Swimming after liftin'

"Swimming is not the best exercise to prevent osteoporosis" (actually, swimming is not an exercise to prevent osteoporosis at all. No load on the bones= no reason for your bones to ossify.) If you're looking to improve your bone density, then weight training will help you. Doesn't matter whether you're a swimmer or not. If you're trying to swim faster, dryland training will not help you swim faster (unless you're a new athlete in which case doing any sort of exercise will help you.) Here's a non-Costill Study coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../crowe.htm Muscular strength is not related to sprint-swimming performance. Even Dr. G found this when he studied olympic trial qualifiers from 2000. coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../sokolova.htm Dryland helps you if you have muscle imbalances, and you're looking to balance your muscle stabilizers to ward off injury. (Particularly in the rotator cuff). This is an important goal! But one should not confuse corrective exercise with activities that help you improve your times (note that evening out a muscle imbalance could enable you to have better range of motion/ stop a muscle from inhibiting its activity, see Janda's reciprocal inhibition theory).) But this is different from improve your maximum capabilities! Quote: "In just about EVERY sport, the time spent in the weight room has gone up while the time spent "doing the sport" has gone down among the elite. I'll take the 30+yrs of anecdotal evidence and improvements across just about all sports including swimming over one or two studies anyday." Do you have any evidence for the first statement? Even if that is true, is their improvement due to spending more time in the weight room? What makes the studies inferior to "what peopel have been doing"? Particularly when they have a sound physiological explanation for their findings (namely, the principle of specificity.) Those who are gifted in swimming do well in spite of faulty coaching practices that are the product of armchair theorizing rather than concrete evidence. Classic example is that of the swimmers in the 40s, 50s, and 60s rolling their bodies despite being told to swim as flat as possible. If you're dead set on doing lots of dryland, that is your business, and I hope your times improve. I cannot help those who are unwilling to consider that something they have been doing is right just because they have been doing it for a long time. People are wary of change, and rightfully so. But I urge the open minded to consider why exact is it that strength gains in the weight room do NOT transfer to the water. For those who unsure, I advise you to consider what exactly you are trying to improve in the weight room and not have some abstract concept of being "stronger" or being able to plank longer. If you have the option of training 6 times a week but there is 1 day where you have no chance to swim, go ahead and lift. Some exercise is better than none. But if you have the option to swim, please do so. It will have infinitely more value for your body than lifting. REGARDING STEROIDS -Steroids help people recover faster. Reason why East Germans were so successful in the 80s was that they could go race pace every practice and recover faster and from deeper stress curves than their opponents. Improvement comes from recovery, not training. If you overdo 1 component (training or recovery), make it recovery. With recovery, you have a little extra in the tank. If you overdo training, you get an overtrained person who mysteriously plateaus. Not a popular concept for coaches to grasp with maximum yardage philosophies, but it's one that must spread if we want kids to stop quitting due to overtraining plateaus. What makes the studies inferior is that there are too many variables they do not control, they do not account for the history of some of the swimmers, etc. They often do not account for how the same particular swimmer would have done w/less strength, which is much more meaningful, and those studies that try to do that (i.e. measure an improvement in strength etc.) often those swimmers are not gaining real muscle and only just training their body how to do the lift in the time the studies are done due to as you correctly point out, overtraining which is waay more real than people think and ESPECIALLY true when heavy weight lifting is introduced. Have you seen Phelps improvements in sprint free since 2007? Coincides when he started doing weights. Did you read Ryan Lochtes comments on how he injured his leg I think in 09 and then his improvement since then, when he could only really lift for a while as opposed to just swim? And when it comes to the women, the benefits are even more dramatic. (Dara Torres, East Germans (no, your rationale is not entirely accurate, strenght advantage was another reason) etc. etc. So one study shows that it doesn't help female swimmers. Look at overall improvements in time, look at the impact of steroids in swimming (if you think it is not also increase muscle mass/less body fat % you are simply nuts) and look at how much more people are lifting (and how many more are lifting heavy weights like powerlifters/bodybuilders) If an elite female sprinter about 5'10" like many female sprinters juiced up to have the same muscle mass and bf% as a man, do you really think she would not dominate every other woman out there? Are you crazy? A real study would be to put a group of swimmers on a 2-3x a week of light swimming program with considerable weight training for at least several months, enough time for them to make real significant improvements in muscle mass and strength not just learning how to do perform the exercises versus a group that swims 6x a week and then compare the improvements in their sprint performance. This coincides much more to the anecdotal evidence from real life, where we see improvements over the entire world of sprinting more or less where dry land has gone up and swimming time has gone down. It also is much more relevant, as the factors that are most important to swimming between individuals are probably height and technique, but what matters for whether or not a swimmer should lift is whether or not it will improve THEIR OWN swimming speed. Lastly, as I mentioned before, it is possible and probably likely that the returns of strength training are asymtotic (sp?) and that some swimmers, perhaps those with a history of lifting or good genetics have already reached the plateau of where they are strong enough that strength gains are unlikely to have much benefit. However, this is much more likely in men and there is I would say, ZERO likelihood that women can get to that point or EVEN CLOSE without lifting, and probably they cannot even get there without steroids. (Hence part of why women at the elite level are slower than men at sprints, and why the impact of steroids is more dramatic for women in swimming and just about any sport)

