I overheard some ladies talking yesterday and instructing their kids not to get in the ocean. Here are two of their reasons: 1) they just had lunch and lady said you'll get cramps, you can't swim for an hour, and 2) your face will turn to scales while food is in your stomach.
Later, a young woman was advising me on my newest problem, leg cramps, and she told me it was impossible for me to get leg cramps because I wasn't sprinting. She said that leg cramping is caused from dehydration and only a person who sprints will get dehydrated; not distance people, so she suggested I see a doctor.
We all know these are pretty ridiculous, have you overheard anyone advising others about "their myths?" The people making these comments were from England.
Former Member
Truth or Myth? Someone told me the other day that Breaststrokers have bigger thighs then the other swimmers.
Based on my experience I’d say truth.
I believe it was earlier in this thread someone commented about their inner thighs not being all that developed. I think mine are pretty well developed and all I do is mostly swim (with some, but not a lot, of Yoga as well). It seems to me that when done correctly (ankles outside of knees) the whip kick uses a lot of inner thigh strength, but someone better versed on Kinesiology should know for sure.
I do about as much breaststroke as the other three popular strokes. Now that I’ve given it some thought, it seems all the kicks use quite a bit of thigh power. In the past few years I’ve been doing a lot of dolphin kicks on my back too (to help with my fly practice), and in the last year or two I’ve noticed some rather amazing changes in my leg muscles (I’m seeing muscles in my legs now that I never knew I had!).
As for those hot swimmer babes (broad shoulders and all), I like a healthy set of gams, so bring on the kick sets! :-D
During the summer after my junior year in college and well into double digits of a pretty good swimming career, I went to the Boy Scout camp for the Worcester MA council as I was an assistant scoutmaster. When I went to get checked out at the beach so I could go swimming and use the boats, the ever helpful instructor did not want to give me the "swimmer" designation because I could not float on my back without a little bit of sculling yet I could have easily taken a few laps around the lake without any trouble. I finally convinced him and was able to be a "swimmer" during my stay.
During college, the coach got on me for kicking my feet a little bit during breaststroke pulling without a pull buoy. I told him I had no choice. He would not hear of it. So I pulled a couple of laps grinding my toe nails on the bottom in the shallow end. He latter let me use a pull buoy.
Lesson from this: you don't have to be African American to be dense (physically or mentally)!
Leo
Swimming won't make you lose weight (within a reasonable one hour a day training) is not a myth, however you look better even though your weight is the same. Gotta go run or lift weights to get some of the weight off.
No, this is definitely a myth. I lost 35 pounds from swimming alone at about 30-45 minutes a day.
You can't burn 700 calories in a workout and not loose weight. You can, however, have a big mac with fries afterward because you are extra hungry after swimming vs. other sports and completely negate the weight loss effects of the workout. Typically, an hour of swimming makes you ravenous, and hour of jogging does not. If you put back more than you burn, of course you don't loose weight. But that doesn't mean you can't loose weight swimming.
Try this for floating on your back. My wife showed me this, because I have always had sagging legs floating on my back.
Put your arms straight alongside your ears with the palms up. Then bend the wrists so that the hands are pointing to the sky (ceiling). I have no idea why this works (the physics doesn't seem to fit) but my feet immediately come to the surface and I can float on my back for long periods this way.
Let me know if this works for anyone else.
Lesson from this: you don't have to be African American to be dense.
You don't have to be male either. I still can't float on my back without a little kick every so often.
The kind of people best suited for swimming are human beings, with red blood flowing in their veins.
So how do you account for Jim Borkowski?
I'd also heard the body density myth. I didn't think anything of it either way. I guess preference and availability count for sporting choices more than ethnicity. Then again "white men can't jump" is BS too...individuals of all creeds and colours can do all sorts of things.
There are not too many black ice-hockey players either (that I know of; please correct me if I'm wrong--I don't mean anything by it)...anyone have a myth for that?
Athletes are athletes...
Myth - Pigs cannot swim they cut their own throats. I have seen a pig swim and of course many other animals can swim.
Myth - I have also heard dogs can swim I was there when a marathon swimmer (he named it after Marvin Nelson a famous marathon swimmer) threw his dog a boxer dog in the water and it would have drowned if he did not go in to save it.
