Triceps: the Importance of having these developed

Which is one reason why I think all the tricep exercises in the world don't take the place of actually DOING BUTTERFLY in practice, as a method of training to race it in a meet.) Really? I better get cracking then since I have kind of a big meet coming up!

It is very similar to actually performing a 100yard test. Minus the dive, the turns, the kick, the breathing - other than that doing a bunch of pushups in a minute is exactly like swimming fly. I don't find your test to be the least bit valid. You swam a ton of fly and did a ton of pushups and your fly got better. I've done absolutely nothing other than swim for six months and eat snax basically and my swimming is better. Therefore I postulate that doing nothing other than swimming and eating snax improves your swimming. I know our strength and conditioning coach doesn't have our swimmers do push ups.

I remember reading Popov engaged in very little weight lifting activity and wasn't nearly as strong as the competitors we would beat at will in sprinting events.

I think to be good at push ups you have to work at push ups, not swim butterfly. Then again, some on this forum claim to be good at swimming all you have to do is run a lot so what do I know. Well my swimming is far from either good or fast, but I do occasionally share things that have worked for me. Running is something I took up to drop some weight, and due to the weight loss, got a little faster in the pool. Keep in mind breaking a 1:00 100 scy free is still something I haven't done, so using terms like good and faster are all relative. What worked for me in the past may not work for me tomorrow, and may or may not work for someone else. And thanks Chris for the support. While I was in the Army, I knew many guys who could crank out 100+ pushups in 2 min (the length of our PT test), but they dropped like a rock in water. I've always been challenged with butterfly; I can do a decent 25 and occasionally a 50, and once in a while repeat twice in a workout. I'd probably get better if I spent more time swimming butterfly (at least that's what Simon Percy used to tell me), but I just don't have the patience to rest long enough.

I'd love to see your source for this. And what would you expect these sources to state exactly? That by performing push ups, one can increase performances in butterfly without even learning how to correctly execute the stroke at the first place? I can do pushups forever it seems (doing enough for a few years builds up endurance), yet I have a very tough time with butterfly at all. A 25 fly is a struggle for me, distances beyond that impossible without fins and/or switching to 1-arm drills. Just ask yourself. What happens exactly so that you end up having difficulty performing a 25m BF. My assumption would be that you have technical flaws preventing you to do so. Really, the key to my statement lies in the fact that these training means are brainless. Training in general, with improvement in mind, general involves identifying bottlenecks. Your ability to perform a lot of push ups probably means that the bottleneck that prevents you from being able to race a full 100m butterfly is elsewhere.

I seriously doubt that you can grab any elite swimmer at random and say with near-certainty that s/he can perform over 60 pushups in 1 minute. In fact, I strongly suspect that most could NOT perform this feat. What about you? Ever tried? By the way, I am not at all trying to belittle the importance of triceps in swimmer, particularly butterfly. Other than lats, I don't think there is a more important muscle for butterfly. This year I faced serious issues (bottleneck) with arm adductors as well. Without serious dedicated dryland program targeting this group, I believe I would have missed my seasons goals. ** edit ** BTW, I just did the test. Haven't done one single pushup this year in training. Just booked 63 reps in 60 seconds, with belly touching the floor. I'm 42yo 5'10 150pounds swim fit still under taper effect, but trust me. If I can do it, most elite swimmers (my 100m bf is 1:14, these guys go under 55sec) can. Just try it Chris, you'll see. Start little faster than 1 per sec, as soon as acidosis kicks in, you'll slow down. Take a man pill and go all the way. It is very similar to actually performing a 100yard test.

You swam a ton of fly and did a ton of pushups and your fly got better. Euhhhh, I did swam a lot of fly, but the only pushups I did this season were the 63 done earlier today for this test. So if you want to find me guilty of issueing fallacious statements, you may try: "You swam a lot of fly, and did no pushup. Then you did a pushup test no preparation no warm up whilst being at worked timed by a colleague, and you managed 63 in 60sec, therefore Fly did help you developing what it takes (lactate tolerance and muscle endurance mainly) to perform the push up test without spending a single minute training at push ups." If this is fallacious, then yes I may plea guilty. To be entirely honnest though, I have to add that Dips (I was doing 2x12 dips per week) probably contributed to this as well, since they target similar muscle groups as push ups.

