Swimming Anatomy Paperback – Illustrated, October 22, 2009

Ok swim coaches, go ahead and buy this book. The description of the exercises is good, the anatomical diagrams of the muscles worked in each exercise, and how it relates to swimming is worth every dime this book costs.I've read weight lifting books for swimmers, and they are usually generic in content, or they are written by coaches who don't explain the "why's".I've got a former swimmer who consults this book before every session in the gym; her personal trainer saw the book and ordered one for his center. Use the "Look Inside" feature here on Amazon, and the content will impress you.Coaches should coach, and by that they should be able to explain the "why's" of what they want the kids to do, too many coaches abdicate that role of teacher. If you get the athlete to buy into what they are doing and why they are doing it, they have longer term success. This book will help take a step towards that goal of being a better coach.

Beautiful book! This was a gift to my sister in law, who took up swimming after a multiple leg fracture, for rehab and recovery purposes, and it seems she’s liking the sport and considering racing. I took a good peek at the book. It shows one by one, which exercises develop strength on which muscles, with an illustration showing the anatomy and the exercise, and it explains the use of said muscle in swimming and shows a picture of the movement during swimming. The text explains the exercise and it’s relationship to swimming. I like the format, it helps plan a workout to strengthen the muscles involved in the movements and the techniques of interest.

I have used this book for years as a swim coach. It is a great resource for designing warm ups and dry land workouts! Now I need similar books for a few winter sports. I highly recommend the book and will buy it again when my current copy becomes too worn.

This book is wonderful to understand how our muscles act to move our arms, legs, body....The graphics are indeed awesome and it becomes clear that Ian McLeod is someone with a deep knowledge about how to develop each single muscle in our body in a way to improve our capacity to swim better and faster.It is easy to read, simple to understand and so the question is: why not 5 stars?Simple because I could not find anywhere inside this book how to check if someone is unbalanced and which muscles to develop to correct that unbalance.It also doesn't have any set of common training sets with number of repetitions and charges to be used.Lack of answers for those two aspects make me think it is a book much more useful for coaches than for simple swimmers like me.Although is was fantastic to know a bit more of how our muscles are and act!A strong recommendation for those who like me do like to understand body mechanics!

The is very detailed in what you are trying to accomplish your goals in swimming.

I have coached swimming/swimmers from YMCA programs toprivate clubs, to college programs.I have had swimmers that I have coached, make it to Nationals,both in short course and long course, as well as swim at colleges,Duke, NC State, UNC, ECU, Clemson, West Point, to name a few.I have been a personal trainer for, swimmers, tennis players, soccerplayers, and baseball and softball players.This is a very informative book, on the "anatomy" of swimming, the4 strokes, and starts and turns.It is NOT, a work out book/program, or a weight training guide, those 2programs,are yours to come up with.The book will guide you, to which muscle groups you need to focus on,and what purpose those muscles will serve in the stroke motion.Swimming Anatomy is another "tool" to help a coach or trainer, that is allit is.Use it as such.

Covers most muscle groups and how to strengthen them out of the water, but nothing new or revolutionary that I was hoping for. Most dryland exercises seemed common to me and fit my general concern, as a coach, that while the athlete may strengthen a muscle or muscle group, it may not directly translate into a more powerful stroke in the water. Also did little to convince me that power might be as or more important than technique. The one area I really wanted more guidance on, how to teach and strengthen high elbow catch, seemed pretty slim, kind of like it was difficult to describe so lets just cover things that are easier to address. Overall, I can see how this can help me sound more knowledgeable, snow the high school kids with jargon they will not understand, but not necessarily train them any better or more effectively.

Both my grandsons are high performance competitive swimmers. One has Olympic potential. This book is great for showing how to do APPROPRIATE exercises to build muscles for each stroke. This is so important because exercises done incorrectly can lead to injury. I bought copies of this book for both grandsons and some of the kids on our team with potential.