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!
Chris, you are, as always, a voice of reason in a world of bellicosity!
I honestly don't intend anything I've posted here or anywhere else to actually influence anybody's opinon on anything!
Really!
I just find the world, as you put it, increasingly counterintuitive--with more and more elements of the Conventional Wisdom failing to survive critical scrutiny.
Remember, for example, when:
Having sex within two years of a big competition was a recipe for sapping all your energy and aggression and would doom your chances?
Guzzling endless ounces of bottled water was essential to cognitive, muscular, emotional, and virtually every other aspect of human health?
Cigarettes were good for your digestion?
Bounce stretching your knees before a long run was the key to preventing running injuries?
Vitamin E and folic acid would prevent heart attacks?
Imagining little white blood cell "warriors" gobbling up cancer cells would cure you of the disease?
Back surgery works?
The sun revolves around the Earth?
The key to sprinting fast was swimming 15,000 meters a day?
Infectious diseases were so well understood that only second rate researchers should consider pursuing this for a career?
The earth is 10,000 years old?
As far as the Q-cited study goes, I do find it at least a little intriguing, and I would love to think that my recently adopted Nautilus visits might have even a marginally beneficial impact on my own 400 m. swimming performance.
However, I won't be terribly surprised if it doesn't make much difference one way or the other.
One thing I did wonder about with such a small sample group of swimmers, most of them in the 14-17 year old range, is the possibility of a placebo effect.
Imagine you are a teenager, and you have been lifting heavy weights for a while, and you are facing a time trial in an event that involves a reasonable amount of gumption to do well in.
You can be in a bad mood and still blast out a 50. But I am convinced that psychological factors, especially motivation and expectation, matter more in something where you need to sustain a painful effort for a reasonably long period of time.
So you have Teenager #1 who knows he or she has been lifting, subscribes to Jazz Hands conventional wisdom certainty that this must have helped somehow, and they take off on the race figuring they have a real ace in the hole.
Compare this to Teenager #2, in the control group, who knows that he or she has not added this magical adjunctive workout measure. When they take off on the race, they may well lack that kind of cocky drive that comes from feeling you do, indeed, have an ace in the hole.
This is not to denigrate the fact that Teenager #1 improves and Teenager #2 doesn't. But to declare that muscular changes are the absolute reason for this is just not supported by the study. It could be, as they say, all in the muscleheaded head.
In which case, it really shouldn't matter what kind of dryland training you do, as long as you believe it will help you.
Hence the popularity of ever more exotic techniques, from BOSU balls to plyometrics, where the self-deluding cognoscenti believe they have an inner secret to swimming improvement not generally available to their competitors.
Dara and mashing, perchance?
The more extreme the placebo intervention, the greater its effect. Sham heart surgery, for example, was extremely effective as students of 1950s mammarial artery ligation procedures learned!
Chris, you are, as always, a voice of reason in a world of bellicosity!
I honestly don't intend anything I've posted here or anywhere else to actually influence anybody's opinon on anything!
Really!
I just find the world, as you put it, increasingly counterintuitive--with more and more elements of the Conventional Wisdom failing to survive critical scrutiny.
Remember, for example, when:
Having sex within two years of a big competition was a recipe for sapping all your energy and aggression and would doom your chances?
Guzzling endless ounces of bottled water was essential to cognitive, muscular, emotional, and virtually every other aspect of human health?
Cigarettes were good for your digestion?
Bounce stretching your knees before a long run was the key to preventing running injuries?
Vitamin E and folic acid would prevent heart attacks?
Imagining little white blood cell "warriors" gobbling up cancer cells would cure you of the disease?
Back surgery works?
The sun revolves around the Earth?
The key to sprinting fast was swimming 15,000 meters a day?
Infectious diseases were so well understood that only second rate researchers should consider pursuing this for a career?
The earth is 10,000 years old?
As far as the Q-cited study goes, I do find it at least a little intriguing, and I would love to think that my recently adopted Nautilus visits might have even a marginally beneficial impact on my own 400 m. swimming performance.
However, I won't be terribly surprised if it doesn't make much difference one way or the other.
One thing I did wonder about with such a small sample group of swimmers, most of them in the 14-17 year old range, is the possibility of a placebo effect.
Imagine you are a teenager, and you have been lifting heavy weights for a while, and you are facing a time trial in an event that involves a reasonable amount of gumption to do well in.
You can be in a bad mood and still blast out a 50. But I am convinced that psychological factors, especially motivation and expectation, matter more in something where you need to sustain a painful effort for a reasonably long period of time.
So you have Teenager #1 who knows he or she has been lifting, subscribes to Jazz Hands conventional wisdom certainty that this must have helped somehow, and they take off on the race figuring they have a real ace in the hole.
Compare this to Teenager #2, in the control group, who knows that he or she has not added this magical adjunctive workout measure. When they take off on the race, they may well lack that kind of cocky drive that comes from feeling you do, indeed, have an ace in the hole.
This is not to denigrate the fact that Teenager #1 improves and Teenager #2 doesn't. But to declare that muscular changes are the absolute reason for this is just not supported by the study. It could be, as they say, all in the muscleheaded head.
In which case, it really shouldn't matter what kind of dryland training you do, as long as you believe it will help you.
Hence the popularity of ever more exotic techniques, from BOSU balls to plyometrics, where the self-deluding cognoscenti believe they have an inner secret to swimming improvement not generally available to their competitors.
Dara and mashing, perchance?
The more extreme the placebo intervention, the greater its effect. Sham heart surgery, for example, was extremely effective as students of 1950s mammarial artery ligation procedures learned!
