Hi all - I have an odd post for you to ponder :)
Recently I've decided enough is enough and it's time to shift some unwanted poundage. Over the past few months through exercise and eating much better I've dropped about 15% of my original body weight, going from 207lbs to 175lbs. At the same time I've been swimming a bit and making an effort to keep on some muscle too.
I know it's a very very hard question to answer but am looking for people's estimates on what this sort of weight loss would do to your swimming time over longer distances if I was able to keep everything else static (stroke, flexibility, strengtht etc). The only difference if possible would be there would be less body weight, and hopefully a better shape for moving through the water.
I know that due to water being denser it's not as easy to say as it would be in relation to running etc, but say over a 5km open water swim, what would people guess the % improvement would be as a result of this?
Cheers
GC
This is an interesting discussion that I have thought a lot about before. I can remember a exercise science teacher of mine proposing that having some extra fat would be beneficial in swimming, as it would make one more buoyant. This professor also liked to present most topics in exercise science on a continuum. On one side of the continuum would be being too skinny (loss of buoyancy would have to be countered by more work being done swimming) would be detrimental, and being overly fat would as well (less streamline body shape, too much weight to pull). He believed there was a happy medium. At some point, as one moves from the extreme of skinny to the extreme of obesity, there would be a weight (individual for each person) where the extra buoyancy that fat provided would be counteracted by a disadvantageous shape and/or extra weight to pull.
Also, think about training with added weight vs. training without the added weight. If you lose 10 lbs, you will train with 10 lbs less to pull. I personally believe that pulling that much weight is negligible, but for those of you who believe that it is a big deal, think about the loss in training stimulus. It may be similar to doing squats with 220 lbs and then deciding to train with 210 lbs in the hopes of getting stronger (I realize there are differences).
And as many have demonstrated here, it is nearly impossible to quantify how much help you would get from losing weight. There are so many factors aside from the ones presented above. Did you swim more to lose weight? Did the weight you lost change the shape of your body significantly (loss of a round belly to a flat belly), or did you just lose weight everywhere. Did your eating habits change for the better?
I personally feel that the emphasis on weight is a waste of time. The key is to swimming faster is to train as smart as possible. Ande does a great job of laying out what that looks like on these message boards, especially for the sprinter.
Once you put in the training, it is important to eat the correct feul at the correct times. For the most part, I have found that if I am forcing myself to eat the type of meals I need for before and after workouts, I don't have much of an appetite left for junk.
As far as anecdotal evidence goes:
Since I started swimming seriously in October, I have lost about 15lbs. I have gotten much faster, but I honestly don't equate any of that to weight reduction. It might have played a factor, but I honestly don't care if it did or not. The bottom line is, if I want to get faster, I have to train more. If I do, I will most likely lose weight. I think it would be a mistake to try and eat less while training hard as our body needs to correct type and amount of fuel to adapt to serious training. If fact, the problem for world class swimmers is not being able to eat enough food! (most likely the reason why there are not any serious scientific type studies on if weight reductions enhances swim performance)
Further anecdotal evidence to lead me to believe that weight loss really does not help is how my swim season went my junior year in high school. My junior year started out without my swimming at all. I didn’t join my team until about half way through the season. I had gained about 20 lbs, yet I still out swam my teammates. My times were not far off from the year before. My coach would sit in amassment how I could still swim so fast while looking like I did (much bigger belly). In my final meet of the year, a fellow swimmer next to me was flabbergasted that I could still out swim him looking the way I did.
This is an interesting discussion that I have thought a lot about before. I can remember a exercise science teacher of mine proposing that having some extra fat would be beneficial in swimming, as it would make one more buoyant. This professor also liked to present most topics in exercise science on a continuum. On one side of the continuum would be being too skinny (loss of buoyancy would have to be countered by more work being done swimming) would be detrimental, and being overly fat would as well (less streamline body shape, too much weight to pull). He believed there was a happy medium. At some point, as one moves from the extreme of skinny to the extreme of obesity, there would be a weight (individual for each person) where the extra buoyancy that fat provided would be counteracted by a disadvantageous shape and/or extra weight to pull.
Also, think about training with added weight vs. training without the added weight. If you lose 10 lbs, you will train with 10 lbs less to pull. I personally believe that pulling that much weight is negligible, but for those of you who believe that it is a big deal, think about the loss in training stimulus. It may be similar to doing squats with 220 lbs and then deciding to train with 210 lbs in the hopes of getting stronger (I realize there are differences).
And as many have demonstrated here, it is nearly impossible to quantify how much help you would get from losing weight. There are so many factors aside from the ones presented above. Did you swim more to lose weight? Did the weight you lost change the shape of your body significantly (loss of a round belly to a flat belly), or did you just lose weight everywhere. Did your eating habits change for the better?
I personally feel that the emphasis on weight is a waste of time. The key is to swimming faster is to train as smart as possible. Ande does a great job of laying out what that looks like on these message boards, especially for the sprinter.
Once you put in the training, it is important to eat the correct feul at the correct times. For the most part, I have found that if I am forcing myself to eat the type of meals I need for before and after workouts, I don't have much of an appetite left for junk.
As far as anecdotal evidence goes:
Since I started swimming seriously in October, I have lost about 15lbs. I have gotten much faster, but I honestly don't equate any of that to weight reduction. It might have played a factor, but I honestly don't care if it did or not. The bottom line is, if I want to get faster, I have to train more. If I do, I will most likely lose weight. I think it would be a mistake to try and eat less while training hard as our body needs to correct type and amount of fuel to adapt to serious training. If fact, the problem for world class swimmers is not being able to eat enough food! (most likely the reason why there are not any serious scientific type studies on if weight reductions enhances swim performance)
Further anecdotal evidence to lead me to believe that weight loss really does not help is how my swim season went my junior year in high school. My junior year started out without my swimming at all. I didn’t join my team until about half way through the season. I had gained about 20 lbs, yet I still out swam my teammates. My times were not far off from the year before. My coach would sit in amassment how I could still swim so fast while looking like I did (much bigger belly). In my final meet of the year, a fellow swimmer next to me was flabbergasted that I could still out swim him looking the way I did.