"Swimming is not the best exercise to prevent osteoporosis" (actually, swimming is not an exercise to prevent osteoporosis at all. No load on the bones= no reason for your bones to ossify.) If you're looking to improve your bone density, then weight training will help you. Doesn't matter whether you're a swimmer or not. If you're trying to swim faster, dryland training will not help you swim faster (unless you're a new athlete in which case doing any sort of exercise will help you.) Here's a non-Costill Study coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../crowe.htm Muscular strength is not related to sprint-swimming performance. Even Dr. G found this when he studied olympic trial qualifiers from 2000. coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../sokolova.htm Dryland helps you if you have muscle imbalances, and you're looking to balance your muscle stabilizers to ward off injury. (Particularly in the rotator cuff). This is an important goal! But one should not confuse corrective exercise with activities that help you improve your times (note that evening out a muscle imbalance could enable you to have better range of motion/ stop a muscle from inhibiting its activity, see Janda's reciprocal inhibition theory).) But this is different from improve your maximum capabilities! Quote: "In just about EVERY sport, the time spent in the weight room has gone up while the time spent "doing the sport" has gone down among the elite. I'll take the 30+yrs of anecdotal evidence and improvements across just about all sports including swimming over one or two studies anyday." Do you have any evidence for the first statement? Even if that is true, is their improvement due to spending more time in the weight room? What makes the studies inferior to "what peopel have been doing"? Particularly when they have a sound physiological explanation for their findings (namely, the principle of specificity.) Those who are gifted in swimming do well in spite of faulty coaching practices that are the product of armchair theorizing rather than concrete evidence. Classic example is that of the swimmers in the 40s, 50s, and 60s rolling their bodies despite being told to swim as flat as possible. If you're dead set on doing lots of dryland, that is your business, and I hope your times improve. I cannot help those who are unwilling to consider that something they have been doing is right just because they have been doing it for a long time. People are wary of change, and rightfully so. But I urge the open minded to consider why exact is it that strength gains in the weight room do NOT transfer to the water. For those who unsure, I advise you to consider what exactly you are trying to improve in the weight room and not have some abstract concept of being "stronger" or being able to plank longer. If you have the option of training 6 times a week but there is 1 day where you have no chance to swim, go ahead and lift. Some exercise is better than none. But if you have the option to swim, please do so. It will have infinitely more value for your body than lifting. REGARDING STEROIDS -Steroids help people recover faster. Reason why East Germans were so successful in the 80s was that they could go race pace every practice and recover faster and from deeper stress curves than their opponents. Improvement comes from recovery, not training. If you overdo 1 component (training or recovery), make it recovery. With recovery, you have a little extra in the tank. If you overdo training, you get an overtrained person who mysteriously plateaus. Not a popular concept for coaches to grasp with maximum yardage philosophies, but it's one that must spread if we want kids to stop quitting due to overtraining plateaus. What makes the studies inferior is that there are too many variables they do not control, they do not account for the history of some of the swimmers, etc. They often do not account for how the same particular swimmer would have done w/less strength, which is much more meaningful, and those studies that try to do that (i.e. measure an improvement in strength etc.) often those swimmers are not gaining real muscle and only just training their body how to do the lift in the time the studies are done due to as you correctly point out, overtraining which is waay more real than people think and ESPECIALLY true when heavy weight lifting is introduced. Have you seen Phelps improvements in sprint free since 2007? Coincides when he started doing weights. Did you read Ryan Lochtes comments on how he injured his leg I think in 09 and then his improvement since then, when he could only really lift for a while as opposed to just swim? And when it comes to the women, the benefits are even more dramatic. (Dara Torres, East Germans (no, your rationale is not entirely accurate, strenght advantage was another reason) etc. etc. So one study shows that it doesn't help female swimmers. Look at overall improvements in time, look at the impact of steroids in swimming (if you think it is not also increase muscle mass/less body fat % you are simply nuts) and look at how much more people are lifting (and how many more are lifting heavy weights like powerlifters/bodybuilders) If an elite female sprinter about 5'10" like many female sprinters juiced up to have the same muscle mass and bf% as a man, do you really think she would not dominate every other woman out there? Are you crazy? A real study would be to put a group of swimmers on a 2-3x a week of light swimming program with considerable weight training for at least several months, enough time for them to make real significant improvements in muscle mass and strength not just learning how to do perform the exercises versus a group that swims 6x a week and then compare the improvements in their sprint performance. This coincides much more to the anecdotal evidence from real life, where we see improvements over the entire world of sprinting more or less where dry land has gone up and swimming time has gone down. It also is much more relevant, as the factors that are most important to swimming between individuals are probably height and technique, but what matters for whether or not a swimmer should lift is whether or not it will improve THEIR OWN swimming speed. Lastly, as I mentioned before, it is possible and probably likely that the returns of strength training are asymtotic (sp?) and that some swimmers, perhaps those with a history of lifting or good genetics have already reached the plateau of where they are strong enough that strength gains are unlikely to have much benefit. However, this is much more likely in men and there is I would say, ZERO likelihood that women can get to that point or EVEN CLOSE without lifting, and probably they cannot even get there without steroids. (Hence part of why women at the elite level are slower than men at sprints, and why the impact of steroids is more dramatic for women in swimming and just about any sport)