achieve your results?
I noticed in the begining of the programs when we first started to work on medball tosses that the athletes have a hard time keeping cosistant with form. i.e they would not get enough leverage out of there legs for the response that i wanted. We started light, trying to do 25-35 perfect tosses while keeping consitant with distance and hieght. 2-3 times per week fot the first couple of weeks. I tried to keep it like a max speed day. meaning as soon as they started to get really week in distance and height i would start to rap it up.
By the middle of the program they would be a lot more responsive. they could throw farther and higher for more tosses than before. We would do about 50-60 throws 3 times per week. we will do different reps of 6. Forward, bakward, double bounce throw ect…
I found that amount of work to be good for the rest of the program. if they got week in the throws towards the end of the week i would back off some for recovery. If i thought they were doing really well and it was not much of a challege we would make the trows more difficult. I believe Charlie is similar in training, maybe he could respond.
How about you pakewi? what did yo do with your swimmers?
Intersting observation about leverages,as I found the same thing regarding upper body type throws: quality of movement always has to come before any quantity,the medball gives a good chance of analyzing athletes’ movements and individual strength/weaknesses in this regard.
I agree also on the reps number (<8) per bout of exercise, and the often forgotten importance of consistency of the output.
As far as the numbers are concerned I find that 20-40 full body explosive type throws -as the ones you mentioned- per session 1 to 3 times per week increase overall power output and help with starts, while 120- 200 multiple response (plyo) upper body lower intensity throws are more suited for the kind of targets we’re talking about in this thread.
I find this type of sessions and numbers extremely helpful performed on a daily basis at two extremes:
with more advanced swimmers,already able to move relatively heavy weights in the gym, and with younger swimmers,very unexperienced of gym work.
Elastic work and CNS interaction and tissue responses to training is tough to juggle. My pride and joy swimmer is a kid of good ability and does everything I require.
Elastic work can be improved without CNS fatigue during warm-ups with light medicineballs and shifted in maximum efficiency and contractile force with heavy loads. Such light elastic work helps clean up coordination issuses that can help with further training means or skill specific work directly.