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!
Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.
Note: given the soaring costs of healthcare today, I would add that the question needing to be answered here is not just whether parachutes work to reduce gravitational trauma, but whether they do so in a cost-effective manner.
How many parachutes per capita must be used, and at what unit cost per parachute, to reduce this putative "trauma" in a financially prudent way?
During the Second World War, it must be noted, the Russians decided that parachutes were not cost effective, and they simply pushed their troops out of planes at an elevation of 600 feet, hoping for a landing in a snowbank.
Sometimes it is possible to lose the forest for the trees.
Or in the case of Russian paratroopers, be impaled by them.
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.
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?
Well, Jazzbone, it may not make sense to you because you are young, in great shape, no kids, etc. I didn't know what a rut was in my 20s but, let me tell you, you will find out about the rut when you get to be in your 40s. I don't know a single dedicated adult fitness fanatic (not run of the mill person but hard core fanatic) who hasn't been in a rut. Everyone finds their own way out, whether it be cross training, a bolt of lightning, getting fat (like I did). When you come out of it, you feel like a million bucks and it makes the next rut a little easier to manage.
Be careful in discounting the experiences of others simply because you haven't experienced them.
Sharpsburger, why do you feel lifting has helped you?
It's pretty simple, really.
A few years back, I tried to get back into swimming. But I wasn't conditioned. I did some lifting, enough not to be completely untoned, but didn't take it very seriously.
When I got in the pool, it was like hiking through a snowdrift. I had no speed, couldn't establish a pace, and wore out very quickly.
Well, a couple of years ago I decided to get serious about conditioning. I used trainers to help me set up my workouts and started spending an hour a day in the gym.
So 2 months ago when I once again attempted to start a swimming routine, I was amazed at the difference. At that point, I was strong enough so that right off the bat I was skimming thru the water and recovering my old stroke from over 25 years ago, and an hour workout was no problem.
Clearly, the strength training made the difference.
So it's of tremendous benefit for someone in my situation, a returning swimmer.
On the other hand, I recall watching an interview w/ Phelps (60 Minutes, iirc) in which he said he never lifted, so I'm willing to accept that weights make no difference for swimming-conditioned athletes. (I'll see if I can find the cite and link it.)
That said, part of my job involves researching health news, and the points you make in your article about the general health benefits of lifting are right on target. Still, swimming itself is a type of resistance training, so perhaps those benefits can be had thru pool work. I don't know of any studies that compare lifting and swimming. (But I have read recent studies comparing swimming and running over the long term, and swimmers turn out to be healthier and to live longer.)
You CAN hurt yourself on machines.
In fact, some machines are downright dangerous. The Smith machine, for example. (That's the one with the bar locked into a vertical track.) It's on every list of "machines you should never use" that I've ever seen.
What worked for me was a combination of cable machines and free weights, along with lunges, push-ups, and stabilizer-ball work. I don't do anything on Nautilus machines -- they overisolate the muscle so you're kind of shooting yourself in the foot.
Cycling is also fantastic. Not stationary bikes, but real cycling.
I only had time to skim the article, but the sample sizes were quite small so these p-values are, at least, not anything to sneeze at. And did you notice the disclaimer that times that some swimmers did just after the study, if included, would have resulted in a significant difference? Any study that hinges on such things needs a better design (in this case, larger N would probably do it).
Wouldn't this be an issue of taper? Sprints are a finicky events, and having two subjects drop over a half second each on a 50 is pretty big but very reasonable if the initial tests were done before they peaked.
"Time trials of 50m, 100m and 400m front crawl maximal swimming were conducted one to four days" and they go on to say that as a not short term study, this isn't a big deal.
Four days isn't a big deal to a taper?
Based on the p values, I think N was fine, the test setup was flawed.
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.
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.
I agree with this 100% and I think swim studies should recruit from masters swimming for research instead of age group and collegiate swimmers. Think of how many Masters swimmers are willing to experiment with training, stroke or nutrition for a season compared to swimmers who are trying to make Jrs/Srs/Trials/NCAAs/etc times.
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...
