Since this is my first post here I wanna say big HI to everyone! ;)
I think I have to give a little background about myself first so You guys can guide me better (hopefully). So I used to train boxing for a couple of years. I was a boxing maniac to be honest, training 5-6 days a week with lots of sparring. Everything was great untill one day I fell on the ground and could not walk for a few weeks. MRI diagnosed severe bulging discs but I didnt give up and stayed in the gym for an extra year or two. I managed to centralize the pain but MRI showed the violent twisintg motion involved in punching is getting things worse so I had to stop. I was literally addicted to the sport so it took another 2 years for me to get myself off the ground and move on. During this time I took some swimming lessons as I knew I have to find myself another sport and swimming is the best sport for back problems. I started from the cratch as I could only swim some basic *** stroke and now I can swim decent freestyle, backstroke and I'm learning the butterfly. My current situation wont let me hire a coach (both lack of time and money) but I certainly will in a few months perspective. Till that time I have to just focus and develop the strokes further on my own.
I'm pretty happy with my progress but what bothers me is my current state of body fat. I never did any dieting as I allways stayed in shape over the last years. I could eat anything and I was just getting better and better. Even the last few months of boxing when the pain was persistent and I could only train like 2 times a week I couldnt gain any fat at all while now I'm just getting fatter and fatter while swimming my ass off in the pool 3times a week.
I tried everything from doing laps to intervals. i.e. my yesterdays workout looked like this:
200m fs
200m bs- warmup
10x100m fs
4*100m kick (fs/bs/side)
200m bs pull buoy
200m fs pull buoy
cool down- slow steady fs, flip turns and butterfly kick practice
I understand my knowledge at this point is close to none but I'm trying to mix things up and focus on a short distance intervals instead of doing laps. I also constantly focus on my technique.
Some time ago I came to the conclusion that maybe I dont kick properly so I dedicated the whole workout strictly focusing on the proper kick technique. I read somewhere that to kick from the hip You have to squeeze the buttocks so I swam each laop focusing on this. I could barelly walk the next day but the fat stayed. I know that when I finally get to the right level of intensivenes the fat is just going to melt away in a couple of days but I cant seem to get there anyhow.
After each session in the pool I do some very light lifting (2compound excersises/2-3s each/push/pull).
Now my questions is what am I doing wrong? Should I swim more each workout or focus on something in order to burn the fat? Like I said it took me a few rounds on the heavy bag 2 times a week to melt the fat away while now I'm doing miles in the pool without any effect. As for my back problems I almost forgot I had any. Swimming works like a charm!
Dieting is not an option for me. Id rather live in the pool 24/7 than waste time on dieting.
Please help ;)
I got back into swimming to loose weight and through a combination of changing what I ate and swimming I was able to drop 55lbs in about 6 months. I have been a consistent 180lbs for about 2 years. I heard a guy I swim with saying you should never ask a skinny guy for advice on loosing weight so take this for what it is. I am a skinny guy now but at 235lbs I was not. I lost weight primarily by changing what I eat. I gave up alcohol, I don't eat deserts and I watch my quantity of food in a single sitting but I genuinely eat what I want and snack between meals. I swim 6 days a week for about 90mins a session. I have done both high yardage aerobic training and also race pace high intensity training. Swimming is a great form of exercise and I honestly love it but I don't believe I would have lost the weight just by swimming alone. I used myfitnesspal as a way of adjusting my quantities of food. Like I said I eat a lot of food but not at any one single sitting. I hope my advice helps. I also documented my journey on my blog on these forums and if you want to use any of my workouts feel free.
One last thing to consider on the swimming front is to join a masters team. The cost is not much more than swimming at a pool, but there are two big advantages I have found; first the coach can give you some great stroke advice, second having people to workout with is much easier than swimming on your own.
I got back into swimming to loose weight and through a combination of changing what I ate and swimming I was able to drop 55lbs in about 6 months. I have been a consistent 180lbs for about 2 years. I heard a guy I swim with saying you should never ask a skinny guy for advice on loosing weight so take this for what it is. I am a skinny guy now but at 235lbs I was not. I lost weight primarily by changing what I eat. I gave up alcohol, I don't eat deserts and I watch my quantity of food in a single sitting but I genuinely eat what I want and snack between meals. I swim 6 days a week for about 90mins a session. I have done both high yardage aerobic training and also race pace high intensity training. Swimming is a great form of exercise and I honestly love it but I don't believe I would have lost the weight just by swimming alone. I used myfitnesspal as a way of adjusting my quantities of food. Like I said I eat a lot of food but not at any one single sitting. I hope my advice helps. I also documented my journey on my blog on these forums and if you want to use any of my workouts feel free.
One last thing to consider on the swimming front is to join a masters team. The cost is not much more than swimming at a pool, but there are two big advantages I have found; first the coach can give you some great stroke advice, second having people to workout with is much easier than swimming on your own.
