Strength of top swimmers

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:49:10 GMT

That's an interesting study and interesting results! The first question that this study raises in my mind is whether all dryland is the same? Can lifting weights and running all be lumped together under dryland when correlating dryland and performance?

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:56:58 GMT

USA Swimmings 2000 Olympic Trials Project Link to the study www.usaswimming.org/.../DesktopDefault.aspx Under Implications – Performance implications vs. time spent doing dryland for distance swimmers and sprinters are described. Numbers 2, 3, and 4 We took a multidisciplinary approach to identifying characteristics and skills of Olympic Trials qualifiers by assessing psychological, biomechanical, training, and anthropometric characteristics. While the variables we measured do not provide a complete picture of successful swimmers, it is a step towards understanding characteristics related to success. The specific characteristics we assessed included: Background information: gender, age, experience in swimming, performance history, training history Psychology: sport motivation; goal orientation; social support, mental preparation Anthropometrics: limb lengths and girths, height and sitting height, weight, and vertical jump Race Analysis: swimming velocity, stroke rate, distance per stroke. Let’s look at the process we took in assessing our Olympic Trials Qualifiers: In mid-April, 500 athletes were randomly selected from the USA Swimming database of athletes who had qualified for Olympic Trials. The 500 selected athletes were sent a letter soliciting their participation and a packet of forms to complete. The personal coach of each athlete was also sent a letter explaining the project and asking him/her to remind the athlete to complete the forms. Follow-up postcards were sent to the athletes approximately three weeks after the initial mailing. Because some athletes were unable to take anthropometric measures, the USA Swimming sport science staff set up a testing site at the Olympic Trials in Indianapolis. Athletes who fell into this category were sent letters reminding them to stop by the testing room to complete the measures. All data was entered into an Excel database for statistical analyses.Of the 500 randomly selected athletes, one hundred and forty-four agreed to participate in the project by returning the packet of forms (representing a 29% return rate). Implications Based on background information there are following conclusions of relevance for coaches and athletes. The average age started swimming is 6.5 year for females and males. There are non-significant differences between swim strokes for females as well for males. The average age started swimming round year has small differences between events. Male distance swimmers have a statistically lower starting age when compared to sprinters. It shows that sprinters can begin their long-term training later than distance swimmers. Sprinters and distance swimmers have similar average weekly dryland hours and number of workouts per week. But distance swimmers have significantly higher weekly swimming workload volume and number of hours spent swimming than sprinters. It means that distance swimmers swim higher workload volume in workouts than sprinters, as expected. Females and males Olympic Trial qualifiers have similar swimming and dryland workload volume. There are no significant differences in workload parameters between females and males. But male freestyle sprinters have significantly higher dryland workload volume than female freestyle sprinters. Female sprinters as well as male sprinters and distance swimmers have tendency to increase dryland workload volume with age. But it doesn’t seem to have an influence on performance progression since there is a negative relationship between improvement and dryland hours per week for sprinters as well as distance swimmers. Therefore athletes should increase dryland workload carefully with age, especially distance swimmers. Coaches and athletes should make a decision about increase of dryland workload based on evaluation of relation between dryland workload and performance progression. In some cases, higher strength on dryland can lead to the reduction of performance because of higher drag in water. Thus, this data suggests that sprinters should work not only on dryland but also on transition from dryland to the water (swimming with resistance, surgical tubing, paddles etc.), which is especially important for the older swimmers. As data show the later swimmers started long-term training (age started swimming and age started swimming year round) the more they tend to work on dryland. However, it seems that dryland workload volume isn’t related to performance improvement for distance swimmers as well as for sprinters. Therefore, swimmers should pay more attention to the swimming workload instead of dryland workload. There was a significant relationship between improvement and the age the athlete started swimming year round. This data suggests that the later swimmer begins long-term training the greater we find the rate in performance progression to be. Last year improvement has no relation with average of weekly swimming yardage for sprinters. It suggests that sprinters should pay more attention to quality of work instead of quantity. For distance swimmers, especially females, last year improvement has positive relation with average of weekly swimming yardage. Therefore, based on the distance swimmers’ data from this study, the greater workload volume the higher improvement in performance. The age started swimming and round year swimming has negative relationship with weekly yardage in sprinters, while these parameters have positive relationship in distance swimmers. Hence, if sprinters started to swim earlier they tend to adapt to the higher workload volume and need to swim more for higher performance. If distance swimmers started to swim earlier they tend to swim lower workload volume.Respectfully submitted - Budd

