How much does body weight effect swimming speed?

Who knows, try it out and let us know. Good luck. Trying... but it's a slow process. Weight doesn't exactly fly off when you love cheeseburgers so much :banana: The particular heat in that video was me against all 15-16 year olds at a USAS state championship meet ... so i had their ages doubled, and in many cases, their weight too. Strangely I still feel like i was beating up on a bunch of kids. :cool: (no summer masters meets in my state) This topic always intrigued me though, since I don't exactly fit the fast swimmer mold, but i'm probably faster than most my size. That's kinda why i created the discussion though. Just to try to figure out how much the excess baggage effects overall speed. There aren't many people that even have this discussion because swimmers as a whole are so in-shape, and the out of shape ones typically aren't competing. Anyways, as far as your observation about energy... I definitely feel more energy after starting "training" again even though it's only 3 days a week max. But the comparison is looking back to the 5 year no-excercise hiatus I was on. Naturally doing anything will provide more energy. I think mental commitment is the hardest part though. Physical energy is there if mental energy is there. I haven't noticed any excess of energy that I can attribute to mere weight loss between starting last december, through spring and into summer though.

It's hard to tell if the 4 tenths drop in time was from the weight drop or if it was just the shave alone. You can drop .4 from a shave. You can also drop .4 for a lot of reasons so I wouldn't credit the weight unless it helps you loose more weight. :) My theory is you won't see much difference until you are closer to 200. If you can do squats, go squat 45 followed by 60. Can you tell much difference? Now do 45 followed by 95. You are only accelerating your mass off starts and turns so the squat analogy similar to what weight loss is doing for you in the water, at least for starts and turns. If you maintain the same leg strength as you loose weight, it should help your starts and turns. Since you don't accelerate while swimming (you are fastest off the start and turns), your mass doesn't matter, just drag. Our body shapes differ enough from fat to thin to affect how much drag they cause. Most of the drag is caused by our head, shoulders and arms, so a big hydrodynamic belly doesn't add noticeable drag, and thus loosing weight doesn't make us faster by decreasing our drag.

You can drop .4 from a shave. You can also drop .4 for a lot of reasons so I wouldn't credit the weight unless it helps you loose more weight. :) My theory is you won't see much difference until you are closer to 200. If you can do squats, go squat 45 followed by 60. Can you tell much difference? Now do 45 followed by 95. You are only accelerating your mass off starts and turns so the squat analogy similar to what weight loss is doing for you in the water, at least for starts and turns. If you maintain the same leg strength as you loose weight, it should help your starts and turns. Since you don't accelerate while swimming (you are fastest off the start and turns), your mass doesn't matter, just drag. Our body shapes differ enough from fat to thin to affect how much drag they cause. Most of the drag is caused by our head, shoulders and arms, so a big hydrodynamic belly doesn't add noticeable drag, and thus loosing weight doesn't make us faster by decreasing our drag. Good post. This is certainly a good argument. I'm not relying on weight loss increasing speed or anything as a hinge for success or mental interest. I'll be doing my thing regardless of current weight and speed. I'm just kinda curious if it's really a detriment to speed or if it doesn't matter. What you say makes sense. It's not like i have a big anti-forward-motion-sail shaped gut or anything to hydrodynamically cause excess drag, but mass itself is increasing the downward pull of gravity and thus at least increasing it to some extent. Whether it is enough to cause noticable drag or not like you said is I guess at the heart of the discussion here. Your argument does make me think that the weight will only matter on the walls. But how will it effect inertia in the water? If it hurts on the walls, extra mass should help prevent deceleration to some degree as well won't it?

I wonder if the effects of weight would grow as the distance grows? It would seem that lugging extra weight in a 50 is probably less dramatic than toting it around on a 500/1000/1650. Good question. I can't provide any analytical data on that since i'm a lowly sprinter ;)

If you believe that being large makes you faster, consider gaining weight and see what happens to your time. See you at the drive-thru!

I've often wondered if extra weight hurts butterfly/breaststroke more than free/back. I think that there is more change in velocity when swimming the short-axis strokes, especially breaststroke. From an acceleration standpoint... as hard as it is to accelerate the weight, it's technically just as hard to decelerate it too. In this theory, it should even out and the extra weight could help keep a more constant speed, though obviously not completely constant. Doesn't seem like it could really be that way though? :confused:

My two bits are: Form drag is proportional to your forward facing profile so basically to your girth at its largest point. If you have extra weight distributed evenly so your maximum girth isn't that much larger you are better off than having all your weight concentrated at your stomach. Weight concentrated in your stomach is also a greater health risk. I think that the velocity profiles posted by Budd Termin do a pretty good job of disproving that you only accelerate off the start and walls, there's a fair bit of acceleration in each stroke cycle. Looking at the example with the velocity curve after the push off you get a pretty good idea of which wins when drag meets inertia.

I'm just kinda curious if it's really a detriment to speed or if it doesn't matter. Please keep experimenting and updating us :) but mass itself is increasing the downward pull of gravity and thus at least increasing it to some extent. I know this is counter intuitive, but weight and gravity don't matter. You are pushing a heavily laden shopping cart (we must be at Lowes), and it doesn't take much effort to push it down the aisle (if the wheels are round), but starting, stopping and turning require a lot of effort. You are just trying to over come the water drag, because you are a body in motion, and you will stay in motion as long as you continue to overcome drag. If you miss a flip turn on the other hand... sucks to be fat. ;) But how will it effect inertia in the water? If it hurts on the walls, extra mass should help prevent deceleration to some degree as well won't it? Yes, but is it noticeable? Do you make it much further off the wall compared to a 200lb guy before you need to start swimming to maintain speed?

I've often wondered if extra weight hurts butterfly/breaststroke more than free/back. I think that there is more change in velocity when swimming the short-axis strokes, especially breaststroke. If you really want to figure this out, there is probably enough data points in Ande's blog on weight and times for all 4 strokes to draw a conclusion. I think your assumption on swimming velocities is correct. Freestyle Velocity Meter/Video Telemetry on Vimeo Freestyle Velocity Meter/Video Telemetry on Vimeo

Yes, but is it noticeable? Do you make it much further off the wall compared to a 200lb guy before you need to start swimming to maintain speed? That's certainly the question this thread begs. Actual measurements of this I'm sure are difficult to set up and attain. Based on the Gary Hall threads, it seems there isn't all that much research on actual drag for normal sized swimmers, let alone the effects of weight on drag versus increased inertia. I can only answer the glide question partially... with a pushoff and no kicking, i tend to glide far and hold a greater speed over the glide than I can ever remember back in the day. Unfortunately i'm without a solid workout partner to compare to, so there's really no basis for me to say i'm better or worse at gliding than others of the same speed... and being a sprinter there's really no race comparisons I can throw out there that don't also involve massive kicking underwater (something i'm awesome at) to throw off a purely inertia discussion.