Though my form still needs a lot of work, I am considering starting strength training in the near future, since I have read about how it can help swimming speed, form, etc.
However, I am still struggling with the idea of why strength training is needed. Lets assume that lifting a certain weight in a certain way improves a core muscle, which will help steady my posture (?).
Now assuming I don't weight lift, but instead try to hold the proper posture (high elbow, etc.) for a long period of time, and gradually increase the time I do that over weeks and months, won't those muscle(s) automatically improve?
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.
What am I missing?
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!
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!