RE: Strength of top swimmers

jordangregory — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:44:22 GMT

Jazz -- that is not quite the case. There are steroids for muscle growth, but for swimmers that is not the key -- I know the East Germans used steroids to speed up recovery. They were able to pound away almost each and every day. The guys were no bigger than anybody else and later on, even the women were not that much different than the other countries. Recovery not muscle mass. I totally agree that steroids help athletes recover faster, but that is due to their ability to maintain muscle mass in the face of huge amounts of training. Those taking steroids are in an anabolic state more of the time than your average Joe. Therefore, steroids allow swimmers to retain more of the muscle they gain in the offseason while swimming a ridiculous amount of yards during the in season part of training.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

jordangregory — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:10:01 GMT

That is a very good point about dryland. I would love to see a study that looked at the optimum about of "dryland", specifically weight lifting.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

jordangregory — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:25:13 GMT

www.usaswimming.org/.../DesktopDefault.aspx

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:33:52 GMT

Anabolic steroids improve swimming performance by increasing muscle mass, most of us would agree. Jazz -- that is not quite the case. There are steroids for muscle growth, but for swimmers that is not the key -- I know the East Germans used steroids to speed up recovery. They were able to pound away almost each and every day. The guys were no bigger than anybody else and later on, even the women were not that much different than the other countries. Recovery not muscle mass.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:56:16 GMT

Fort, there is a lot of conflicting evidence. I like to think of weight training as a form of cheating, and that guides how I do it. Anabolic steroids improve swimming performance by increasing muscle mass, most of us would agree. There's a great knowledge base about building muscle mass, with or without drugs, in bodybuilding. So at that point I ignore whatever swimmers think about strength training (it must be explosive, it must mimic swimming motions, it can't be too heavy, etc.) and pay attention to what the muscle experts think. I'm faster than I would be if I thought of my weight training as just another thing that swimmers must do. It's outside the regular program. It's doping.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

The Fortress — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:58:35 GMT

If it was that easy, more swimmers would have better results with strength training. Strength training is VERY specific. Just because you get 20% stronger in lat pulldowns, does not mean you are going to drop 2/10 in your 50 time as many studies have shown. Transferring it into the water usually means some sort of resistance work in the water. I use a parachute and it seems to work for me. I dunno. Lifting seems to make me somewhat faster. :dunno: What kind of "resistance" work can you do in the water aside from parachutes? Are you speaking of paddles, etc.? There is a lot of conflicting evidence, opinions on heavy (Smith, Jazz) vs. light lifting (Dara), lifting for overall strength vs. swim specific lifting ... That's an interesting 12 week plan, Greg.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:46:22 GMT

Interesting how strength was related to swimming power and not performance. I would have thought that if power increased so would performance. Does this necessarily, conclusively, prove there is no link between increased strength and performance? Could it, perhaps, just mean that this particular group were not able to use this increased strength to their advantage?

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:58:57 GMT

There are a lot of holes in all these studies. For example, they will usually have one group lift and the control group will not lift. But then they have both groups the exact same swim workouts. That may make for a better research study - but is probably not the right way to account for swimmers being tired. Also as Syd mentions - lifting will do very little if you don't transfer the strength into the water.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Chris Stevenson — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:53:34 GMT

