Not being a swimming fan, until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Ryan Lochte.  The only swimmers I had heard of was Michael Phelps (I’d have to be a hermit to not have heard of him), Mark Spitz (fellow IU alum and obviously showing my age here – he swam in 1972), and a couple of the female swimmers I find attractive.  But, as much time is spent in the water for a swimmer, just as important for Ryan Lochte was his dry land workout routine.  After watching this on one of the Olympic specials, I felt I had to share this routine with you guys.

A little history about the guy.  He’ll be turning 28 tomorrow and is from Florida.  He used to skate board a lot, but gave that up to focus more on his swimming.  He attended the University of Florida where he won 7 NCAA championships.  He is also a 9 time Olympic medalist (including 5 gold), but I don’t think these numbers include the London Olympics.  He is also coming out with a fitness workout video soon.  If you want to read up more on him, I got all this information at his website, www.ryanlochte.com.

So, my understanding is that the guy really wanted to win the 400 IM this year.

He realized that he needed to get a lot stronger to accomplish that goal.  This meant that not only would he be putting in long hours in the pool, but he would have to start doing more intense dry land workouts.  Swimming, like darn near every sport, can benefit from weight training.  It can make you stronger and more powerful in the water, plus it will help you push through fatigue.  We know so much more nowadays, that if you were a swimmer, you’d be a fool not to incorporate this into your program.

For designing Lochte’s workout program, he sought help from Matt DeLancey, an assistant director of strength and conditioning for Olympic sports at the University of Florida.  DeLancey designed Locthe’s workout with a heavy dose of strongman exercises.  Part of the goal was to improve hip extension which is an important piece of the vertical jump.  When a swimmer is coming off the wall that movement mimics what a vertical jump would be.  DeLancey and Lochte felt that much of the hip extension improvement could be accomplished with strongman exercises.

His dry land workout would start on Sundays with 90 minutes to three hours of strongman training.  This would be followed up with three hours during the week of conventional weight training.  The mixture of the two was the perfect combination Lochte needed to bring home the gold medal for the 400IM over the weekend.

Here are some examples of what Lochte would do during his workout:

  • He would toss 25 pound beer kegs over his head as far and as high as he could.  This total body movement really gets the body’s muscle groups working together with a powerful hip extension to finish the lift off.
  • Lochte would drag 500 pound boat chains for a certain distance.
  • Tire flips were huge in the workout.  I know speed coaches that utilize tire flipping in their routine because of the speed development it provides.  Basically similar to a deadlift, the hamstrings really get stronger in this lift which as you must know by now is the secret to running faster (bonus).  Lochte would warm-up with 650 pounds and work all the way up to 875 pound tires.  Sounds fun don’t it!!
  • He would also do rope waves, sledgehammer hits, and fireman walks to help develop his forearm strength among other things.  For Lochte, the stronger forearms help him to move the water better as he is swimming, thus going faster.

Throughout the week, he would then do traditional weightlifting routines.  This would help hit anything that was missed in the strongman workouts.  Or just hit the body in a different way.  Here is a sample of a circuit he did during one of his workouts:

  • Lochte would start off with a medicine ball slam on a 30 inch box.  As the ball would bounce into the air, he would jump up and grab it, then land on the box.  You have to be a very special athlete to do this exercise.  I wouldn’t do this with just any 12 year-old travel baseball player.
  • After that he would do snatches for 5 reps, heavy deadlifts for 5 reps, and then a 20 yard sprint (that’s what I’m talking about).
  • That would be his circuit which he would repeat for either time or a desired number of sets.
  • He would always incorporate some separate, secret, core work for about 30 minutes (I couldn’t find anything on this).

So there you have it, Ryan Lochte’s gold medal workout routine.  If you want to aspire to be a swimmer, or any athlete for that matter, and your workout routine doesn’t resemble the intensity that this routine provides, then you and I need to talk.  If you watched his 400IM race, you could just tell he was more powerful in the water than his opponents.  Apparently, that is a really grueling race and he tamed it by winning gold and being the absolute best in that race for the whole world to see.  And it was all due to his training.