By SwimSwam Contributors on SwimSwam
Courtesy: Carlos Omana
If your swimmers avoid dryland, show up late, or just go through the motions, it’s easy to assume it’s a motivation problem. Most of the time, it’s not. It’s a relevance problem.
Swimmers are honest. If they don’t feel something helping them move better in the water, they check out. And for a long time, dryland has given them plenty of reasons to do exactly that. Too often, it looks like the same recycled circuit: bands that “kind of” mimic a stroke, exercises done for the sake of being tired, or movements that resemble swimming but don’t actually improve it. Whether it is endless band pulls, a Vasa trainer without clear intent, or laying prone on a bench trying to simulate a stroke with weights in their hands, the result is usually the same: fatigue without transfer.
The issue isn’t that dryland doesn’t work. It’s that it’s often disconnected from what swimmers actually need. At its best, dryland should show up in the stroke. It should help swimmers hold their body position when they’re tired, connect their kick to their pull, maintain distance per stroke, and keep their shoulders healthy through high training volumes. To do that, we need to improve mobility, stability, and the ability to apply force. But even when coaches understand those goals, there’s a critical piece that often gets overlooked: meeting the swimmer exactly where they are.
A good example of this is the pull-up, one of the most commonly prescribed dryland exercises in swimming. On paper, it makes perfect sense. But just because a swimmer can get from the bottom of the rep to the top doesn’t mean they’re getting what you want out of it. How they get there is more important than if they get there. The body will always find the path of least resistance. So instead of using the lats with a stable core and controlled shoulder position, many swimmers tend to compensate. They let their elbows drift behind their shoulder, lose control of the shoulder blade, or arch excessively through their lower back just to finish the rep. Now the exercise is no longer building stronger Lats for a better pull. It’s reinforcing the exact compensations that show up in the water. These are often the same swimmers who struggle to hold water late in races, lose distance per stroke under fatigue, or deal with shoulder pain in the middle of the season. The connection is there, even if it’s not always obvious.
In freestyle and butterfly, for example, swimmers need to be able to anchor the hand and forearm, use the lats to drive the stroke, and transfer that force through a stable core into the kick. If they can’t organize those pieces on land in a controlled environment, they won’t suddenly figure it out in the water at high speeds. That’s where better dryland decisions can make a real difference. Instead of forcing every swimmer into the same exercise, the goal should be to adjust the movement so they can actually perform it the way you want. That might mean taking a step back from a traditional pull-up and putting the swimmer in a position where success is more likely and controlled. For example, placing an athlete on their back with their legs in the air at 90 degrees and their head and shoulders slightly elevated immediately forces them to engage their core. From there, using a cable or band from overhead to perform a pulldown, while maintaining proper shoulder and elbow position, allows the swimmer to feel their lats working the same way they’re supposed to in the pool. The goal is not to lift as much as possible, but to lift as much as possible without movement compensations. The movement pattern is similar, but the execution is entirely different. The guesswork is removed, and the athlete is guided into the positions that actually transfer to the water.
When that happens, something important shifts. The swimmer doesn’t just complete the exercise, they understand it because it’s a familiar, and more appropriate feeling. They can feel the connection between what they’re doing on land and how they move in the pool. Maybe their stroke feels more connected. Maybe they can hold water longer or keep their stroke from falling apart at the end of a set. Whatever the case, the feedback is immediate and real. That’s where buy-in comes from.
Swimmers don’t need to be convinced something works if they can feel it working. Dryland stops being something they have to get through and starts becoming something that helps them perform. And once that shift happens, effort is no longer the issue. Dryland isn’t useless. It’s just often misapplied. The goal isn’t to mimic swimming or to exhaust your athletes for the sake of it. The goal is to give your swimmers the physical tools they need to swim faster, and make sure they can actually use them.
When that happens, everything changes.
ABOUT CARLOS OMANA
Carlos Omana, owner of White Water Method, trained under Coach Kirk Peppas and at the University of Florida during his swimming career in addition to representing Venezuela internationally after his collegiate career. After swimming, Carlos pursued a career in strength and conditioning. He graduated with his M.S. in Human Performance and received certifications as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, USAW Level 1 Performance Coach, Performance Enhancement Specialist, and Certified Physical Preparation Specialist. In 2024, he started White Water Method which aims to help swimmers and coaches tackle physiological obstacles such as joint discomfort, technique issues, strength, power, mobility, etc. White Water Method is reinventing and improving the old school dryland training that swimmers know all too well.
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