Mega Drills for Dryland Training

with Coley Stickels,
TFA Pro Team Head Coach;
head assistant coach of the International Swimming League's Tokyo Frog Kings;
member of the 2021-22 US National Team;
University of Alabama Head Men's & Women's Swimming & Diving Coach from 2019 to 2020;
Indiana University Associate Head Sprint Coach - Men's and Women's Swimming from 2017 to 2019;
2018-19 Big Ten Men's and Women's Champions (first time in school history)
head coach for Canyons Aquatic Club (Santa Clarita, CA) from 2012 to 2017 where he helped lead the team to five American records, one world record, six National Age Group records and four national high school records.
Stickels coached World record holder Abbey Weitzeil (Gold & Silver medals - 2016 Rio Olympics)
14x NCAA All American with University of Arizona

Mega Drills for Dryland Training features a refreshing mix of new, unique exercises and traditional exercises that include challenging spins. Coley Stickels teaches and demonstrates exercises with compound movements, many of which are swimming specific and all have a positive carry-over toward developing swimming athleticism.

This program is easy to implement and requires minimal equipment including: pull up bar, TRX or Jungle Gym straps, stretch cords, jumping box and med balls.

With an emphasis on developing core stability and increasing swimming strength, Mega Drills for Dryland Training takes a unique approach to increasing athleticism for the advanced swimmer.

Warm Up - Stickels demonstrates eight dynamic, multi-faceted exercises for his warm up series. These exercises feature low repetitions and are mostly swimming-specific. They include push-ups, somersaults, squats and core development exercises.

Dynamic Push-up Series - Learn 10 different advanced push-up exercises/routines. The emphasis here is on core stabilization, quick and light hands and explosiveness; all essential to developing highly athletic swimmers.

Pull-up Series - Learn 16 challenging exercises that incorporate pull-ups. This series provides a plyometric focus on the lats, forearms and core strength, and affords muscle group variation.

TRX-Jungle Gym Strap Series - Stickels presents 17 multi-dimensional exercises that develop incredible core strength and stabilization, balance, endurance, explosiveness and involve multiple muscle groups working together. The instability of the hanging straps forces the athlete to use a wide range of muscle groups for stabilization.

Cord Series - This series delivers eight unique exercises that offer a wide range of resistive challenges. Stickels combines movements in multiple drills to force core engagement. These drills train the extremities, while simultaneously building core strength and balance through stabilization.

Plyometric and Agility Series - In this segment, Stickels shares three complex exercises (two plyo and one agility) that show how to group short reps of several different exercises into one to train explosiveness and agility. Through this, Stickels demonstrates how creativity can create incredibly effective combinations for training explosiveness.

Stickels' Mega Drills for Dryland Training program exudes imaginative creativity and variety that engages and challenges athletes to improve their core strength, explosiveness, and agility. Coaches or trainers looking to infuse freshness and swimming-specific athleticism into their dryland program will greatly benefit this instruction.

61 minutes. 2013.