Interesting link - www.gsv1.de/freq_speed.htm I found this to be the most interesting study of the three (though maybe it was because it was the only one I could examine in detail). The only real relationship to strength is the fact that dryland training was not included in the experimental group, so the influence of strength training on performance was not directly addressed. Certainly the concept of getting faster while increasing both stroke rate and distance-per-stroke over the course of an entire race is simple enough, and ultimately all training programs try to do this one way or another. Just not quite so explicitly. For example: "It has previously been reported that elite swimmers have stroke frequency-velocity curves that are shifted up and to the right, greater distances per stroke, and higher stroke rates and velocities compared to less competitive swimmers. The stroke frequency-velocity relationship, when shifted up and to the right, has been shown to be associated with a reduced energy cost of swimming. High performance is related to higher stroke rates, greater distance per stroke and the ability to sustain these throughout the race. ... improving performance would necessitate a shift in the curve up and to the right. The data from the present study demonstrate that it is possible to shift the stroke frequency-velocity curve by as much as 10% per year, or 40% over four years. ... A significant shift in the stroke frequency-velocity curve for competitive velocities would not be expected in swimmers trained with long-distance. This later hypothesis needs to be tested on a population of swimmers engaged in a contemporary over-distance-based program." The truth (or not) of that last statement seems kind of important to verify. It seems to me that the top swimmers that come out of over-distance training are able to achieve exactly this kind of shift with such training, that's why they become good. Maybe training that is more explicitly focused on stroke frequency/velocity would achieve the same or better improvement more easily. But it might require more technically-proficient coaches to achieve. I do wish they had chosen faster swimmers for their study, the final sentence is a little weak: "Because we have no evidence to suggest otherwise, it is likely that this novel, unconventional training may be equally suited to elite swimmers as well as the more average athlete." I suppose they would have trouble getting top college swimmers to agree to be guinea pigs for 4 years. Still, it is a fairly old study (2000), why couldn't they interest some better swimmers based on the results of this work? Then again, top swimmers have presumably enjoyed much success with their high school training programs (or they wouldn't be elites!) and it might be difficult to sell them on something radical. The training had a lot of 25s in it...I hate 25s, though I understand their necessity. And the training/taper cycle is practically imprinted into my bones since I've been doing it for much of my life, it would be hard to think of doing something so different (though the study group did have a training cycle). Here is more about Budd Termin: www.teamtermin.com/coachtermin.shtml

RE: Strength of top swimmers

jordangregory — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 08:45:05 GMT

Wow, I am really enjoying this post. Lots of good stuff. Just a few comments about the research studies presented (by the way, thank you so much for all of those ehoch) One article talked about 14 weeks of lifting with reps from 8-12 for three sets, 3x/wk during the competitive season. That is a lot of training, perhaps overtraining. Also, doing the same lifts for 14 weeks really makes someone stale. I know when I was swimming a lot of yards during the competitive season, I did not get stronger. A good strength training program would start with lifting 8-12 reps for the first 4-6 weeks followed by 4-6 weeks of 4-6 reps followed by 4-6 weeks of dynamic stuff (plyometrics, medicine ball stuff, resistance in the water) at high velocities to take the extra muscle and strength and make it functional

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:59:23 GMT

If it was that easy, more swimmers would have better results with strength training. Strength training is VERY specific. Just because you get 20% stronger in lat pulldowns, does not mean you are going to drop 2/10 in your 50 time as many studies have shown. Transferring it into the water usually means some sort of resistance work in the water. I use a parachute and it seems to work for me. Yeah, getting 20% stronger in lat pulldowns when you start out is very easy to do, and almost all of it is accounted for by better coordination and lift-specific strength. It takes much longer than that to build a significant amount of muscle, which is how the automatic transfer of strength happens. It also takes a lot of extra food and a high-protein diet, which is why not everybody has amazing success from lifting.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:54:47 GMT

I have no idea what it means. If you get stronger by increasing the size of muscles relevant to swimming, you will automatically have more power in the water. If it was that easy, more swimmers would have better results with strength training. Strength training is VERY specific. Just because you get 20% stronger in lat pulldowns, does not mean you are going to drop 2/10 in your 50 time as many studies have shown. Transferring it into the water usually means some sort of resistance work in the water. I use a parachute and it seems to work for me.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:21:57 GMT

Also as Syd mentions - lifting will do very little if you don't transfer the strength into the water. I hear this a lot, and I have no idea what it means. If you get stronger by increasing the size of muscles relevant to swimming, you will automatically have more power in the water. You don't have to do anything special to make your strength "transfer." Strength is the ability to produce force. In swimming, you produce useful force in the water through a specialized technique. This is called swimming-specific strength. If you apply the technique you already know with stronger muscles, your swimming-specific strength improves.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

jordangregory — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:15:33 GMT

here is one Competitive swimmers (22 females, 18 males) were tested for arm power using an isokinetic swim bench at varying velocities that covered the range required for swimming. Subjects also performed a series of 25-yard freestyle sprints. The mean power of one maximal pull on the bench at a velocity of 2.66 meters per second was measured while the average swimming time was 1.81. The correlation coefficient between the two was .90. An added study used four untrained subjects. Power improvements of 19% and sprint swimming improvements of 4% were demonstrated. This suggests that sprint swimmers could improve performance by increasing arm power. It should be noted that this study focused on 25 yards of swimming, an event that is not in the competitive schedule. Other studies by these same authors show that the relationship of strength to swimming diminishes rapidly as the distance increases. Do you have a reference for that. i would love to look it up

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:41:33 GMT

www.bodybuilding.com/.../jasonlezak1.htm Lezak lays out a routine but gives no numbers. I haven't seen any "abs" work there .................

