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 ;)
There was a time when I could eat all I wanted and not gain an ounce. Like 5000 calories a day worth of "all I wanted." That was when I was a teenager with a teenager's base metabolism and I was in the pool or weight room 20-25 hours a week. Sometime in my late 20's, early 30's, father time started catching up to me. I wasn't a teenager, and I wasn't working out like I did as a teenager, but I was still eating a lot like a teenager. The pounds started accumulating. By 45, I was 230+. (For reference, I graduated at ~155).
My story from there is similar to Stewart's. I dropped 60 lbs in 9 months with a combination of swimming and diet. Yeah, unfortunately diet was a necessary part of the equation. Honestly, it was probably a bigger part of the success than swimming. I used a specific plan that kept the calorie count in check and kept the allocation of the various food groups in balance. The biggest change has been a complete avoidance of sweets and foods with processed sugars. Also, the total amount starchy carbs is reduced dramatically from what I ate previously. Conversely, I eat more fruit, vegetables, and lean protein than before. I didn't give up alcohol completely, but I did cut back. (When you only get 3 or 4 "carb servings" a day and a light beer or glass of wine counts as one, you tend to think "do I really want this?" before opening a bottle or pouring a glass :)).
For almost everyone, there comes a time where you have to watch what you eat in order to avoid getting fatter. There is no technique advice or magic workout set that anyone can give you that will burn enough calories in three 1-1.5 hour swim workouts a week so that you can eat what you want without gaining weight/body fat. At this point, you probably don't have to make the wholesale changes I did. But you might want to start tracking calories at a minimum, just to see how much you're really consuming. Then compare that to how many your burning. revchris is right, it only takes one poor choice to offset an entire workout's worth of work.
Lastly I would suggest you increase the frequency of your workouts. You said "Id rather live in the pool 24/7 than waste time on dieting." Well, there's a pretty big gulf between 3 times a week, 1-1.5 hours a workout (my guess as to how long it takes you based on the sample workout you provided) and "24/7." I saw a noticeable increase in my base metabolism when I went from swimming 3 times to 4, then 5 or 6 times a week.
There was a time when I could eat all I wanted and not gain an ounce. Like 5000 calories a day worth of "all I wanted." That was when I was a teenager with a teenager's base metabolism and I was in the pool or weight room 20-25 hours a week. Sometime in my late 20's, early 30's, father time started catching up to me. I wasn't a teenager, and I wasn't working out like I did as a teenager, but I was still eating a lot like a teenager. The pounds started accumulating. By 45, I was 230+. (For reference, I graduated at ~155).
My story from there is similar to Stewart's. I dropped 60 lbs in 9 months with a combination of swimming and diet. Yeah, unfortunately diet was a necessary part of the equation. Honestly, it was probably a bigger part of the success than swimming. I used a specific plan that kept the calorie count in check and kept the allocation of the various food groups in balance. The biggest change has been a complete avoidance of sweets and foods with processed sugars. Also, the total amount starchy carbs is reduced dramatically from what I ate previously. Conversely, I eat more fruit, vegetables, and lean protein than before. I didn't give up alcohol completely, but I did cut back. (When you only get 3 or 4 "carb servings" a day and a light beer or glass of wine counts as one, you tend to think "do I really want this?" before opening a bottle or pouring a glass :)).
For almost everyone, there comes a time where you have to watch what you eat in order to avoid getting fatter. There is no technique advice or magic workout set that anyone can give you that will burn enough calories in three 1-1.5 hour swim workouts a week so that you can eat what you want without gaining weight/body fat. At this point, you probably don't have to make the wholesale changes I did. But you might want to start tracking calories at a minimum, just to see how much you're really consuming. Then compare that to how many your burning. revchris is right, it only takes one poor choice to offset an entire workout's worth of work.
Lastly I would suggest you increase the frequency of your workouts. You said "Id rather live in the pool 24/7 than waste time on dieting." Well, there's a pretty big gulf between 3 times a week, 1-1.5 hours a workout (my guess as to how long it takes you based on the sample workout you provided) and "24/7." I saw a noticeable increase in my base metabolism when I went from swimming 3 times to 4, then 5 or 6 times a week.
