I have been reading up on training and considering what I want to do for next season. During this, I came across this article reviewing several peer reviewed studies on the benefits of strength training endurance athletes including swimmers. Two interesting things were pointed out in this review.
Strength training for highly trained swimmers showed no benefit in swimming performance tests when compared to swimmers without the strength training.
Strength training for moderately trained (or less) athletes showed noticeable benefit.
I think most masters swimmers would consider themselves in category 2. If you consider yourself in category 1, that while there was no benefit shown for strength training, there was also no detriment shown. Based on this, if you have the time and the desire, there is no reason not to add strength training to your current program.
If anyone has read more current research (the referenced studies are 15-20 years old), or you have personal experience to share, please do.
You are pretty current, the only other thing is a study showing that maximum strength training helped sprint performance as much as resisted and assisted sprinting in well trained swimmers.
Unless you're really cranking out the yards, like 40k a week or so then probably safe to say that strength training can improve your performance. But the better you are and the more fit you are the less likely it is help.
This excludes anything you might do to keep your shoulders in line. If you have injuries then doing your rehab is important.
I have been reading up on training and considering what I want to do for next season. During this, I came across this
You are pretty current, the only other thing is a study showing that maximum strength training helped sprint performance as much as resisted and assisted sprinting in well trained swimmers.
Unless you're really cranking out the yards, like 40k a week or so then probably safe to say that strength training can improve your performance. But the better you are and the more fit you are the less likely it is help.
This excludes anything you might do to keep your shoulders in line. If you have injuries then doing your rehab is important.
I have been reading up on training and considering what I want to do for next season. During this, I came across this
