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
Parents
Former Member
One final thought: a couple years ago, I lost a significant amount of weight (from 180 to 159; I am 6' 1") and it didn't seem to correlate with any improvements in my swimming (though I did seem to bonk from exercise induced hypglycemia more often at practice.)
This is something that I had also noticed in my other sport - cross country ski racing. This is a high endurance activity and I noticed a couple of years ago that I started to bonk in 10 K races (30-40 minutes) and often couldn't frinish the 25 & 50 K races. This was never a problem when I weighed over 200 lbs but became one for weights below that level. I was really puzzled until I realized that I was no longer carrying around the food stores needed for races of 40 min to 4 hours in duration. I have now figured out how to compensate for the food shortage but it was pretty discouraging for a while.
Especially after all the hype from the weight-loss ***...
One final thought: a couple years ago, I lost a significant amount of weight (from 180 to 159; I am 6' 1") and it didn't seem to correlate with any improvements in my swimming (though I did seem to bonk from exercise induced hypglycemia more often at practice.)
This is something that I had also noticed in my other sport - cross country ski racing. This is a high endurance activity and I noticed a couple of years ago that I started to bonk in 10 K races (30-40 minutes) and often couldn't frinish the 25 & 50 K races. This was never a problem when I weighed over 200 lbs but became one for weights below that level. I was really puzzled until I realized that I was no longer carrying around the food stores needed for races of 40 min to 4 hours in duration. I have now figured out how to compensate for the food shortage but it was pretty discouraging for a while.
Especially after all the hype from the weight-loss ***...
