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!
After several years of no improvement, I got a ton faster when I started lifting. This happened over several years (not, I might note, any amount of time that one of these studies has even come close to covering).
I tend to agree with you that the full benefit of lifting may take years to accrue. (Since I haven't been able to hit the gym the past few months as much as I would like, I hope the opposite is true too...that the benfits are slow to fade.:)) That sort of thing is, of course, much harder -- and more expensive -- to study.
But I will point out that an abrupt shift in training routine is sometimes a good way to jolt someone who has hit a plateau. It might not have been only the weight-lifting in your case, but that you were stuck in a rut.
Who knows, at some point in the future you might find the same thing happening and break out of it by cutting back on lifting (or at least changing it) while increasing pool time.
One of the nice things of masters swimming, I think, is that we have the time and inclination to try new things. It isn't a big deal to have a season that is a little off; there are (hopefully) plenty more to come. In fact, it might not be a bad thing to use the last 1-2 years at the "top" of an age group to try a new training routine and see how it works.
After several years of no improvement, I got a ton faster when I started lifting. This happened over several years (not, I might note, any amount of time that one of these studies has even come close to covering).
I tend to agree with you that the full benefit of lifting may take years to accrue. (Since I haven't been able to hit the gym the past few months as much as I would like, I hope the opposite is true too...that the benfits are slow to fade.:)) That sort of thing is, of course, much harder -- and more expensive -- to study.
But I will point out that an abrupt shift in training routine is sometimes a good way to jolt someone who has hit a plateau. It might not have been only the weight-lifting in your case, but that you were stuck in a rut.
Who knows, at some point in the future you might find the same thing happening and break out of it by cutting back on lifting (or at least changing it) while increasing pool time.
One of the nice things of masters swimming, I think, is that we have the time and inclination to try new things. It isn't a big deal to have a season that is a little off; there are (hopefully) plenty more to come. In fact, it might not be a bad thing to use the last 1-2 years at the "top" of an age group to try a new training routine and see how it works.
