Girly Man vs. Manly Girl: the Poll

I think weights are beneficial for a myriad of reasons not just the power return. It think they're worth doing for a general health perspective...even if just a little, like me. I'm curious to hear more from Rob Todd and his bench press to speed example what his weight and body shape was like before and after...I think this too has an impact. I'm trying to find a passage from a book about back health and the effect of gravity and the nerve message responses to the foot connecting with the floor...I think it has some parallel here (actually now I'm just trying to find the damned book!). NB: Errrr, Les if you're not elite...I'm going to quit because you make my kind of average look like crap... :D

Just making fun of his stupid definition of "elite" vs. the rest of us who were "too serious" and "didn't get it" that was widely pilloried in another thread. I think you were boycotting the forum at that juncture and missed it. What a loss. I wasn't boycotting, I just found it hard to swim in the tempestuous sea-storm of tech suit threads ( I felt like CF in the Association Football thread--note to CF: 2010 just around the corner)... Anyhow, I'm trying to make up for it on this thread...and even if you are elite (which, by my reckoning your times say you are)...you're not elitist...that's the crux of the matter :)

Leslie forgot one important reason for lifting. How else can I drag my fat ass out of the pool at the end of practice to make sure I get to the showers? Gary Sr.

I swim 3 times a week & lift 3 time a week . It has helped me over the years & decades # high point trophies in 6 years has to say something.! At 63 1/2 I need all that I can get to stay even !

I don't pretend to have the answers, but to me these seem to be the important questions. Ah, here's where we differ. I do pretend to have the answers! The basic maguffin, as I see it, boils down to the specificity of muscle training. It's well established that running, for example, does not do much for swimming performance or vice versa--beyond, perhaps, a little bit of general cardiovascular resilience. You can be a superb marathoner, in other words, and still become quickly exhausted swimming a 500 yard swim--a fact many of us have seen firsthand when triathletes come to swim practice for the first time and assume their great land shape will transfer immediately to the water. So the point is that only by training the muscles actually recruited and specifically used in a sport are you going to get faster in that sport. The question becomes: Can weight training do this for swimming muscles? Intuitively, the answer seems like a no-brainer. You use your deltoids and pecs in swimming, for instance, so surely training these with weights should help. But there is a difference between muscles on the gross level and muscles on the specific fiber level. Those who believe weight training does NOT help swimming performance suggest it is difficult, if not impossible, to precisely stimulate and train specific swimming muscles on dry land. Maybe with a VASA trainer, which recreates swimming motions. But pumping barbells this way or that? Not likely. Those, on the other hand, who believe weight training does help are convinced that the gross muscular development from lifting taps all the effected muscles--i.e., the micro muscles used in swimming, plus their neighbors that probably don't play a role. In this view, weights are like the proverbial tide that lifts all ships. Get generally stronger, and the HMS Swimming Performance will necessarily power even more quickly through the water. Either way, it is not at all obvious which belief is correct. If you concede that running, or playing golf, or doing gymnastics aren't likely to make you a faster swimmer, you must also acknowledge the possibility that pumping iron might not either. For many land sports, there is strong evidence that lifting helps. For swimming, the data is extremely equivocal at best. To me, this is what is so fascinating about the whole debate: the suggestion that there may indeed be something unique to swimming--a non-weight bearing sport that is extremely technique dependent and which depends at least as much on cutting drag as it does on increasing propulsion. The best way to answer this in the population at large are well-designed studies. But on an individual level, perhaps Jazz Hands is correct. If lifting works for you, who am I to say you're delusional? But you are, Leslie. Absolutely stark raving mad! But in a very adorable way, I must say.

jim, the only reasonable thing for you to do is to experiment for yourself. do some test sprints now like 50 fly or 50 free then swim & lift weights for 3 months or 6 months or till SCY Nats in atlanta, maybe compare your 2009 times with your 2010 times then test again I'm not sure what sort of exercises they did in the study what you do and how you do it matters maybe you should wear jammers like the Speedo FS PRO Jammers or TYR Tracer Light Jammer

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? I recall that you don't believe in periodization, or presumably training progressions (eg increasing loads/intensity over time during a season). But they seem fairly well established in exercise physiology. As Maglischo says, "adaptations will not occur unless the demands of training are greater than the usual demands made on a particular physiological mechanism." Getting stuck in a rut makes sense from that standpoint: you are doing the same old things and going about the same speed. There are diminishing returns from this approach to training. If that wasn't your situation, then fine. Unless you are talking another type of rut, in which case you are on your own.

jim, the only reasonable thing for you to do is to experiment for yourself. do some test sprints now like 50 fly or 50 free then swim & lift weights for 3 months or 6 months or till SCY Nats in atlanta, Excellent suggestion! Jimby was quick to embrace the B70 experiment, and so (since he's been feeling in a "rut") he should be quick to embrace this experiment. This does require less laziness, of course. And I think he should have a more formal program for weights & core, not just a "I'll fool around on the nautilus machines when the mood hits me." I don't see how that system produces any results. At least it didn't for me. Is there anything truly wrong, in the absence of clear science, in relying on anecdotal evidence or personal experiments? And, Sharpsburger, why do you feel lifting has helped you?

jim, the only reasonable thing for you to do is to experiment for yourself. do some test sprints now like 50 fly or 50 free then test again Actually, I am planning to see for myself if lifting makes a difference, though I am hoping for at least as much of a boost in the 500 as the 50 (and the only study so far cited in favor of lifting indicates it may help longer swims more). Our Y has a bunch of free weights, which I don't know how to use, along with two circuits of Nautilus machines. I know that the former are supposedly infinitely superior to the latter, but I've also heard that it's harder to get hurt on machines than with free weights, and this is reasonably important to me. I do about 14 or so of these machines, two or three times a week. They cover legs, arms, and torso, usually in multiple directions (i.e., there are separate machines for abs, obliques, and back.) I started out with light weights, doing 3 sets of 12 each, then have gradually worked my way up over the last two or three weeks to where I am doing 1-2 sets of 8-12. I am getting up to weights that are pretty hard, though still not impossible, to lift at least 12 times. When I finish a set, I definitely can feel a burn and sometimes feel like swooning. I realize this is probably far short of the ideal lifting routine for swimming, but it seems to me that if it doesn't do anything whatsoever for speed and endurance in the water, it's hard to believe a more "pure" (i.e., esoteric and exotic regimen discovered by some guru somewhere and involving new equipment for the Y or me to purchase) would be infinitely better. For what it's worth, I do expect this will help me avoid injuries (if it doesn't injure me itself!) and add a general level of robustness that might make it easier for a decrepit josser like me to make it through my infirm days (once the incredible morning stiffness and functional arthritis of wt training starts to wear off). I profoundly HOPE my swimming will improve, or at least not get a whole lot worse. The illegalizing of the speed suits is going to make seasonal comparisons awfully hard till somebody comes up with a valid with B70/ without B70 equalization formula, the controversy over which will make this thread seem like tiddly winks. Leslie, I will tell you right now: I know I won't be able to raise myself up on your torture wheel, so don't even bring it with you on Thanksgiving. Instead, why don't you do my exact Nautilus circuit when you are here, same weights (you can adjust the settings), and then you can report back here to our voters how hopelessly weak I am--and how much potential for improvement I've got!

I can think of many routines that would be superior (for overall fitness and swimming) than doing 14 nautilus machines. For example, you could eliminate half of those machines and do various squats and lunges instead to better effect.