Swimming experts,
I recently started strength training to complement my 3-4x/week swimming routine. I'm trying to lose weight, I am currently 205 and want to drop 20lbs. I'm not very interested in gaining a lot of muscle, but rather, I want to gain muscular endurance to improve my strokes (freestyle and ***) and more efficiently burn fat in the water. I swim about 3000-3500 yds per workout, in sets of alternating 200yds, 150yds, 100yds, 50yds, etc....and pyramids and IM's here and there.
My question is, how should I go about figuring out how many reps/sets to do for my situation? I just started a 3x/week (every other day) regimen of legs, chest, shoulders, lats, abs, etc, and the recommendation I found was to do 2-3 sets of 15-20 reps per exercise. I thought I heard somewhere that for swimming strength training, you want to do lots of reps, not too many sets, and keep the weight down.
Any help would be appreciated! I'm sure either way I'll get faster and
stronger in the water, but like I said, I don't want to add too much muscle
mass if I can stay away from it!
Matt
Ask any of the real muscle heads at the local gym about how to "gain a lot of muscle." You'll quickly get the sense that it takes a hell of a lot of work to do it. You basically eat lots of lean protein, do nothing but lift lots of weights and recove rin between.
There's very low risk of you doing such a thing given that you are swimming in between.
Your questions about the length of sets the resistance and appropriate rest in between all fall under the subject of periodization. The book high performance sports conditioning has a reasonable coverage of it.
For swimmers, Joe Friel lays it out pretty well for you. Basically you take a complete periodization plan from a muscle head, extend the anatomical adaptation phase, cut out the hypertrophy and peaking phases and add a maintenance phase onto the end.
Just take the phases in trun and everything will work out fine.
Joe Friel's Strength Periodization article
Ask any of the real muscle heads at the local gym about how to "gain a lot of muscle." You'll quickly get the sense that it takes a hell of a lot of work to do it. You basically eat lots of lean protein, do nothing but lift lots of weights and recove rin between.
There's very low risk of you doing such a thing given that you are swimming in between.
Your questions about the length of sets the resistance and appropriate rest in between all fall under the subject of periodization. The book high performance sports conditioning has a reasonable coverage of it.
For swimmers, Joe Friel lays it out pretty well for you. Basically you take a complete periodization plan from a muscle head, extend the anatomical adaptation phase, cut out the hypertrophy and peaking phases and add a maintenance phase onto the end.
Just take the phases in trun and everything will work out fine.
Joe Friel's Strength Periodization article
