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!
Former Member
When I went into grade 11 in high school I took a strength training class. I was never able to do fly well and it was my worst stroke. I was a summer swimmer then so I only swam from May to August. The summer after grade 11 I took 4 seconds off my 50 fly. The strength training I am sure gave me the ability to become fast. In a one or two year time frame fly went from my worst stroke to my best.
There was a website in 2003 that I read that referred to a small study of weight training to improve sprint freestyle. I looked for 20 minutes but I can't find any information about it. In this study one group did a generic weight training routine and the second group just did a lat exercise and dips. The first group didn't improve after 6 weeks and some tapering time but the second group had slightly faster 25 free times.
Currently I am doing a modified version of Jason Lezak's routine. What is important is to focus on exercises that relate to swimming and not to train like a body builder. You aren't trying to bulk up so doing a higher number of reps with a lower amount of weight is important.
www.bodybuilding.com/.../jasonlezak1.htm
Arthur,
I disagree with your generalization that higher reps at lower weight are better than lower reps at higher weight.
If you believe that Lezak's plan is good, you don't actually believe higher rep, lower weight is the best way to train either. The power lifting phase should not be low weight and is not high rep.
I said lower weight and higher reps are important because a lot of people who go to the gym will never do more then 10 or 12 reps. Most gym routines found online stop at 8 or 10 reps. I do agree with the article that alternating months doing power training will help you if you are training for 50m or 100m events but might be detrimental if you are training for longer distances. I will do some power training but focusing on endurance I think is more important for where I am physically.
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.
I'm struggling with the logic. It seems to be:
If a general lifting routine does not work, a targeted routine won't work either.
Am I missing something?
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.)
Correction: Phelps did not lift until 2005, so his 2008 performance came after 3 years of a training regimen that included weights. But it's impossible to know how he would have performed had he not done any dry-land strength training.
He credits the weight training for a faster push-off from the wall.
Phelps began lifting weights in 2005, which has given him a more powerful push off the wall.
In races, Phelps now travels more than 10 meters from the wall, where "you're going faster than you could ever swim," Bowman says, before taking a stroke. Other swimmers average 6 or 7 meters on turns.
"How do you beat that?" asks Matt Biondi, the American swimmer who won a total of 11 medals, including eight gold, over three Olympic Games. "When your lungs are burning and you can hardly feel your arms and you're battling a guy head-to-head, and then all of a sudden he gets a turbo boost and you've got to run him down?"
In Melbourne, no one came close to running down Phelps. Even his mom couldn't believe it.
"I was in awe," she says. "It was like, 'Michael, what are you doing?' "
But this issue of Swimmer magazine was perhaps the worst one I have received in five years. Almost nothing worth reading.
Don't ruin the surprise for everyone!
I'm still waiting for mine too. By the time it arrives this thread will probably be dead.
...or most probably devolved into a tech suit thread...
I found a study from Ball State that compared 2 groups of swimmers, one of which added weight-enhanced dips and pull-ups to their training regimen.
After 3 months, the weight-users shaved 1/3 sec. off their 25 yard crawl compared to the control group, but there was no difference in 400 yard crawl performance.
Whether that 1/3 sec. is statistically significant, I have no idea. Whether it matters for real-world competition is dubious, especially given the lack of advantage at 400 yards.
But then again, is 12 weeks long enough? And although dips and pull-ups might seem like the right exercises to do, the Phelps example provides at least some indication that they might not be. Perhaps weight-enhanced squats would have been a better choice.
On the other hand, a surprising study was done at U. Buffalo which had swimmers work out their lung muscles for one month by breathing against a valve that provided resistance.
Subjects who followed a resistance-breathing training program improved their respiratory muscle strength and their snorkel swimming time by 33 percent and underwater scuba swimming time by 66 percent when compared to baseline values. Participants using a program requiring high respiratory flow rates (endurance) improved their respiratory endurance and surface and underwater swimming times by 38 percent and 26 percent, respectively. The placebo training group showed no significant improvement in respiratory or swimming performance.....
"Results showed that the RRMT and ERMT protocols used in this study significantly extended swimming endurance through an improvement in respiratory muscle performance," said researchers. "These data are in agreement with previous studies in cyclists, rowers and runners. They suggest that athletes in most sports could improve their performance by undergoing respiratory muscle training. It is also clear that the greater the stress on the respiratory system, the larger the improvement in performance."
Maybe instead of lifting weights we should be blowing up balloons?
