Does Cross-Training with Running or Biking Help Swimming?

If your coach has been encouraging cross-training, you might be wondering what that is and whether it’s something you really need to do to improve your swimming.

Cross-training means engaging in an activity that’s different from your primary sport as a training tool to boost your performance in the first sport. “Cross-training is good because it shocks the system,” says Dr. Robert Jacobs, assistant professor of human physiology and nutrition at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. “We’re creatures of habit,” he continues. “Our biology can outsmart us in that we adapt so specifically to a very certain stimulus.”

This can become problematic in that, while swimming nearly every day for your whole adult life is far better than being sedentary, if that’s the only activity you’re engaging in, “it leads to the development of muscle imbalances in later life,” Jacobs says. “Most musculoskeletal injuries – I would estimate 80% or more – are because of muscle imbalances.”

But shaking up your workout routine by adding a new discipline can help balance out those issues and keep you from stagnating in your quest for improvement.

Cross-training can also provide a lot of cardiovascular fitness benefits without adding risk of injury from just more swimming and the repetitive movements that brings. For example, if your shoulders feel shot towards the end of the racing season, your coach may advise you to take some time away from the pool and increase your volume of cross-training to give yourself some time for your swimming-specific muscles to recover without losing fitness.

Cross-training can also offer fabulous health benefits, particularly as you age. Jacobs says that cross-training is a great idea for swimming for a range of reasons, not least of which is the time we spend in a low-gravity environment—aka the water. Working against gravity pays dividends for bone health.

“Swimming is not weight-bearing,” Jacobs says, so if you’re someone who works out with your Masters club four to six times a week and never does any exercise on land, you could really benefit from engaging in something that requires you to bear your own body weight while moving, such as walking or running.

That’s because weight-bearing exercises help maintain bone density, which can delay the onset or stall the progress of osteopenia or osteoporosis later in life, Jacobs explains. “Muscle contraction is good for maintaining bone density—it’s the second-best force to do so. But really, gravity’s number one.”

Engaging your body to move against the pull of gravity—which is greatly reduced when you’re floating in water—can do wonders for keeping your bones strong and healthy as you age.

Dancing, aerobics, and elliptical training are also weight-bearing activities that can help you build strong bones and muscles while providing a great cardiovascular workout.

Cycling is good for boosting cardiovascular output and it’s great for building strong leg muscles. But it’s not weight-bearing. Still, it’s an excellent option to balance out the muscle development swimming provides for the upper body by putting more emphasis on working the big muscles in the lower body. Those muscles burn a lot of calories, so if you’re looking to manage your weight, cycling can be a good option.

Walking, running, and cycling are great for building general overall fitness, but some sports help you target the muscles you use most in swimming—these activities fall under the umbrella of sport-specific cross-training. Rowing is one such sport that has a lot of direct translation to swimming and is a fabulous way of building cardiovascular capacity and sport-specific strength for swimming.

Climbing, whether at a climbing gym, up a cliff face, or with a Jacobs Ladder machine (that’s the treadmill-style ladder climber where you can endlessly climb upward) also offers a full-body workout that provides sport-specific conditioning for swimmers, Jacobs says.

In addition to boosting your bone density and strength overall, cross-training using modalities that increase flexibility are also a good idea for swimmers. This is where practices like yoga and Pilates come in.

Pilates in particular can be a great way to cross-train, says Bob Fernald, a Great Bay Masters member who coaches swimming and Pilates in New Hampshire. Pilates—a strength and flexibility-building protocol developed in the 1920s by Joseph Pilates that shares some similarities to yoga—targets building core strength and offers swimmers “an enhanced understanding of what the functional core muscles are” Fernald says.

This provides a subsequent understanding of “what position you want them to be in” and control over moving them as you need to propel yourself forward. The core is a key component to swimming fast, and when you can truly harness the power you possess in the center of your body, you’ll find you can swim longer and faster with less energy expenditure.

Yoga and its emphasis on breath work is fabulous for helping you build lung capacity for that final sprint. It’s also good for developing the mindfulness to stay calm when racing or in the scrum at an open water turn buoy.

Lastly, Jacobs notes that although some people might think of weightlifting or resistance training as cross-training, he thinks these disciplines should be viewed as part and parcel of being a swimmer. “For me, that’s associated training,” meaning that it’s not a separate discipline, but rather the complete extension of swim training. “Depending on how serious you are in the sport, resistance training is the opposite side of the same coin swimming would be on really. Personally, I don’t even consider resistance training cross-training, I would consider that a part of training. That’s your core training,” he says.

Across all these options, the key to cross-training is to find a modality you enjoy that you’ll be willing to engage in often. In the end, Jacobs says whatever cross-training activity you like best is probably your best bet because if you enjoy it, you’re more likely to engage with it consistently. And “things like resistance training will help minimize imbalances and help maintain sport-specific and non-sport-specific strength and are just invaluable from a metabolic standpoint going through life. I tell my students to ‘get muscle on your body’ almost any way you can because it’s so important,” Jacobs concludes.

Want to learn more about improving your freestyle? Check out our Freestyle guide featuring tips, drills, sets, dryland exercises, and videos.