I am looking for a weight lifting routine that will benefit my swimming. I am in my late 30's and swim 4 days a week approximatly 1800 meters each work out. I lift weights the other 3 days and do high reps with a 30 second rest between sets and a 2 minute rest between exercises, this being based on a fitness theory I read about. Is this benefiting my swimming or is there a better theory out there?? I would some day like to enter somthing when I feel I am conditioned enough.
I disagree. As a 44 year old woman, weight lifting is an important part of my routine to make sure I stay strong and my bones remain strong as I age. Weight lifting helps my swimming tremendously. By keeping the muscles strong around the tendons, I have been able to swim despite having injured shoulders from play softball for 30 years.
Eric, my advise is to try and find a personal trainer who understands your a swimmer, and discuss your goals with them. With weight lifting, it is best to defines your goals first, and then a program can be derived from that. It is also good to not do the same thing month after month after month. Your body gets used to that, and it is wise to shake up the endurance with a couple weeks of more strength based lifting(not enough to make you the hulk), to add strength. Also important when weight lifting, or anything else is flexibility training. Don't forget to stretch!
I started doing weight about a year ago to help keep my shoulders strong for swimming. I have found it helps with speed, endurance, plus my bones are healthier, and I look better in my jeans. Do lighter/ higher reps so you don't bulk up . Many of the YMCA have welliness trainer to work with you on tech, so you don't get hurt. Goodluck Keep swimming
I hear people say weightlifting is good for swimming strength building routines.
However, In my humble view...weightlifting tends to build bulk and is also easy to injure yourself.
I think building strength in 3 ways is good. First by doing intense sprinting in workouts. Secondly, doing strength exercises with your own body weight: pushups, dips, pullups, abs, etc. Lastly, using stretch cords and tubes.
Weightlifting is good for many sports, but swimming requires low weight and mass per unit of strength. In many sports being bigger and heavier is an advantage, but not swimming.:rolleyes:
Light weights,high reps are fine for endurance,but if you want to sprint you need power and that comes from low reps and high weight(but build up to it slowly.) I'm a breaststroker so I do work on legs as well as arms(as well as core and rotator cuff,but do NOT do heavy weights in rotator cuff exercises.) Six mo.after starting a regular weight program my 200 Br. improved the most. This surprised me, but I think it improved my DPS and so I wasn't as tired at the endof the race.
Your current high rep routine is unlikely to add much bulk, so I don’t think you need to worry about that. I would recommend that you begin to tailor your choice of exercises to those that will most benefit your swimming. For starters, you should be doing an entire rotator cuff series at least twice a week. The rotator cuff is probably the most commonly injured body part in swimming, so you need to keep it strong. Low weights are best for the shoulder joint. Just make sure you do these with perfect form to avoid any impingement. A physical therapist can show you the correct technique. If you do each rep very slowly, you will get a very good workout even with a low weight.
You should also be focusing on core body strength (abs, hips, glutes). This will help you rotate your body faster and more powerfully. If you are a breaststroker, don’t neglect the hip abductors and adductors
I would avoid doing too much work on the big muscles that can get very bulky. This would include the pecs and especially the quads and hams. Having heavily muscled legs will just drag you down as a swimmer, making it very difficult to stay balanced in the water.
Working your hips should also help your flutter kick, but the thing that will help it most is increasing the flexibility of your ankles (the ability to point your toes like ballet dancer while keeping your lower leg as relaxed as possible). In fact, improved flexibility all over will probably help your swimming about as much as weight training does. For example, shoulder flexibility helps you maintain a better and more relaxed streamline, back flexibility helps your dolphin kick and leg/hip flexibility helps your breaststroke kick. I would recommend that you substitute a yoga or pilates class for one of your weekly lifting sessions, or get a good yoga dvd and do it at home.
Finally, remember to change your lifting program pretty frequently. Even if you stay with the same basic program, change the order of the exercises, substitute different exercises that work the same body part, change the tempo, etc. The body becomes accustomed to routine very quickly. For weight training, it typically takes about three weeks, and then your progress starts to really slow down. Try and keep it fresh. And focus your mind on each and every rep you do, striving for perfect form.
Lifting weights can not only strengthen your arms and shoulders, but also your core. Core strength is as important in swimming as it is in other sports.
Having stronger legs will also aid in dives and turn pushoffs. Although there are tradeoffs in terms of bulk vs speed and such.
