Total Conditioning for Swimming?

Fortress, here's a question--can you do a full chin up/pull up? I'm getting close but I'm not there quite yet. The work to build that strength really trashes my upper body. But I'd like to be at a point where chin ups are something I do regularly. In sets.:)

Yeah. :bow: I feel like building to that level of strength is important for me for swimming, and even worth feeling a bit trashed as I get there. But I'm a big girl--5'10 and 165 lbs. It's a lot to lift!

Maybe. I don't know how to consistently interpret subjective impressions of how "trashed" or "wiped out" swimmers are. Some people are accurate, others think DOMS is an illness. I suspect there is an acclimation period to DOMs for new lifters. It can seem extremely unpleasant at first. New lifters may overdo it initially as well. I know I have been guilty of doing too many exercises/reps in one session, which can lead to feeling "trashed."

Elaine, I don't do push ups much as they tend to tweak my shoulder. But 42 is fantastic! Seeing "42" made me realize I had made a typo; it was 32 push ups on one minute. So, I don't know if it's "fantastic" anymore... :blush:

like saying that swimming itself is detrimental to swimming because it makes you tired in the following minutes. Um, isn't this exactly what sprinters and race-pace people say when they advocate for (much) more rest between max efforts? Or for recovery days between quality days? In any event, Jazz, you're a bit of an odd source for this statement, what with your mega-yardage philosophy. I agree with the general sentiment that you can expect to be tired in mid-season. But I think cutting back to 2X per week to see what happens is not a recipe for disaster by any means. Lifting is good but the marginal benefit in going from 2-3X per week is less obvious, particularly if cutting back allows you to work significantly harder in swim practice. Swimdaily , another possibility is to hit the gym very hard early in the season and then switch to 2X per week in mid-season before going into your taper. Nothing wrong with trying different things and seeing what works.

I am lifting 2X/wk but at 63 I may need more recovery time(also I don't have time to lift 3X/wk.)You might try swimming before lifting.I had to do that one day to avoid a noodler class and found I liked it better.Swimming didn't seem to hurt my weight lifting and I was fresh for my swimming.

About 2 months ago I tried to swim a coached workout, and I had to quit after 700 m. My shoulder just gave way like muscle failure. I'd lifted to failure, but I'd never felt that sort of muscle failure while swimming. That was when I took some time off and decided to stick to 2x/week of weights. With strategic timing to keep weights as far as possible from speed/lactate type workouts. This seemed to be a good combination for me. If you couldn't swim more than 700 then I think you did the right thing.

Jazz is a baby and doesn't always understand the 40+ crowd. Maybe. I don't know how to consistently interpret subjective impressions of how "trashed" or "wiped out" swimmers are. Some people are accurate, others think DOMS is an illness.

Very few people are interested in working hard consistently to get faster. So that's why my universal advice is: if you are tired, but you are not actually injured and your strength numbers are not decreasing, then suck it up and keep going. Why would you use a strength metric for overtraining instead of one that is more directly related to swim performance, such as performance on test sets or in-season meets? Or the ability to recover between hard efforts? Yes lifting will in the short term depress swim performance (and vice versa), this is to be expected. But if you goal is to swim fast and lifting -- or any other form of cross-training -- overly compromises the ability to train hard in the water, then it is not helping and quite possibly hurting your training. The trick of course it so be able to recognize when the training is "overly" compromised. It takes some experience, possibly involving crossing that line a time or two. You are saying that masters swimmers are too quick to cry "uncle." Perhaps so, but I think if you can't swim more than 700 yards that you aren't being "wimpy" for scaling back a bit.

I'm referring to lifting to failure--when your muscles can't complete a lift. I believe that is referred to as "lifting to failure". Of course my muscles could work. But not under the load at that time. There is a school of thought that lifting to failure is not a desirable thing in training. Yes, progressively increase your weight over time and challenge yourself but quit a given set sometime short of complete failure. (You don't *swim* to failure, do you? Of course not.) You'll can still get a heck of a workout. From what I can tell, I don't think even Jazz lifts to complete failure; I think I remember him saying once that he stops a set when the speed/rate of his reps decrease below a certain amount. So maybe restructure your lifting workouts with this in mind, and you might well be able to handle 3X per week. Also, Fort's idea of recovery weeks are good. Remember, you only get stronger/faster when you recover from hard workouts.