Why is weight training necessary?

However, as one of the few people on these forums who agrees with your skepticism regarding weight lifting for swim performance, let me add a further caution: injury potential. Weight lifting may make you faster like Jazz; then again, it may not. But done incorrectly--and in my opinion, it is easy to incorrectly lift weights and/or execute the ever-proliferating array of dryland exercises much touted here on these forums--your odds of getting hurt (and sidelined from swimming) are much higher than if you just stick with swimming. Regardless of what you decide, might I just leave you with a FINA-58-year-old's hard-earned wisdom about any new form of physical activity, from bench pressing to pick-up soccer games inspired by the World Cup, that you aren't used to doing. If you haven't been doing a lot of something recently, do not do a lot of it now! Take your time, build up slowly but surely, and err of the side of caution.

Swimming is a great exercise,I'd say the best exercise,but it is not weight bearing so it may not help prevent osteoporosis as much as weight bearing exercises.More importantly for swimming speed ,it is fundamentally a high rep/low weight exercise and therefore it doesn't increase power as readily as proper lifting can.

But Jim's blanket statements are a little ridiculous. If you are going to injury yourself getting on the floor and doing crunches, you probably need to find someone qualified to supervise you and devise a workout plan because you are in sad shape. Q, please see my just posted poll. However, I am willing to wager a small amount that if you took 100 of our fellow forum readers who have not done any crunches in the past month, and had them get on the floor and crunch away out of the blue as many times as they could before running out of steam, 90 percent plus of said experiment lab animals would have an incredibly hard time getting out of bed in the next couple days. My point is not that anything of these things are horribly dangerous, just that most quasi-athletic people remember how good they used to be at doing X, and figure that their former peak should be the current baseline. Thus, I remember 34 years ago being able to do 15 pull-ups in my outdoor shower in Boynton Beach, Florida. If I tried to do the same number right now, not having executed a single pull up for decades, I am not at all certain my arms would remain attached to my body. Obviously, I am perhaps something of an exaggerated case here. But my point is that we are all like this to some degree. And it's crazy to jump into any new physically demanding activity and go at it with gusto from the get go! I say, dear chap, that it is ridiculous to call such insight ridiculous!

It seems to me that intuitively the proper muscles would gradually get stronger in order to adjust to the frequent usage - that way the exact muscles I need would get stronger, instead of having to train a large array of muscles that have a relation to swimming. This makes a lot of sense, and I didn't lift weights for a long time based on this logic. But sometimes it doesn't hurt to try. I got a lot faster when I started lifting, in distances up to 500.

Though my form still needs a lot of work, I am considering starting strength training in the near future It is not necessary, but it can be beneficial. It is necessary for you to have good form to swim fast. Training faster to get faster definitely works, you are not missing anything. Strength training is additional, not a replacement for swimming. What is going to make you the fastest fastest is technique improvements. Strength training is not a short cut to fast times.

My point is not that anything of these things are horribly dangerous, just that most quasi-athletic people remember how good they used to be at doing X, and figure that their former peak should be the current baseline. And how many swimmers jump in the pool, after a long hiatus, and do a 5000+ yard/meter set, tight intervals, on their first day back? I can't imagine them coming back again if they do. Nearly every athletic endeavor I can think of requires some degree of conditioning. Although I'm a runner and can knock out some longish runs today, if I take even a month break, I ease back into it, sometimes starting with just a 2 mile run/walk, then gradually building things back. Same thing with weights, if I take a month break, I'll start out lighter, feel how things are for the first couple sessions, before I begin the build back. Common sense should be the primary concern here.

But done incorrectly--and in my opinion, it is easy to incorrectly lift weights and/or execute the ever-proliferating array of dryland exercises much touted here on these forums--your odds of getting hurt (and sidelined from swimming) are much higher than if you just stick with swimming. If aren't going to take the time to learn to lift properly, don't lift. But Jim's blanket statements are a little ridiculous. If you are going to injury yourself getting on the floor and doing crunches, you probably need to find someone qualified to supervise you and devise a workout plan because you are in sad shape. Weight bearing exercise should be done by everyone unless you want to be a poster child for an osteoporosis commercial.

swimming so much, not often get to do any...but... a fine swimmer in the next lane said to me once...you can't build strength by pushing water around. though in the 75-79 group, he hits the weight room often, and a faster swimmer than I may ever be, and breaks record(s) almost every meet.

Eh? You mean because of DOMS? DOMS isn't really an injury. It's just some temporary pain and minor weakness. Also, why aren't you doing pull-ups? One word answer: Domsphobia.

However, I am willing to wager a small amount that if you took 100 of our fellow forum readers who have not done any crunches in the past month, and had them get on the floor and crunch away out of the blue as many times as they could before running out of steam, 90 percent plus of said experiment lab animals would have an incredibly hard time getting out of bed in the next couple days. Eh? You mean because of DOMS? DOMS isn't really an injury. It's just some temporary pain and minor weakness. Also, why aren't you doing pull-ups?