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 ;)
My experience has been pretty much the same as Stewart's RevChris and Gary P. metabolism slows especially at about 50 yrs and your appetite stays as it was when you were 20 working hard and burning calories like an incinerator. I cut out most of all of the extra carbs (crackers, cookies, ice cream, alcohol etc.) except on special occasions and limited my alcohol intake to 2 beers/day on weekends. I never really counted calories but ate more veggies, fruit and lean protein when I was hungry instead of carbs and only weighed myself once per week (same day same time). I dropped about 2-3 lbs per month swimming about 12k+ per week, but then began spinning and running too and that really accelerated the weight loss. Running burns calories the fastest and I think spinning burns them slightly faster than and equivalent time length of swimming - long runs (or fast walks) are the best as speed isn't really much of factor. I got rid of about 40 pounds in about 10 months, but put some back on each time I fell off the wagon. The pounds come off much faster and with less work when you are young!
My experience has been pretty much the same as Stewart's RevChris and Gary P. metabolism slows especially at about 50 yrs and your appetite stays as it was when you were 20 working hard and burning calories like an incinerator. I cut out most of all of the extra carbs (crackers, cookies, ice cream, alcohol etc.) except on special occasions and limited my alcohol intake to 2 beers/day on weekends. I never really counted calories but ate more veggies, fruit and lean protein when I was hungry instead of carbs and only weighed myself once per week (same day same time). I dropped about 2-3 lbs per month swimming about 12k+ per week, but then began spinning and running too and that really accelerated the weight loss. Running burns calories the fastest and I think spinning burns them slightly faster than and equivalent time length of swimming - long runs (or fast walks) are the best as speed isn't really much of factor. I got rid of about 40 pounds in about 10 months, but put some back on each time I fell off the wagon. The pounds come off much faster and with less work when you are young!
