Old Forum Conditioning for Water Polo

[NJBill]

I have a 14 year old interested in getting ready for Water Polo in September. He's been doing S&S for 12 weeks now and is just about to move up on swings from 16 kg (probably to 20 kg), and is on 16 kg for getups on 2 sets out of 5. Unless it's a bad idea, the plan is to continue with S&S, and make sure to concentrate on the goblet squats and hip mobility.

Pool time is at a premium, so a good portion of it needs to go to some basic sport specific skills. Thus, I'm looking for dry land conditioning, especially endurance, that will free up as much pool time as possible for other work.

My primary concern is how and what endurance conditioning to work in. Low intensity during game time is still treading water. Here are some stats I found on exertion during water polo games.




Total Work Time


34 minutes




Total Rest Time


20 minutes




Work to Rest Ratio


5:3 – 1:1




   Duration of High Intensity Work Demands


up to 15s




Duration of Low Intensity Work Demands


up to 20s




Distanced Swam in a Match


500m - 1800m




Horizontal Body Position (as a %)


30 - 50%




Vertical Body Position (as a %)


50 - 70%

 

[jkvandal]

I'll say that I wish I had been doing a program similar to S&S while I was playing water polo at the collegiate level. 

However, I'm not sure that I would advise skipping or even limiting in water conditioning.  I'm not sure how much swimming experience your 14 year old has, but I had been swimming competitively for around 6 years before I came across water polo.   Swim conditioning is VERY important and while my team may not have been the most skilled in the country, we prided ourselves in being able to out-swim anyone, which made up for a lot.  The first hour of the 2.5 hr practices were spent in swim sets, if that gives you any indication of how important the swim conditioning is.

While the sport specific skills/coordination are important, it's also important to get a good conditioning base in for both swimming and treading water.  The drills that I feel translated the most directly to the sport were short sprints (12-15 yards) then treading water (hands out of the water) for 10-15 seconds, and repeating this several times up and down the pool without taking a rest on the wall.  This essentially mimics the exertion during a game.  Treading water while holding weights will also boost the power from the "eggbeater" (treading water technique used in water polo). 

A lot of the sport specific skills and eye-hand coordination can be practiced dry-land style if pool time is at a premium.  You can play catch with him/her on the pool deck or at home and they can practice catching and throwing the ball one-handed while standing, before trying to do so while treading water (significantly harder).  He/she can also practice by themselves by finding a tall wall and throwing the ball at the wall and catching it after each throw, eventually switching hands and being able to use both.

If your child can become or is already a decent swimmer and can work on this coordination, they already have a leg up in the strength department from the S&S training which will serve them quite well when wrestling with opponents in the water (which is about 60% of the time).  The biggest pain and most exhausting thing was playing against an opponent with strong grip...so excellent job on building his/her strength in that way.  The next biggest pain was an opponent that just wouldn't stop moving or swimming, and thats all conditioning.  I only wish I had found S&S and Kettlebells at that age...

Sorry for the long reply, but I saw this topic and thought "Finally, something I can weigh in on!"  In short, keep doing what you are doing with the S&S, but don't skimp on the swim sets and treading water work.  The ball skills (catching and throwing) can be worked on outside the pool until you are sure that your child can keep up with (or preferably be faster/better) than his/her peers in the water.  Hope that helps!

 

[NJBill]

Thanks, John. It's been a long time since I played and I had actually forgotten about all the offhand and grip work.

I was thinking about putting together a sort of in water "Litvinov" drill, with hard eggbeaters followed by a sprint, but the opposite like you mentioned (sprint and then eggbeater) is more game specific.

Any thoughts on how reversing the parts of the Litvinov might change the training effect?

Based on my reading of Easy Strength, I think the hard endurance training should stand alone except for some mobility work. So I may keep that to just one day each week, and focus on power training with eggbeater and sprints the other days along with skills.

 

[jkvandal]

I would certainly switch up the order on the eggbeaters and sprints, but to really get used to game situations should repeat 2-3 times before taking a break.  In games with lots of counterattacks, you could have to sprint-tread water-sprint-tread water-sprint-tread water-sprint before there was a stoppage, all the while wrestling with an opponent for position.  I think mixing it up could work quite well.

As a driver, I would also have shorter sprints of 2-3 meters in game situations when running picks on the perimeter, so you could add that in too depending on what position he might be playing.  If he's going to play "in the hole" on offense or defense, I'd emphasize a lot more treading water work with lots of resistance.  If he's going to be a driver/perimeter player, more sprints with sudden stops and treading water will help with moving the hips from horizontal to vertical and back to horizontal.