My great friend, the charming ignoramus Leslie "the Fortess" Livingston, and I recently had the opportunity to bandy about a debate topic in the November issue of Swimmer magazine.
Leslie has asked me to create a poll to see which of us had the more persuasive arguments vis a vis the usefulness of weight lifting to behoove swimming performance.
I tried to talk Leslie out of such a poll, because I wasn't sure her delicate albeit manly temperament could take the likely beat down she would get, vote wise.
After all, her teenage daughter had already proclaimed, in uncertain terms, that she was best off pleading Nolo contendere here (see en.wikipedia.org/.../Nolo_contendere if your legal skills are as atrophied as Leslie's). In her daughter's own words, "He totally owned you, Mom! Like totally! It was so awesome! He's so totally funny, and you are so totally uptight, Mom! I mean, it was like so totally embarrassing how much he owned you! Please tell me I'm adopted! Please tell me Jim Thornton is my real mother!"
Unfortunately, this kind of advanced rhetorical argument on my part fell on deaf ears, just as my advanced rhetorical argument--in which actual studies were cited!--also fell on deaf ears. Evidently, the dear girl has overdone the neck thickening machine, and in the process, mastoid muscle processes seem to have overgrown her ear canals!
I know that not everyone has received their copy of Swimmer yet. Rumor has it that those of us who live in the higher class zip codes get the extra virgin pressed copies, with the rest of you having to wait to the ink starts getting stale.
You will get your copies one day, I assure you! Just as you will get your H1N1 swine flu vaccines dosages when me and my friends at Goldman have had our third inoculations!
But I am getting a bit off the track here.
If you've read our Inane Point (Leslie) - Brilliant Counterpoint (Jim) *** for tat debate, Leslie asks that you vote in this poll for the person you think was RHETORICALLY superior.
Note: this does not mean which of us was right.
Hell, I have already conceded Leslie was right, and have begun weight lifting myself thrice weekly!
I am one bulked up monstrosity of a girly man at this point, and I don't plan to stop till you can bounce quarters off my moobs.
So. Forget all aspects of actual rational correctness here, and certainly forget all aspects of who is more popular.
And vote with your pitiless inner rhetoritician calling the shots.
Leslie, I warned you: Nolo contendere was the smart plea. But no, you just wouldn't hear of it!
I certainly have my opinion on the matter but I won't vote on who is more persuasive until I see the two essays (I don't have my magazine yet). I doubt that either one will convince me to change my training routine, which evolves over time but for the moment includes lifting.
Alas, the only published literature thus far cited, Mr. Q's referenced study in 2009 Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, found that dryland did help the 400 m in their small population of Norwegian teenage girls, however, and I quote:
The 50m (p = 0.11) and 100m (p = 0.12) performances did not significantly improve.
I only had time to skim the article, but the sample sizes were quite small so these p-values are, at least, not anything to sneeze at. And did you notice the disclaimer that times that some swimmers did just after the study, if included, would have resulted in a significant difference? Any study that hinges on such things needs a better design (in this case, larger N would probably do it).
The authors also note that the shorter distances were more greatly affected by technique (eg a blown turn). It is interesting, at least, that the 400m distance showed the strongest effect.
Making people slower by telling them not to do things that obviously work? Using boring details from scientific literature to entirely miss the point that's so easy to grasp that nobody other than you even argues about it?
Peer-reviewed blah blah blah. It doesn't matter. Show me a SINGLE PEER REVIEWED STUDY OMG that shows that eating five full-sized chocolate cakes every day makes people gain weight. Oh no! We may have to rely on basic common sense to figure out what happens.
Playing devil's advocate...
Common sense has its place but sometimes the world can be counter-intuitive. While I understand that the state of science sometimes lags behind "common sense," there appear to have been at least some attempts to investigate the correlation between dryland strength training and swimming performance. If the effect is as "obvious" and the correlation as strong as you suggest, then probably even those limited studies would have shown a consistent effect.
It's funny, because you are often one of the first people to question what is accepted as rarely-challenged dogma in this sport. Why not this as well?
(But I am saying this without having seriously researched this topic. Mostly I lift because at the moment I like it as cross-training; I also believe it helps my swimming but that is really secondary.)
I certainly have my opinion on the matter but I won't vote on who is more persuasive until I see the two essays (I don't have my magazine yet). I doubt that either one will convince me to change my training routine, which evolves over time but for the moment includes lifting.
Alas, the only published literature thus far cited, Mr. Q's referenced study in 2009 Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, found that dryland did help the 400 m in their small population of Norwegian teenage girls, however, and I quote:
The 50m (p = 0.11) and 100m (p = 0.12) performances did not significantly improve.
I only had time to skim the article, but the sample sizes were quite small so these p-values are, at least, not anything to sneeze at. And did you notice the disclaimer that times that some swimmers did just after the study, if included, would have resulted in a significant difference? Any study that hinges on such things needs a better design (in this case, larger N would probably do it).
The authors also note that the shorter distances were more greatly affected by technique (eg a blown turn). It is interesting, at least, that the 400m distance showed the strongest effect.
Making people slower by telling them not to do things that obviously work? Using boring details from scientific literature to entirely miss the point that's so easy to grasp that nobody other than you even argues about it?
Peer-reviewed blah blah blah. It doesn't matter. Show me a SINGLE PEER REVIEWED STUDY OMG that shows that eating five full-sized chocolate cakes every day makes people gain weight. Oh no! We may have to rely on basic common sense to figure out what happens.
Playing devil's advocate...
Common sense has its place but sometimes the world can be counter-intuitive. While I understand that the state of science sometimes lags behind "common sense," there appear to have been at least some attempts to investigate the correlation between dryland strength training and swimming performance. If the effect is as "obvious" and the correlation as strong as you suggest, then probably even those limited studies would have shown a consistent effect.
It's funny, because you are often one of the first people to question what is accepted as rarely-challenged dogma in this sport. Why not this as well?
(But I am saying this without having seriously researched this topic. Mostly I lift because at the moment I like it as cross-training; I also believe it helps my swimming but that is really secondary.)
