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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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.
Rut theory makes no sense. It's like training voodoo. Can't explain a sudden increase in performance (or can, but don't like the explanation)? Must have been a rut. What is a rut? How does breaking out of a rut cause faster swimming?
In my case, I was never in any particular routine for a couple years after high school. I'm assuming a rut comes with a routine? I tried everything I could think of in the pool. For a while I was very focused on technique, and I would do 3-4 hours a day in slo-mo working on my catch. The I did a month of nothing but SDK (seriously). I did a month of just nothing. A month with a high school team and my old coach.
The entire time, I was anti-lifting, for these reasons: I didn't consider myself a "meathead", I had read Jim's favorite studies, and I believed in specificity of training (basically, swimming is resistance training, and if one needs strength or muscle mass to swim, one will get it from swimming). I started lifting not because I wanted to swim faster, but because I wanted to be a big guy. My first nationals, a couple months in, I went sorta fast, had a lifetime best in the 500, but nothing special in the sprints. A year and some 30 pounds later, my first event at nats was a relay on which I split 20.9. I remember asking for my split and saying "are you sure?" and then "oh my god it worked!" As in, I just dropped over a second in a year.
That turned out more autobiographical than I expected, but there you have it. My story of why I joined the church of lifting, as Jim sees it. Of course, Jim can't stay with me in the 500. He might have when I was skinnier...
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.
Rut theory makes no sense. It's like training voodoo. Can't explain a sudden increase in performance (or can, but don't like the explanation)? Must have been a rut. What is a rut? How does breaking out of a rut cause faster swimming?
In my case, I was never in any particular routine for a couple years after high school. I'm assuming a rut comes with a routine? I tried everything I could think of in the pool. For a while I was very focused on technique, and I would do 3-4 hours a day in slo-mo working on my catch. The I did a month of nothing but SDK (seriously). I did a month of just nothing. A month with a high school team and my old coach.
The entire time, I was anti-lifting, for these reasons: I didn't consider myself a "meathead", I had read Jim's favorite studies, and I believed in specificity of training (basically, swimming is resistance training, and if one needs strength or muscle mass to swim, one will get it from swimming). I started lifting not because I wanted to swim faster, but because I wanted to be a big guy. My first nationals, a couple months in, I went sorta fast, had a lifetime best in the 500, but nothing special in the sprints. A year and some 30 pounds later, my first event at nats was a relay on which I split 20.9. I remember asking for my split and saying "are you sure?" and then "oh my god it worked!" As in, I just dropped over a second in a year.
That turned out more autobiographical than I expected, but there you have it. My story of why I joined the church of lifting, as Jim sees it. Of course, Jim can't stay with me in the 500. He might have when I was skinnier...
