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 also recommend the MyFitnessPal app and community (with a forum for swimmers, too). They have a huge database of branded and generic foods and exercises, which makes it very easy to track your calories in and calories out (CICO). By combining killer work-outs and a very low calorie but variable diet, I lost 60 lbs in 3 months and increased my swimming endurance from 3 laps to 3 miles continuous. The variable part of the diet is important as is getting proper rest. I tend to eat much more, especially protein, AFTER my work-outs and get PLENTY of rest so that my body can rebuild itself stronger than it was before. I've also been doing some strength-training in the gym to keep from losing muscle. Good luck to you!
I decided to bump the thread as this information might be usefull for someone struggling with similar problems.
So I did a major progress since April and even hired a coach and my conclusion is that the intensity>time spent in the pool
My current workout allways ends with a set of 10-20 25m sprints with 10-15secs breaks. This gives me an instant hormone rush resulting in better performance on every drill/excercise/distans. I even started to gain some good quality muscles after very light gym sessions (2 compound excersises, 2 series each in super sets) and the best part is that im loosing fat RAPIDLY without any changes to my diet. The only change is that I eat twice as much as I did in April ;))
I feel great in general so if anyone is looking for the way to quickly get in shape I strongly advice to incorporate heavy sprinting to their workouts.
Still I'm in search of a good watch that will help me with my workouts. I like garmin swim but I handled suunto ambit3 during the weekend and it just feels nice. Anyone have any experience with the suunto?
I don't know if this was mentioned in previous posts, but be sure you're staying hydrated. Often hunger is actually your body's craving for fluids, so make sure you drink before, during, and after your swim. Congratulations on how much progress you've made.
