This has been something I've wondered the last few years. I used to be a college swimmer, fit and trim, but the 10 years since then I've drank my fair share of beer and ate plenty of cheeseburgers. Just curious what peoples' take is on how much the extra baggage really effects swim races.
I don't really fit the swimmer mold anymore. I'm 31, 6'2", and 270lbs with a huge beer gut. I got some strange looks since the meet i was in recently was a USAS meet and I outweighed my competition by 100lbs in many cases. My first race in about 5 years i went 23.4 in the 50y free. I didn't expect to be that fast at this weight but at the same time I almost wonder if the added intertia is helping me more on the start and turns. Followed it up with a low 52 in the 100y free but I had a horrible reaction on the start and incorrect pacing. I think if i raced again today that'd be deep in the 51 range. For reference, typical non-taper times for me in college were in the low-mid 22 range at just a tick over 200lbs but I was obviously a lot stronger, younger, and doing a TON more yards at the time, that's why it makes me wonder just how much the weight is actually holding me back.
How much time do you think I stand to drop if i were 50lbs lighter? Could it be a measurable difference or something just slight? I guess I ask that to see if it'd be worth my while to drop that much weight quickly by dieting in addition to the swimming i'm doing. I don't really like dieting, and i generally eat what I want, when i want. Not gorging myself at every meal doesn't really seem to fit into my lifestyle :blush: Anyone have a similar story? "I dropped XX lbs and went XX seconds faster because of it."
Maybe it's an immeasurable, but I thought I'd ask for opinion anyway. I'm hoping it doesn't turn into a "to diet or not to diet" discussion though.
Former Member
The math is right, the science is wrong. There is something important missing. There is not a skinny guy waiting inside you to go sub 21 on weight loss alone, sorry :)
I know ;)
I like the discussion so far though. You guys are probably the pioneers in fat-man-hydrodynamics :) All the theories are great so far, keep em coming. :)
Thought provoking article on this topic.
www.theglobeandmail.com/.../
It concludes that the worst thing, in the terms of a physical capability, for a man is to have fat on his belly (at the front, not the sides).
For many years I saw that men swimmers`average performance drops sharply when they move up to 50-54 age group. But, in the same time, I noticed that the "average belly size" rose most visibly in that age group. Is there a positive correlation?
From my personal experience my best performance (speed, power and the ability to control my body movements) was achieved when I had the smallest waist line (no front belly).
If the above conclusion is correct, you, as an aged swimmer, should design your strength development program with a goal of reducing your belly fat instead of building more muscles.
Lindsay,
I have been thinking about your comments since you made them.
Form drag is proportional to your forward facing profile
True, but it does not appear to be that simple. Assume fmracing had a 36" waist when he swam 21.7 and has a 42" waist now swimming a 23.4, but than being rounder, he is in just as good of shape now as he was at his peak.*
If his waist is the largest cross section, and it is a circle, his cross sectional area increased by 40%. Since he is in just as good as shape now as he was when he was swimming 21s, he should have trouble breaking 30s.
A skinny swimmer could have a higher drag coefficient compared to a fat swimmer and this could offset the increase in cross sectional area.
At 200 lbs vs 270 lbs, the surface area of fmracing's skin increased by 16%**. If skin friction is the primary source of drag, then he should not be able to break 25.
If the arms are considered separately, the arms of a fat person vs a skinny person are still pretty similar, and if they are the primary drag causers, that would explain why fast fat people can exist. They still have to overcome form drag of their increased girth, the skin friction from their increased surface area, but primarily they are dealing with drag caused by their arms which minimizes the impact of the former causes of drag.
* My assumptions are very conservative. When more realistic assumptions are made, the difference becomes more pronounced.
** Mosteller's formula for estimating surface area hypertextbook.com/.../IgorFridman.shtml
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.
This is correct, I was oversimplifying.
Awesome post!