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:25:58 GMT

Last one : Relationships between muscular strength and dry land power, muscular strength and swimming power, and muscular strength and competitive swimming performance were investigated in collegiate swimmers (M = 37; F = 28). Strength measures included 1 RM of the bench press, latissimus pull down, and triceps press. Dry land power was assessed using a seated chest putt and a two-arm supine overhead throw for distance using a 6-lb medicine ball. Swimming power was assessed by performing a 30-s maximal effort tethered crawl stroke swim. Competitive times for 50 and 100-m crawl strokes were used as measures of swimming performance. For the whole group, all relationships were significant. For women, the three strength measures were related to dry land and swimming power. Only the 1 RM latissimus pull down was related to performance. For the men, muscular strength was related to dry land and swimming power but not to performance. Contrary to the authors' interpretation of these results as being indications of an important role of strength in maximal swim velocity, when only one strength exercise in the females was related to performance and none were in the men, a contrary interpretation is warranted. These results support the contention that muscular strength is not related to sprint-swimming performance (velocity) in male or female swimmers.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:20:07 GMT

Interesting link - www.gsv1.de/freq_speed.htm

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:17:39 GMT

Next one - Swimming is one sport where the majority of competitors practice some form of resistance training. Although most competitive swimming distances might not be considered true endurance events, elite swimmers perform huge volumes of over-distance training. To determine whether adding resistance training to pool training might improve sprint-swim performance, Tanaka, et al. (1993) studied 24 experienced swimmers during 14 weeks of their competitive season. The swimmers were divided into two groups of 12 swimmers and matched for stroke specialities and performance. The two groups performed all swim training sessions together for the duration of the season, but in addition to the pool training, one group performed resistance training three days a week, on alternate days for eight weeks. The resistance training program was intended to simulate the muscles employed in front crawl swimming and utilized weight lifting machines as well as free weights. Swimmers performed three sets of 8-12 repetitions of the following exercises: lat pull downs, elbow extensions, bent arm flys, dips and chin ups. In order to maximize the resistance training effect, weights were progressively increased over the duration of the training period. Then both groups tapered for approximately two weeks prior to their major competition. The most important finding: resistance training did not improve sprint swim performance, despite the fact that those swimmers who combined resistance and swim training increased their strength by 25-35%. The extra strength gained from the resistance training program did not result in improved stroke mechanics. Their conclusion: "the lack of positive transfer between dry-land strength gains and swimming propulsive force may be due to the specificity of training."

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:16:21 GMT

RE: Strength of top swimmers

jordangregory — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:55:53 GMT

Sorry, when you said "strength of top swimmers," I didn't realize you only meant sprinters. The 400 free is not an aerobic event in the true sense of the word, you are well above lactate threshold for the entire race. That is true of the vast majority of pool events. Nothing is 100% aerobic, but a 400 is better than 50% aerobic

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Chris Stevenson — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:43:36 GMT

I agree in a distance event, even a 200 that it is easy to find a young girl who can out swim USMS males. I currently swim with a girl who has All American times in the 400 free and destroys me in practice when we do aerobic stuff, but I can outswim her in the 50 free and any breaststroke event. Sorry, when you said "strength of top swimmers," I didn't realize you only meant sprinters. The 400 free is not an aerobic event in the true sense of the word, you are well above lactate threshold for the entire race. That is true of the vast majority of pool events.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

jordangregory — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:20:47 GMT

I don't have to look very far to find some 15-year-old girls with sticks for arms who can swam faster than 99.99% of all USMS males. I agree in a distance event, even a 200 that it is easy to find a young girl who can out swim USMS males. I currently swim with a girl who has All American times in the 400 free and destroys me in practice when we do aerobic stuff, but I can outswim her in the 50 free and any breaststroke event.

RE: Strength of top swimmers

Former Member — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 07:32:46 GMT

Strength training doesn't exactly take a lot of time. You might be surprised by how much stronger you can get on a routine of two 40-minute workouts per week.