Swimming after liftin'

I used to lift before swimming,but to avoid a noodlers class I had to lift after swimming a few times and found it works better for me. Lifting after swimming seems to have less effect on my lifting than lifting before swimming had on my swimming.I go straight from the pool to the weight room(stopping to dry off and change of course.)which means that I get to the weight room a little tired,but very warmed up.I think being really warmed up has helped me be less prone to injury. I have tended to agree with swimBRCT on most things,but not on this.We have had several threads on swimming only vs swimming and lifting.I know that I have tried both and that I have gotten better results with adding lifting to my swimming.

I used to lift before swimming,but to avoid a noodlers class I had to lift after swimming a few times and found it works better for me. Lifting after swimming seems to have less effect on my lifting than lifting before swimming had on my swimming.I go straight from the pool to the weight room(stopping to dry off and change of course.)which means that I get to the weight room a little tired,but very warmed up.I think being really warmed up has helped me be less prone to injury. I have tended to agree with swimBRCT on most things,but not on this.We have had several threads on swimming only vs swimming and lifting.I know that I have tried both and that I have gotten better results with adding lifting to my swimming. I agree with King Frog on this point. I detour to the locker room for a quick shower, but it's a hot one; great for keeping my muscles warmed up. And, I make sure to chug my chocolate soy milk on the way in, to get some protein. If I do it this way, I can immediately hit the weights. Otherwise, it just takes too long to get my muscles warmed up on the treadmill or elliptical before I can hit the weights without pulling or straining a muscle. When I look back to my gym-only days, those were the times I had those types of problems. Since I have been hitting the weights after swimming, I have not had one injury.

What's with the dude posting bits and pieces of someone else's literature review? Really bizarre behavior... Swim then lift (7): Swimosaur, jaadams1, ElaineK, knelson, nkfrench, aztimm, Allen Stark Lift then swim (8): The Fortress, gaash, dadis, slow, Chris Stevenson, ande, _steve_ (?), androvski It's about even. Sorry if I miscounted or misrepresented someone's preference! This is mildly suprising to me, because at the local Y where I spend two-thirds of my time, it seems that "swim then lift" is much more popular (in my unscientific observations). I'll even it up 8-8 with a vote for swim then lift.

I have always felt that lifting was an essential...but supplemental part of my swimming. Anytime I have done ANY dry land exercise before swimming (weights, yoga, spinning, running stadiums) my swimming suffered. I think these guys summed up the debate very well: sportsmedicine.about.com/.../ExerciseOrder.htm

What's with the dude posting bits and pieces of someone else's literature review? Really bizarre behavior... Swim then lift (7): Swimosaur, jaadams1, ElaineK, knelson, nkfrench, aztimm, Allen Stark Lift then swim (8): The Fortress, gaash, dadis, slow, Chris Stevenson, ande, _steve_ (?), androvski It's about even. Sorry if I miscounted or misrepresented someone's preference! This is mildly suprising to me, because at the local Y where I spend two-thirds of my time, it seems that "swim then lift" is much more popular (in my unscientific observations).

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. What are you talking about? Wary of change? Unwilling to consider something new? Most people who know me would say the opposite. I've only been lifting more seriously (still not even near my max potential) for 2 years. My times have dropped with more serious drylands. I know others with similar results. Your sport specific strength movements notion is what sounds antiquated. Agree with Gaash on your non-Costill study. It proves nothing without a prior history of sprint times and lifting and a relative before and after comparison of each test subject over a meaningful amount of time. If all you want to do is swim, then swim. But adding more yardage in the pool is not "infinitely better" (I'd like to see the substantiation for this) and will not necessarily make you faster. Maybe you should try some squats and plyos to see if your starts and walls improve. :)

A very interesting thread. Allow me to throw in my (very anecdotal) 2/100. I will be 58 next week and have been swimming and strength training for years. I have gone from HIT type training, to powerlifting type training to what I do today - kettlebells and bw exercises. I have found strength training to be of great benefit to me but in a GPP way. I am quite muscular (in an athletic, not bodybuilding way) and strong for my age but I have never felt that there was a noticible transfer to swimming. I regularly see women in the pool who are faster than me even though they are not muscular at all. They are great technicians and spend all their time swimming. I do not beleive that composite exercises like squats or deadlifts are really transferable to the water. I was deadlifting about 200% of my bw but it had no effect on my swimming. Recently, I have been giving thought to the idea of doing more strength training in the water with the aid of big paddles, pullbouys etc. Another point to consider is the slower recovery rate as we age. At various times I prioritize swimming or strength training, but I can't go really hard on both during the same period (add in the job factor). Finally, I have recently felt that improving my flexibility would be a greater contribution to my swimming and to my general well being as I age. :cane: After every swim session I do about 10 minutes of flexibility work in the pool and I am feeling alot "looser" especially in my shoulders.

"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. So how fast is your 50 free, Dr. Weakness?

. 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. . Having done both routes, you may be better off just swimming. You are not everyone else.