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!
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Former Member
At this time I agreed more with Jim's view, but I wanted to side with Leslie, because I believed that weights would help... however my direct experimentation on myself with a weight training program beginning in February of 2009 through last week actually... decreased my performance. Now my weight training was not properly supervised or coached, perhaps I over did it here and there, but I was consistent with my workouts (it just isn't reflected in my blogs, I didn't blog every gym session).
I did get stronger with the ability to lift more weight, but I did not get faster as a result. I got slower. I have an excellent stroke coach; so the majority of my swim workouts were supervised, therefore its not due to bad form. Perhaps results vary with individuals and it a given that I wasn't following a exact methodology paired with a control group to have a good comparative scientific study.
Are you comparing taper pre weights to taper post weights?
In season, some days I want to cry at swim practice after a hard lifting session I feel so slow.
Not sure why adding weights to your existing training program would make you slower. Did you bulk up? In season injuries from lifting?
If you are at the peak of your game and you add weights, I could see that it would detract from the max effort you could put in the pool, thus hurting your season. But for most masters swimmers, I would expect adding weights to either be beneficial or make no difference. A season is not really long enough to put on enough muscle for the added weight to be a problem, but an injury would really hurt your training.
At this time I agreed more with Jim's view, but I wanted to side with Leslie, because I believed that weights would help... however my direct experimentation on myself with a weight training program beginning in February of 2009 through last week actually... decreased my performance. Now my weight training was not properly supervised or coached, perhaps I over did it here and there, but I was consistent with my workouts (it just isn't reflected in my blogs, I didn't blog every gym session).
I did get stronger with the ability to lift more weight, but I did not get faster as a result. I got slower. I have an excellent stroke coach; so the majority of my swim workouts were supervised, therefore its not due to bad form. Perhaps results vary with individuals and it a given that I wasn't following a exact methodology paired with a control group to have a good comparative scientific study.
Are you comparing taper pre weights to taper post weights?
In season, some days I want to cry at swim practice after a hard lifting session I feel so slow.
Not sure why adding weights to your existing training program would make you slower. Did you bulk up? In season injuries from lifting?
If you are at the peak of your game and you add weights, I could see that it would detract from the max effort you could put in the pool, thus hurting your season. But for most masters swimmers, I would expect adding weights to either be beneficial or make no difference. A season is not really long enough to put on enough muscle for the added weight to be a problem, but an injury would really hurt your training.
