Does being overweight affect swimming performances?

As robrecht alluded to...the extra weight caused by fat does affect your performance in the pool...but to a lesser extent than other exercises (on land). Fat is lighter, so in the water it creates buoyancy. It floats. It's not working against you as much as it would if you were running...where buoyancy doesn't matter. It's just extra weight. But, if the extra weight happened to be muscle...like if you were a bodybuilder for example...that would work against you more than the fat in the pool because muscle is more dense and sinks. You'd be working harder to keep yourself afloat. But...depending on the amount of muscle weight, and you're swimming technique...sometime the extra muscle weight can be overcome. Dan

I'm 70 yrs old and started swimming last August. I'm swimming with an awesome Masters team. I've lost quite a bit of weight, still have 20lbs to go; I'm getting there but have two questions: 1: Am I pulling an extra 20lbs with each pull? At first it seems an obvious yes, but I wonder if being in water makes it different. 2: When the weight is off will it be easier for me to get and stay underwater? - I'm having a tough time pushing off the wall streamline underwater. odd questions I know, but I'd really appreciate it if anyone can tell me? Thanks, PamFirst, congratulations on your great progress so far! Yes, extra weight does inhibit your preformance but not as much as with some other exercises. It also increases your calorie burn. I have seen some very fast overweight swimmers. Technique and cardiovascular fitness are much more important than weight, it seems. At 70 years of wisdom, you are an inspiration to everyone!

To lose lots of weight, for me at least, made me feel fantastic in the water from what I remember. Not sure if this would have less of an effect on higher distances, but my 50 and 100 free time reduced drastically. Not sure if it was in my head though. Im currently losing weight again, and am gonna try to maintain around 175. I got heavier so I could improve my lifts, and I just don't feel as streamline in the water.

Thanks everyone - great answers. And thank you so much for the kind words of encouragement - it means a lot. I'm looking forward to getting the weight off because I know I'll feel better, and I'm looking forward to swimming longer and faster...(grin). The really nice thing is that I've found something I truly love and the more weight I lose the more I can swim - the more I swim the more weight I lose. - Thanks again :-)

You may or may not notice the difference but it will be there...hiding in your technique. I took a 4 year break after college simply because I could not afford a pool pass anywhere and when I finally got back in the water at a very similar weight, I wasn't nearly as fast but things felt "right". I swam for 4 years before getting disrupted with children (how dare they, haha!) and am just getting back into the water after another 4 year break but this time am 25-30 lbs heavier. This is what I notice: - Instead of pushing past my thighs in free, I'm hitting my thighs - and not in the pretty just brush past them way. So I'm having to change my pull a touch in ways I don't want in order to get around the weight. - Side to side rotation is more difficult. Side to side rotation used to be effortless. Now my butt would prefer to act as a floating barge and getting the hip action rocking right is frustrating. - my breaststroke is a total mess - and I am (was?) a breaststroker. I can actually feel the drag hitting my stomach instead of gliding past. Sneaking my legs up behind is harder with thick thighs in the way. And it's messing with my buoyancy...popping my entire rear body to the surface far too fast when I'm trying to hit my straight line. - on the opposite end of the spectrum, it seems to be helping my fly. I probably didn't have enough pop in my hips as a kid and I may actually have greater leg strength now from walking around with the extra weight and carrying children everywhere. Are these things I would notice if I hadn't had technique beat into me for my formative years? Probably not. Am I able to drop some time despite being at within a pound of the same weight I restarted at 3 months ago? You betcha! I'm holding an overall pace ten seconds faster per hundred. I guess my point is that the weight isn't going to play much of a role unless you're trying to go from very fast to super fast and even then, you'll have perfected your technique to your body shape so it may not matter at all.

