Increasing my weekly yardage seems to have increased my hunger. How can I determine the calories really expended during swims of various lengths or intensities?
And when the office hits the all-you-can-eat lunch buffet, how many laps equate to that second or third serving? (Not giving up the food can justify extra time in the pool!)
Parents
Former Member
Actually, a person who is very fit, cardiovascularly, for his sport will burn WAY more calories when working his threshold intensity than will a person who is only marginally fit working at his threshold intensity. How fit you are is really a measure of how much oxygen your system can process while engaged in your sport. How much oxygen your body can process ultimately determines how many calories your body is capable of burning during any given period of exercise.
So "fitness" is also a big variable that also makes "working at threshold" a huge variable.
Of course it IS possible to attain a high level of fitness for swimming very badly - and many people do just that.
On the other hand, people who learn excellent stroke technique have a big calorie consumption advantage over those who suck at swimming. Excellent swimming technique involves lots of core muscle mass. Poor swimmers tend to flail arms and lower legs predominantly without involving much core muscle mass. The excellent swimmer might be using as much as 5 times as much muscle mass productively as does the poor swimmer. This allows the excellent swimmer to spread the work over a larger muscle mass, thus avoiding localized fatigue. It is very common in swimming to see an athlete who is limited by localized fatigue such that he cannot sustain the highest level of exertion in swimming that his heart is capable of sustaining in general. An athlete that is not actually at his cardio threshold for an extended period won't burn as many calories as the excellent swimmer that does reach his cardio threshold for an extended period.
What all this means is that at slow paces, energy consumption is extremely variable across a population. We've all seen really good swimmers who, when swimming at very slow paces, exert less energy than Homer Simpson eating donuts. We've also seen very poor swimmers that, while swimming, look like a a big splash moving slowly down the pool. These people are burning LOTS of energy at those very slow paces. When we move to the other end of the speed spectrum the corelation between speed, work intensity and calorie consumption gets better. The very fastest swimmers in the world have all developed sufficient skills and conditioning to allow for maximum oxygen (and calorie) consumption when they choose to work at high levels so there are fewer variables and the range of each of those variables is smaller. Of course, since poor swimmers have self selected themselves out of this realm, the population we consider here is a lot smaller than the population we consider at slower paces.
A calorie comsumption estimation mechanism for the population of swimmers at slow speeds is fraught with pitfalls. Such a mechanism for swimmers at much higher speeds is much more doable. In swimming we have a continuum of ability levels between these areas. But, I suspect that only at ability levels where:
1) technique is good enough to eliminate localized fatigue as a limiting factor to systemic metabolism and
2) cardiovascular conditioning levels are high enough for the swimmer to actually reach and maintain threshold paces for extended periods,
can we begin to count chart estimates or simple equation estimates for calorie consumption as being at least in the right ball park. While such estimates might be usably accurate for elite swimmers, I suspect they are of dubious accuracy for the vast majority of Masters swimmers.
Actually, a person who is very fit, cardiovascularly, for his sport will burn WAY more calories when working his threshold intensity than will a person who is only marginally fit working at his threshold intensity. How fit you are is really a measure of how much oxygen your system can process while engaged in your sport. How much oxygen your body can process ultimately determines how many calories your body is capable of burning during any given period of exercise.
So "fitness" is also a big variable that also makes "working at threshold" a huge variable.
Of course it IS possible to attain a high level of fitness for swimming very badly - and many people do just that.
On the other hand, people who learn excellent stroke technique have a big calorie consumption advantage over those who suck at swimming. Excellent swimming technique involves lots of core muscle mass. Poor swimmers tend to flail arms and lower legs predominantly without involving much core muscle mass. The excellent swimmer might be using as much as 5 times as much muscle mass productively as does the poor swimmer. This allows the excellent swimmer to spread the work over a larger muscle mass, thus avoiding localized fatigue. It is very common in swimming to see an athlete who is limited by localized fatigue such that he cannot sustain the highest level of exertion in swimming that his heart is capable of sustaining in general. An athlete that is not actually at his cardio threshold for an extended period won't burn as many calories as the excellent swimmer that does reach his cardio threshold for an extended period.
What all this means is that at slow paces, energy consumption is extremely variable across a population. We've all seen really good swimmers who, when swimming at very slow paces, exert less energy than Homer Simpson eating donuts. We've also seen very poor swimmers that, while swimming, look like a a big splash moving slowly down the pool. These people are burning LOTS of energy at those very slow paces. When we move to the other end of the speed spectrum the corelation between speed, work intensity and calorie consumption gets better. The very fastest swimmers in the world have all developed sufficient skills and conditioning to allow for maximum oxygen (and calorie) consumption when they choose to work at high levels so there are fewer variables and the range of each of those variables is smaller. Of course, since poor swimmers have self selected themselves out of this realm, the population we consider here is a lot smaller than the population we consider at slower paces.
A calorie comsumption estimation mechanism for the population of swimmers at slow speeds is fraught with pitfalls. Such a mechanism for swimmers at much higher speeds is much more doable. In swimming we have a continuum of ability levels between these areas. But, I suspect that only at ability levels where:
1) technique is good enough to eliminate localized fatigue as a limiting factor to systemic metabolism and
2) cardiovascular conditioning levels are high enough for the swimmer to actually reach and maintain threshold paces for extended periods,
can we begin to count chart estimates or simple equation estimates for calorie consumption as being at least in the right ball park. While such estimates might be usably accurate for elite swimmers, I suspect they are of dubious accuracy for the vast majority of Masters swimmers.
