Sunday, April 14, 2013

Train Hard Swim Hard

I read an article a few weeks ago about San Fransisco 49ers Head Coach Jim Harbaugh being a bit concerned that his new star quarterback might be spending a little bit too much time in the weight room getting a little bit too muscled up in the off-season.
When I was in high school, my coach told me to lay off the weights for the same concern of Harbaugh.  I did lay off the weights for a short time, but went right back to them and never stopped trying to get as strong as possible, but I did add stretching into my lifting routine throughout the training session and always maintained really good flexibility in my shoulders.  The other thing that I did and recommend to every QB regardless of how muscular or strong you are and that is swimming.  Swimming every stroke (freestlye, back stroke, breast stroke and butterfly) is a great, great workout and a fantastic way to maintain flexibility while building strength in parts of your body that you cannot really hit with weights alone.
If Tim Tebow really wants to take playing QB in the NFL seriously, he should take up a very rigorous swimming schedule and lose about 15 pounds.  He has a slow arm swing and swimming and weight loss would probably help with both.
As for Colin Kaepernick, I don't worry much about him getting too big in the off-season, but adding swimming to his colorful off-season activities wouldn't hurt his exciting and emerging game either!

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