Body composition and swimming

LOL :rofl: Isn't this kid in his 20s? You don't have to be old to have excess body fat. I lost quite a bit of weight this year by changing my diet.

Leaner,but not better looking.My observation is that,in general,USMS women are HOT.:banana: Ditto to this Allen. I like the curves and the athleticism of swim gals :D

Sorry,but the "fat burning zone" as the best way to lose weight myth is not good physiology... True. The "fat burning range" was something I remember distance athletes training in back in the eighties (maybe still do) to train their bodies to burn fat so as to be able to draw on it in a marathon/century ride/ski loppet/whatever and not hit the wall. The general public selectively heard the "fat burning" part, just as they only heard the "diet" part of the high-carbohydrate diet that distance runners were starting to eat for energy - not for weight loss.

Ditto to this Allen. I like the curves and the athleticism of swim gals :D I agree! Runners and triathletes have very uninteresting bodies in general.

Sorry,but the "fat burning zone" as the best way to lose weight myth is not good physiology.Yes in the so called"fat burning zone" you are using primarily fat for fuel and at faster speeds you are primarily using glycogen for fuel,but that is not the whole story.At faster speeds you are still burning some fat,but you are burnung more glycogen.You are also burning more calories and if you do not eat more after a hard workout than after an easy work out you will lose more weight.Your body will draw from the fat to replace energy stores.There is an additional advantage to the harder workout,namely you take longer to recover and that recovery takes energy.Further,sprint type workouts build more muscle mass and muscles burn calories at rest. I made a point of not saying lose weight. I agree fat is burned at all levels. And more calories are burned at high intensity levels. When glycogen is depleted, the body replaces it. Where does it replace it from? With carbohydrate and fat. A style of dryland training called High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is intended to do much of what you say. Short intense periods of exercise, followed by recovery periods. It is similar to many types of swimming sets. A good article on energy pathways: sportsmedicine.about.com/.../aa080803a.htm

hofffam How do we replace glycogen. We originally did glycogen replacement in the 50s by consuming Wheatgerm Oil then switched over to Vitamin E to replace Wheatgerm Oil. We were also told that there was no sense taking Wheat Germ Oil or vitamin E if you were not working out hard. We were also told that Iron depleted Glycogen. Are there any major changes in the advice we received.

Anita, I think you can combat age somewhat with cross training and portion control. Crap. Eyeing that treadmill with trepidation...

Interesting thread. I have been swimming Masters for almost 30 years and I have wondered why with all of my exercise, that I keep the same 176 pounds on this 59 year old 5' 10" body. I have just begun to use a HR monitor and have read Sally Edwards' book, "The Heart Rate Monitor Guidebook". Regarding burning fat she says: Fat is burned in every heart zone. The percentage and total amount of fat burned changes depends on many factors principally how fit you are and how hard you are exercising. There is not one fat burning zone, rather, the exercise intensities that burn the most fat is called the fat burning range. ...This illusive zone is really not a zone but a range of heartbeats that gets bigger as you get fitter. The bigger your fat burning range, the more fat calories that you burn with every beat of your heart. ...Oxygen must be available for fat to burn. When there is insufficient oxygen, there is no additional fat burned. The fat burning range is the exercise intensity level when you are aerobic, not anaerobic. Since so much swimming is done at or near the anaerobic zone, it follows that we won't be burning much fat or at least as much as the output of calories leads you to believe you are burning. So, if you want to burn fat while swimming, swim in the aerobic range not the anaerobic range. There is really a simple reason why anaerobic training does not burn as much fat as aerobic training. Training at higher intensity levels requires more "fuel" than training at lower intensity levels. Fat is a "slow" source of energy. The body cannot use fat to convert it fast enough to supply the muscles. So the body switches to carbohydrate. For the most intense exercise the body uses glycogen stored in the muscles. Activities shorter than 30 secs can be satisfied completely from stored glycogen. That's why you can sprint with little or no breathing - oxygen is required to use carbohydrate and fat for energy. If you want to burn fat through swimming - you should swim more long sets at aerobic pace. Your body will choose the energy source that best meets the requirements. For long duration exercise at a moderate pace fat meets the needs. Disclaimer - I am not any kind of expert on these topics. But search "energy pathways" and you fill find many good articles on this topic.

1995 to 1999: Swam an average of 14,000 yards a week. Little or no running. LDL average was 123 and HDLs were 50. 2000 to 2004 - Main emphasis was running and cycling. Averaged 20 miles a week running and averaged 4,000 yards a week with swimming. LDL average 101. HDL average was 70. 2004- June 2008 - Swam average of 12,000 yards a week. Little or no running. Some cycling. Average LDL was 135. HDL 57. I am no runner, but...comparing the 00-04 years to the others, it appears that you are basically replacing 8,000-10,000 yards of swimming with 20 miles of running. Forget all this "fat burning HR" nonsense, I believe you were simply burning significantly more calories running than swimming, particularly when you factor in hills and the pounding that running produces. For me the comparison would be cycling: one hour of cycling will generally consumer more calories than one hour of swimming because, in cycling, I am exercising continuously (even recovering from hard efforts is "active recovery") while that is not true in swimming. In swim practice, including time between sets, you might spend as much as 10-50% of the time on the wall (although, for me, the level of intensity tends to be somewhat higher in swimming). Using Elise's numbers as an example: at a pace of 8-minute miles, 20 miles is 160 minutes. At a 1:15/hundred pace, 10,000 yards would take 125 minutes if swum continuously. Substitute the rates of your choice, but generally running & swimming at a comparable level of ability will have the result that running 20 miles takes longer to do than swimming 8000-10000 yards. (And it seems to me that I have read from a number of sources -- which doesn't necessarily make it true -- that the same perceived effort for running will burn calories at a slightly higher rate than for swimming. This might possibly have to do with cooling.)

Chris - I agree with you somewhat on the calories explaination. The only thing that perplexes me is that in college as an 18-20 year old, I probably trained in swimming 15-18 hours a week. Even with all those hours of training, I still had to be mindful of my diet. In my mid-thirties, I trained only 12-15 hours a week for triathlons and could barely eat enough to keep my weight and body fat appropriate for my height and frame. It was bad enough that I wake up in the middle of the night starving and have to eat something. Yes, since I stopped doing the triathlons, family and friends have commented that I look much better than when I did the triathlons. I'm not really complaining about being fat but am just curious as to why the LDLs are so much higher. At the level some masters swim, I think many burn as many calories in an intense hour of swimming as they would with a moderate run. I can buy that running or biking would burn a few more calories and is usually done continously whereas swimming is done with a stop and go thing. I still can't help but wonder though about the storage of fat thing and high levels of cortisol. I read a study the other day about male swimmers and high levels of cortisol. I'll see if I can find it. I'm really cuious about a study done on female swimmers, level of cortisol, and changes in body fat levels.