Well I guess that like with anything else, that depends. Ability to do pushups probably has some correlation with ability to swim fast butterfly, since it does target arm adductors as well as triceps. Also, let us not forget that correlations work both ways. Can a swimmer that never does any pushups perform better at a pushup test than a runner that never does any pushup? Of course. Take any elite swimmer that doesn't perform any pushups, they can probably book over 60pushups in 1 min well. I'd love to see your source for this. I can do pushups forever it seems (doing enough for a few years builds up endurance), yet I have a very tough time with butterfly at all. A 25 fly is a struggle for me, distances beyond that impossible without fins and/or switching to 1-arm drills. I've seen many fast swimmer struggle to do even 10 correct pushups, and I've seen some runners knock out 70 pushups without even trying.

While I was in the Army, I knew many guys who could crank out 100+ pushups in 2 min (the length of our PT test), but they dropped like a rock in water. I hope you guys didn't get offended by my position on this topic. Cross training effects is a real passion for me. In the same time, these matters are very complex (obviously). Technical component in swimming makes these matters even more complex. I did spend a lot of time reviewing most scientific literature on the impacts of dryland training on swim performances. Most of this literature concludes to no correlation between dryland and improvement on swim performances. Yet. A very high number of top level coaches could not live without it. It's a huge topic, all shades of gray. I think that butterfly's biggest challenge is probably a technical one. Last year when I got back to swimming after several years away from it, I approached butterfly from a 'technical'/'base endurance' perspective rather than from a fitness perspective. My only swim workout (I train as a multi sport athlete) was 5x200m butterfly. No warm up, no warm down. Twice a week, for months. No freestyle, nothing. All done at very slow pace (roughly 3:45/200). My goal, was to stop being afraid of swimming it, and allowing myself for enough training time at learning to move well in the water; especially the arm recovery while breathing every cycle thing. That clip (below) was taken last summer, during one of these sessions. The fly looks kind of ugly, but I am really happy with the results I got last weekend, at the end of a season that began with this strange regiment. YouTube- Base endurance Butterfly - Full stroke (Side View) At top speed during a 50m, it rather looks like this. The guy in the middle (sorry for the start, I did not work on them this year, haven't even tried 1 single track start. on the menu for next year). YouTube- Quebec Provincial Championship - 50 BF So as a conclusion I would say that if you want to learn efficient butterfly, you may try it at very slow pace first. Got to solve the issues one at the time. First, got to sort out the arm recovery. No need to rush fast paces to achieve this. By keeping the pace slow, you can book much more mileage and therefore more effective learning/training time.

Here's my generalization (without regard to a person's gender, age, creed, religion, political affiliation, sexual preference, favorite color, etc.): ability to do pushups has close to zero correlation with ability to swim fast. Well I guess that like with anything else, that depends. Ability to do pushups probably has some correlation with ability to swim fast butterfly, since it does target arm adductors as well as triceps. Also, let us not forget that correlations work both ways. Can a swimmer that never does any pushups perform better at a pushup test than a runner that never does any pushup? Of course. Take any elite swimmer that doesn't perform any pushups, they can probably book over 60pushups in 1 minute. That raises a question. When correlation clearly works in 1 way, can we assume it could work the other way? As far as I am concerned, the two most striking examples happen to be chin up and leg extension. I clearly have a huge edge on these two stations over non swimmer general gym crowd. Completely out of shape, I pull down at least the equivalent of my body weight. When swim fit, I can pull down up to 200 pounds (I weight only 150). It is even more apparent with leg extension. Some say it burns, I can't feel it. Hard kick sets are burning much more. And anyway, pushups are just a training means. Like any other training means, it doesn't own a brain. It doesn't think by itself. Can't be entirely good or entirely bad. It all depends on what the person that owns the brain does with it. That said, for this year's butterfly events preparation, I did favor dips over pushups. They target the same muscles in a more specific manner (at least in my opinion). Since I wanted to keep the muscle strength/endurance component of my dryland program within 30min including squats and abs etc, pushups weren't on the menu. I also did 1 or 2 sets of fly as well.