Water Polo and Crossfit

[Davis Murphy]

Hi,

I have seen a few threads on water polo and had a few questions regarding mixing Crossfit in as my out of water conditioning. From what i can see Crossfit would be an excellent supplemental conditional program for water polo. I was swimmer in high school and started playing club water polo in college. Water polo is relatively unknown in my area so it is not extremely competitive but I want to gain any edge I can. My club team practices 3 times a week for a couple of hours and I am unsure of what kind of crossfit schedule I should run in addition to that. Also would I be best off running the standard workout off the main page or trying to gear my workouts towards one area ?(strength, endurance etc) The main things I would like to gain is stronger eggbeater and core strength and a little upper body strength for pushing opponents around and better shooting.

I put this in fitness because I was unsure. If it needs to be moved mods feel free. Thanks!

[Patrick Donnelly]

The main page WOD's are geared toward both strength and endurance.

What three days are the water polo practice? It may be better for you to do a 7-day schedule, rather than 3on:1off.

[Davis Murphy]

Thanks,

We practice Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. We occasionally try to put in an extra swim set on Wednesday or Saturday.

I found a team mate and a good time to work out on mon, weds, and Friday so i think i might do crossfit on those days. I can probably do some kind of suffer on saturday deal also. Sound like a decent plan? Any other suggestions?

[Ben Moskowitz]

If you can, it looks like doing those pool workouts would be killer. There's a whole article on swimming CF workouts in the CF Journal.

Good luck man, I wish I was big and talented enough to keep doing water polo in college. Hopefully Sunday will give you enough rest. If not, maybe take Saturday off too.

[Jeff Edmonston]

The eggbeater is a fairly specific exercise. You could do tabata eggbeater sessions or eggbeater in general in place of squat workouts. Other eggbeater exercises that work well are to eggbeater while holding a jug overhead, you can use a weight plate, but the plate might sink and damage the pool, while a water jug will float and can be filled to various levels to adjust the weight. This also builds your shoulders since you will spend a lot of time keeping one arm up in the air or in the face of your opponents blocking the passing and shooting lanes.

You need more upper body strength than you think for swimming heads up and with the ball. Maybe substitute swimming for running. I think you really need the all around fitness for polo, so I don't think I would mod much else.

[Davis Murphy]

Thanks,

The lifeguards have their 10-lb training brick that they use laying around on our pool deck, so ill just nab that and eggbeater with it. I usually try and do some supplemental swim sets anyway so it sounds like i have a plan.