Assume fmracing had a 36" waist when he swam 21.7 and has a 42" waist now swimming a 23.4, but than being rounder, he is in just as good of shape now as he was at his peak.*
I will say this is pretty darn close for dimensions. :)
I will add that as far as I can tell, all the weight is gut or waist based. The rest of the upper body , arms included, are virtually the same size as they were years ago at peak, perhaps with a little less strength now due to no weight training.
Since it is hard to do experiments involving actual weight loss perhaps we can get a slim swimmer to put on one of those big flotation belts to simulate a larger sized body. They might have to also wear a weight belt to counter the buoyancy.
As Gary Sr points out in another thread buoyancy can increase speed.
Actually, here's a possible way of testing it.
To increase buoyancy uniformly over the body, have a swimmer wear a couple different wet suits of increasing thickness. Provided they all have a negligible effect on stroke mechanics, the thicker the neoprene, the more buoyant the swimmer, and the faster he/or she should go (at least that is out hypothesis.)
You can buy lead tape to put on tennis racquets to adjust the center of gravity. Perhaps a few strips of lead tape arrayed here and there would be able to add weight without appreciably changing a swimmer's physique.
These two adjustments could at least help judge the relative roles of buoyancy and weight as independent factors. To analyze how being overweight in different parts of the body (hips vs. gut, for example), perhaps there might be some way to put neutrally buoyand material--silicone?--under the wet suit that would pooch out the abdomen or butt in a relatively smooth way to see how this effects speed.
A couple years ago, I went through a somewhat depressing experience that pretty much turned me off my feed for a number of months, I went from my previous fattish weight of 184 down to 164.
I also upped my swimming mileage fairly significantly because it seemed to be one of the best strategies I could come up with to defuse the melancholic heeby jeeby restless agitation of my state.
There are probably all kinds of reasons one could argue why semi-anorexia induced by depression should not be ideal for swimming performance, but I guess hope springs eternal, and I thought that if nothing else, the additional working out and the weight loss would conspire to provide at least one silver lining to the whole wretched time of my life then, i.e., better swimming times.
It didn't make any difference. I swam no faster or, for that matter, slower than before.
It was the same as it always is.
Now, maybe losing 20 lb. when you aren't terribly fat to begin with (though I definitely have the abdominal bulge) isn't enough to make a measurable difference. Or maybe what you gain in terms of weight loss is overwhelmed by other factors, like suboptimal nutrition.
But when I mentioned the fact that losing 10 percent of my body weight had had not appreciable benefit to my swimming, a friend told me he, too, had experimented with swimming at different weights, and that he found it made no difference for him either. He's a USMS All American and very smart guy. But he also was talking weight changes, like mine, of 10-20 lbs., not significantly more.
I guess like everything else, there is probably a lot of individual variation here, but I do think that the kind of weight loss most people have a prayer of sustaining over time is probably not going to make a huge difference in how fast they swim.
I remember Ralph Hutton swimming masters in the 1980's. Back in the day he held the world open record for 400m free, so suffice it to say he had wonderful technique but liked to party hard. Now when he came to masters in the '80s he trained very hard but partied even harder so stayed 270lbs (at least; 5'10") and for 5-6 years just kicked you-know-what up here. I can't remember times except, for sure 2.05scm free at 38years. He then stopped swimming cold for over a year when on pritikin diet, went down to 165lbs and without any training jumped into 200m free at a local meet and went 2.06scm. Without training. So point is I think the weight loss plus technique produced that time. Sadly he developed some sort of heart problem and does not now compete.
The math is right, the science is wrong. There is something important missing.
Considering that the model we've been discussing is basically that of cylinders of varying diameter moving through water we can safely assume that actual swimming will be more complicated. :D
My point in bringing up drag was just to say that a swimmer with a large belly will have more drag than a skinny swimmer, regardless of how hydrodynamic their belly is. There is still the issue of accelerating a larger mass during each stroke, our model was based on constant velocity.
Since it is hard to do experiments involving actual weight loss perhaps we can get a slim swimmer to put on one of those big flotation belts to simulate a larger sized body. They might have to also wear a weight belt to counter the buoyancy.
As Gary Sr points out in another thread buoyancy can increase speed.
