It's often said swimming makes your shoulders wider, perhaps breaststroke and butterfly in particular? Are there any real swimmers here who can confirm this with their personal experience?
If true, what length of time and intensity of swimming did it take to result in such changes? I suspect this can happen only to competitive swimmers.
We need twins. One who grew up swimming and one who did not to solve this mystery.
my brother and I are 23 months apart. his primary sports activity were soccer and baseball with very little swimming, then in HS it was cross country and crew. so he was built more like bruce lee.
he's now taken to mixed martial arts and juggling. (funny combo I know). but even when he was his biggest through weight lifting he never really got the same upper body as me.
about 4-5 weeks ago he started swimming and when i asked him why, he said he was hoping to improve his posture and upper body shape. I can only assume he means he was bigger shoulders.
SIDE TRACKED
this topic has gotten me to think about "cobra" like lats.
we have 3-4 triathlon guys swimming with us, and to the non-swimmer the tri guys probably blend in well on deck with us swimmers. but last night at practiced I started laughing to myself, because of this thread, I started to notice the "nonswimmer" didn't have the same size/shape lats that us swimmers have.
Back in the old days of 20k training, there was not a suit in the store that would fit - only blazers and separates. Even those required surgery.
Now, 17 1/2" x 35 shirts, always baggy around the waist unless I can luck into the "athletic cut" dress shirts.
44 long suits, but the pants are usually too big in the waist - so I'm working on that. Still. :drink:
I find the muscle mass gloms onto the delts, traps and collarbone-shoulder area most regularly with swimming and related weight training.
dV
Yes, most definitely. I had pretty big shoulders and lats when I was young and swimming. You can see it in my pics. I should mention that I do tend to bulk up more than the average woman in the muscle department (unfortunately in the fat department as well!).
I think that some may develop larger shoulders than others depending on their genetic makeup.
The muscle on the shoulders does get a bit thicker but my experience is the lats really get wide. Even at 49 , I have gained all of my swim lats back and my shirts are getting tight. So, yea, swimming cranks up the upper body.
Rob
Just looking at genetics, my father and step brothers all have much narrower shoulders that I do. I was very skinney before starting swimming as a freshman in high school. Had great shoulders by the time I was a senior, age group swimming and water polo help develop shoulders.
In my day we didn't do weights, had the exergenie and rubber bands.
But when you talk necks, us old breaststrokers all had BIG necks, from holding our 10 pound heads above the waters surface for complying to the breaststroke rule. When I weighed 126 pounds I had a 16 inch neck. Now I am up to 17.5 inch neck, and a LOT more weight.
I have naturally large lats, and they have started growing even more since I started swimming just a short time ago. I also have a 29-in waist, so they look even bigger. My girlfriend tells me my back is getting bigger, but I also lift so I'm not sure if it is just the weights or a combination of both.
I am an ex-marathoner (almost 28 years of distance running) who took up swimming five years ago. I am more oriented towards distance events than sprinting. I consistently swim five to six days per week and do all four strokes with my best strokes being freestyle and fly. My backstroke is getting decent and my *** stroke is horrible. My body has changed since taking up swimming. I have put on upper body mass that I never had as a distance runner. I can't say my shoulders are "bigger" but I have packed on some muscle in the upper body.
I've pondered this one myself and I'm not really sure what to make of it. In some ways I think of it as a chicken/egg problem. Are lots of swimmers predisposed to be big shouldered to begin with? Is seeing a team full of swimmers with wide shoulders & tiny waists similar to looking at a team of basketball players and marvelling at how playing hoops made them tall? I don't think swimming will change the geometry of your frame but will tend to make areas more or less muscular or tapered. But won't any sport that builds muscle make certain areas a bit bigger?
That said, when I got married right in the middle of college I had to buy a size 12 wedding gown (and this is a 1980 12 not a 2009 12 - those who know fashion sizing know there is a difference - a big one) to fit my shoulders and have the lower half tapered to fit my barely size 8 lower half. Before that day I had never worn a dress with sleeves beacuse I could never find one that fit. Did swimming do that? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that not swimming as much as I did then has caused my bottom half to now match my top half!
I think too that skinny waist + developed lats + well-developed shoulders = an illusion that makes the shoulders seem much bigger proportionally than they really are. I think it's the lats that give that big V look. I'm just remembering some tidbits from a life-drawing class that focused on body types that vary from "classic" proportions.
