Freestyle - Vary Your Recovery

When you're warming up for practice, it's common to feel tight, stiff, or just plain sore from your previous practice, or just because it's early.  Sometimes just getting in and swimming hurts even more if you continue to repeat the exact same motion that got you sore to begin with.

Why Do It:
Varying your recovery during warm-up can help open up the blood flow to your shouders, and loosen up the arms.

How to Do It:
1.  You're going to use three different recoveries in this drill, so preplan how many strokes or cycles of each recovery you're going to do.
2.  You're going to start with a low, fingertip drag recovery for a couple strokes or cycles.
3.  Then, start to lift your fingers just out of the water, or do what you'd consider a "normal" recovery..
4.  Finally, do a couple strokes or cycles of straight arm, or high arm recovery.
5.  Repeat through your warm-up, or until you start feeling a bit more loosened up.

How to Do It Really Well (the Fine Points):
Vary your warmup by stroke, stroke cycles, or by length.  Depending the length of your warm-up set, or how sore you are, you can spend more time in each recovery.  Who knows, you may start to discover that by experimenting with a varied recovery, you might like one more than you thought.