First off I'm new here and this is my first post so if this question has been answered on a different post, sorry.
I come from a bodybuilding background and recently started swimming and liked it so much that for the summer I'm forgoing lifting for swimming. I've been swiming four times a week now for about four months and I've lost about 8 lbs - as far as I can tell it's all body fat. My question is, can I build muscle mass by just swimming or will I just be reducing body fat? Also is it possible to burn muscle? In other words could some of my weight loss be muscle loss? The reason I ask is that a couple of my friends have told me that my back is getting broader - I haven't really noticed.
Former Member
You can catabolize muscles to provide energy and building blocks for repairing other muscles. I began one weight loss venture with about 155# of lean mass and ended up weighing 140# total (17% body fat=126# lean). As a smaller leaner person I did not need the extra muscle in the lower body not used for swimming. It was just to get my larger hulk around, so that was fine. Swimming muscles got bigger and stronger.
You can also overtrain and lose muscles you DO want to keep if you train hard and don't provide sufficient calories/recovery time.
Long easy swimming may not stimulate your muscles by itself with no hard fast swimming.
