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!
All things being equal strength developed through lifting will make you faster. Not at the expense of pool time though, in addition to it.
Time to do some lifting!:chug:
jim
just read both sides of the lane line
you picked the wrong side
Leslie schooled you with actual facts
i have to admit yours was pretty funny
the real question is
how much did you improve your 50's from 2008 to 2009
leslie's improvements were:
50m fl from 31.13 to 29.74
50 bk 33.44 to 31.99
50 fr 29.39 to 28.51
you argued cause you went 29.55 and she went 29.74
man up jim, guys are supposed to be 3 seconds per 50 faster than girls
proportionately she whipped you
accept your beating and hit the gym Jim
maybe you'll swim faster faster
ande
I seem to recall that Jim did improve in the 50 free. But then he donned a B70 for the first time at Nats -- after relentlessly attributing my improvements to tech suit use. hehe. :bolt:
(Note: For anyone who cares, my 2008 and 2009 times were all B70.))
Here's what I think,
When and only when your swim technique, efficiency and aerobic base is 100% maximized, will lifting help. This is likely the case for those with tremendous swimming pedigree, such as, but not limited to, 10+ years of age group experience, NCAA experience, olympic experience..etc.
In these cases, lifting can put the crowning touch an what is in all likelyhood crazy fast swim times.
If you lack any of the above experience(s), you may want to reconsider cutting out on any swim time to substitute for lifting.
A few exceptions to that might be someone who really lacks some real basic upper body strength. In those cases it might help in the 50 and 100 sprints.
When I started swimming I had a 300lb bench. Today, five years later, I swim the 50 free 8 seconds faster, the 100 free 13 seconds faster, and the 200 free 45 seconds faster. I have not lifted in five years, but was in a gym the other day and my bench is in the neighborhood of 185-205 lbs.
When my swim times plateu, I will reconsider lifting.
I swam my fastest times after I added a weight routine, along with a running and biking routine. But, I swam those times also when I did the most focused swim training, which included more pool time and meaningful (not garbage) yardage. It is hard to isolate the improvements solely to weights. I'm sure it had some impact, maybe by allowing me to swim more, with better recovery.
I like to think that being in all around better shape makes for improved times and being in all round better shape includes some weight program.
But, since sprinters spend 3-4 minutes a day in the water the need something else to occupy their time, hence the weights.
Lordy, it appears that weight lifting is a form of religion with some people.
Take this on faith! Ignore scientific studies that fail to confirm personal belief based on cognitive dissonance! Let seem be the finale of be!
I honestly don't mean to be kicking the bottom level of playing cards upon which some people seem to have erected a swim based house of cards!
And I will absolutely honor my commitment to provide two shiny new quarters to Mr. Q, a former student at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University if memory serves, and a fellow who knows his way around a p value. (A few quibbles below, Mr. Q.)
Nonetheless, in a modern world where amazing amounts of money are spent to optimize athletic performance in virtually every professional and Olympic and hotdog eating sport imaginable, and where there is a surfeit of Ph.D. candidates in sports science hoping for novel dissertation topics, and no shortage of professors in exercise physiology and related fields out to keep their jobs in a publish or perish environment, do you think it's just a fluke that there should be such a paucity of studies showing no benefit to dryland training in swimming performance?
Such a benefit have been demonstrated scientifically time and again in a variety of other sports, from basketball to endurance running.
Swimming, the vast majority of studies conducted to date, is different from these. Two of our very own distinguished USMS swimmer-scientists told me as much--Dr. Dave Costill, emeritus director of the Ball State Human Performance Lab, and Dr. Joel Stager, director of the Counsilman Center for Swimming Science at the University of Indiana.
Why would these guys, who have spent their lives trying to understand the physiology of peak performance, lie about this?
Do you, Mr. Jazz Hands, also object to research that shows lower training volumes at higher intensity works better than higher training volumes at lower intensity?
Probably not, because it is in line with your preconceived bias.
Science, when conducted in a well designed way, provides insights that anecdotal accounts and wishful thinking simply don't.
Which brings me to Mr. Q's referenced study on Norwegian teenagers...
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1. I will pay you your damn bouncing quarters as soon as I can find what journal published this study.
2. Nevertheless, for the benefit of the huge majority of thread perusers who aren't likely to read the study for themselves, let me post a few excerpts.
These are the author's words, not mine.
...of the three studies investigating the effects of dry-land strength training on swimming (Girold et al. 2007; Tanaka et al. 1993; Trappe and Pearson 1994) only one found benefits between a combined strength and swim training group versus a swim-training only group (Girold et al. 2007).
....Silva et al (2007) used a feed forward neural network models method to predict 400m freestyle performance. They did not find any influence of dry land strength on performance
...Although V in swimming has been of major interest to researchers since the 1960's (Magel and Faulkner 1967), no studies have concluded which methods are more efficient in improving V for competitive swimmers.
....There was an intention to recruit at least five subjects of each gender in each group, but the withdrawals left only two male subjects in the control group.
The 400m performance improved significantly (p
Maybe I'm just sick and tired of lifting, so it is sqewing my thinking a bit.
Phelps never saw a weight until after his first world record and Olympics. In fact, I don't think he lifted until after Athens. Alot of that had to do with his age, but it shows you can be fast without lifting.
Leezak relies heavily on lifting, but his focus is the 100. Nathan Adrian sure looks like he lifts, but I don't think his focus is beyond the 100.
It really depends on what the event is. I think if it is anything other than the 50's and 100's lifting is not critical to improve those times and it should only be done as the final piece of the puzzel.
It's not like swimming has nothing to do with resistance training. One interesting thing is that I can do more pull ups now than when I was a gym rat...............hmmmmmmmmmm, maybe swimming "is" lifting.
It really depends on what the event is. I think if it is anything other than the 50's and 100's lifting is not critical to improve those times and it should only be done as the final piece of the puzzel.
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 hope this does not offend Pope Pious Muscleheaditas Obsessionale. I'd hate to see a repeat of the Galileo affair...