Dear PamC, I just want to tell you how impressed I am with your brave and courageous attitude! I think swimming is a difficult sport; to think you started this at the age of 70 to better your health is amazing to me. My goal is to try and be as open-minded, confident, and brave as you when I reach your age. Good luck with your continued efforts, I'm pretty sure you will succeed with anything you set your mind to do. Sincerely, Robin

Pam, I think you might be thinking too much about 20 lbs of weight. In and of itself it's a relatively minor factor in how fast you swim. Your weight (resulting from gravity pulling your mass towards the center of the earth) is a downward force. However, water exerts an upward buoyant force (equal to the weight of the displaced fluid as you lie in the water) and that upwards force counterbalances all or a great deal of your weight, which is generally why you float. (Floating is somewhat more complicated involving your density (weight per unit volume) and the density of the water you are in.) To move forward in the water you must exert enough propulsive force through your pull and kick to overcome the fluid's resistance to movement - that resistance is called drag. Drag depends on 4 properties (none are directly weight): the fluid (density), the size (form or cross-sectional area in the water) of the swimmer, Coefficient of Drag (depends on shape) of the swimmer, and on the square of the speed of the swimmer. The fluid density, cross sectional area, and coefficient of drag are very similar from one swimmer to the next, although they can vary somewhat or be tinkered with. Thus the biggest factor influencing how much propulsion you need to exert to overcome drag and move through the water is velocity. If you want to swim twice as fast, you have to increase propulsive force by a factor of 4, because drag increases with the square of the velocity. Similarly, the amount of power or energy you spend increases with cube of the velocity. To achieve such a substantial increase in velocity and propulsive force, you have to get stronger and/or pull and kick more efficiently. These are far more important than weight. Getting stronger and retaining muscle mass gets harder as you age, but it can still be done. Improving your stroke and kick (technique) to become more efficient is a great way to get faster and swimming with a masters program and coach should really help. Focus on strength (to the extent you can) and technique and don't worry about weight too much. Its great that you are swimming- a non-weight bearing sport and your engine is water cooled! Keep going.

Pam, I think you might be thinking too much about 20 lbs of weight. In and of itself it's a relatively minor factor in how fast you swim. Your weight (resulting from gravity pulling your mass towards the center of the earth) is a downward force. However, water exerts an upward buoyant force (equal to the weight of the displaced fluid as you lie in the water) and that upwards force counterbalances all or a great deal of your weight, which is generally why you float. (Floating is somewhat more complicated involving your density (weight per unit volume) and the density of the water you are in.) To move forward in the water you must exert enough propulsive force through your pull and kick to overcome the fluid's resistance to movement - that resistance is called drag. Drag depends on 4 properties (none are directly weight): the fluid (density), the size (form or cross-sectional area in the water) of the swimmer, Coefficient of Drag (depends on shape) of the swimmer, and on the square of the speed of the swimmer. The fluid density, cross sectional area, and coefficient of drag are very similar from one swimmer to the next, although they can vary somewhat or be tinkered with. Thus the biggest factor influencing how much propulsion you need to exert to overcome drag and move through the water is velocity. If you want to swim twice as fast, you have to increase propulsive force by a factor of 4, because drag increases with the square of the velocity. Similarly, the amount of power or energy you spend increases with cube of the velocity. To achieve such a substantial increase in velocity and propulsive force, you have to get stronger and/or pull and kick more efficiently. These are far more important than weight. Getting stronger and retaining muscle mass gets harder as you age, but it can still be done. Improving your stroke and kick (technique) to become more efficient is a great way to get faster and swimming with a masters program and coach should really help. Focus on strength (to the extent you can) and technique and don't worry about weight too much. Its great that you are swimming- a non-weight bearing sport and your engine is water cooled! Keep going. Good discussion but a couple of things. First, form drag is highly changeable, that is what streamlining is all about. One is not as streamlined carrying extra weight , but good body position is a much bigger factor. Form drag does go up as the square of speed, but 2 squared is 4, 3 squared is 9, so streamling makes a big difference. The second issue isn't apropos to this, but there is another drag, wave drag. It isn't a big factor at low speeds, but since it increases as roughly the cube of speed, it quickly becomes the main drag. The best way to deal with wave drag is to avoid it hence SDK and BR pullout.

To move forward in the water you must exert enough propulsive force through your pull and kick to overcome the fluid's resistance to movement - that resistance is called drag. Drag is going to slow you down, but you also need to exert force against the water to actually accelerate you forward and that is directly related to weight (via mass). F= ma. A greater force is required to accelerate a heavier object.

the fastest swimmers on the planet seem to be around 200lbs