Stretches for Synchronized Swimming

Series Summary

Brightly smiling women in colorful one-piece bathing suits, donning white swimming caps, rising slowly out the water on a giant birthday cake replete with sparklers, diving off into the swimming pool in a perfectly timed sequence, each swimmer keeping form with the person before them. A bird’s eye shot of a circle of swimmers, each kicking their legs and waving their arms to create a kaleidoscope of geometric patterns. A beautiful water ballet, where all of the dancers move to a common, well-choreographed theme. These are just some of the tricks that an experienced synchronized swim team can pull off.

In these free swim lessons on video, learn some basic synchronized swimming techniques, including strokes, kicks, body jumps, sculls, figures and hybrids. Our expert swim instructor will walk you through all of the elements of a typical synchronized swimming routine, from the stretches and warm-ups, to tricks like an alligator scull or a split walkout. If you practice these techniques regularly, chances are you’ll be ready for the next synchronized swim team tryouts. Who knows…maybe you could be the next rising star of the swimming world. You never know until you try.

Video Transcript

"Okay, we are going to start by stretching. We really want to stretch out the arms to make sure we're not hurting ourselves while we are swimming during the warm-up. So we'll take the first right arm across, this is my left arm, but that's okay. Take the right arm across and you want to hold it about ten seconds. Shake it out. You want your hand just above the elbow so you get a nice good stretch just above the armpit, about ten seconds, and relax. Take the arm behind the head, nice and easy elbows bent, and get a nice good stretch. Hold it there for about ten seconds. Shake it out. You want to repeat the same thing on the other side, grabbing just above the elbow, and hold it for about ten seconds, and relax. And we also want to stretch out the quads, heal to your butt, oh boy, and you want to hold it about ten seconds, and relax, and the same thing on the other side, trying to stay nice and balanced holding it about ten seconds and shaking it out and last thing we want to stretch out the hamstrings. So we'll take the right foot over left, reach arms up and stretch it over. You want to hold it there about ten seconds. Come up and shake it out and the same thing on the other side. Left over right, arms up and stretch it over about ten seconds and shake it out and we are ready to get in and warm-up."