Why is weight training necessary?

Jazz hands - I appreciate your post and opinion but please explain your statement "What you're saying has no connection to the reality of how a body creates thrust in the water." I am not implying that we should mimic a stroke on land to improve our skill in the water. We just need train the muscles in the same manner that they are used. Jazz hands - yes, I do understand that you when you do a lat pulldown other muscles come into play such as the biceps and forearm. When i say in isolation I am referring to the fact that the core musculature is not being trained at the same time. Ap4305 made a great analogy as to why performing this exercise locked down in a machine "limits" your ability to develop strength and power in the water. The lats basically attach to the spine. If the spine cannot stabilize it will certainly inhibit the amount of strength that the lat can express while in the pool. Exercises that strengthen the core and all of our spinal stabilizing muscles must be trained in order to utilize all of our strength. For example, a rope climb really challenges that lats and the core at the same time - this would have a better transfer of strength and power to the pool than a seated lat pulldown. Heavier loads do increase force production and rate of force production (power) but this is more effectively trained with faster explosive movements not heavy slow ones. Either way, this increase is mostly seen in the lifts themselves. I have no problem incorporating traditional strength training with my athletes - its just not the only thing i do. If all you do is traditional machine training your wasting your time. No training is the end all be all - its just another tool in the tool box.

Jazz hands - I appreciate your post and opinion but please explain your statement "What you're saying has no connection to the reality of how a body creates thrust in the water." I am not implying that we should mimic a stroke on land to improve our skill in the water. We just need train the muscles in the same manner that they are used. So rather than saying something specific and wrong, you're saying something vague enough that everyone can agree on it, provided we each bring our own definition of "training in the same manner?" Jazz hands - yes, I do understand that you when you do a lat pulldown other muscles come into play such as the biceps and forearm. When i say in isolation I am referring to the fact that the core musculature is not being trained at the same time. Ap4305 made a great analogy as to why performing this exercise locked down in a machine "limits" your ability to develop strength and power in the water. When did I say I love lat pulldowns? Also, if you think they don't involve "core musculature", I think you're wrong. Pulldowns are pretty tough on the abs, and obliques as well if you do them one-armed. The lats basically attach to the spine. If the spine cannot stabilize it will certainly inhibit the amount of strength that the lat can express while in the pool. Exercises that strengthen the core and all of our spinal stabilizing muscles must be trained in order to utilize all of our strength. For example, a rope climb really challenges that lats and the core at the same time - this would have a better transfer of strength and power to the pool than a seated lat pulldown. Yeah! Lat pulldowns are bad. Lat pulldowns are irresponsible. Lat pulldowns told Lee Harvey Oswald to do it. Heavier loads do increase force production and rate of force production (power) but this is more effectively trained with faster explosive movements not heavy slow ones. Either way, this increase is mostly seen in the lifts themselves. Eh, kinda. The explosive lifting hypothesis doesn't actually have a whole lot of science behind it. For example, I saw one study where "explosive lifting" was supposed to have a stronger effect on vertical jump, a good measure of athletic explosive power, than normal lifting. The problem was that the explosive training program was jump squats. That's really just more of a skill transfer, I think. I have no problem incorporating traditional strength training with my athletes - its just not the only thing i do. If all you do is traditional machine training your wasting your time. No training is the end all be all - its just another tool in the tool box. Where did you get the idea that heavy strength training means only using machines?

I am discovering that every time I spend little time in the gym doing dryland, the swim session that follows (my gym and my pool are in the same building), my aerobic pace is getting a boost. Either the same day or the day that follows. I need to get on your program! Hahaha - If I could swim 1:40 100s consistently I would be able to call myself a good swimmer finally!

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. Jim, This same statement can be true for any sport that requires continuous repetitive motion, hmm, such as swimming? As with anything else, you have to learn to do it correctly, either thru self education and/or instruction from a qualified source.

Jim, This same statement can be true for any sport that requires continuous repetitive motion, hmm, such as swimming? As with anything else, you have to learn to do it correctly, either thru self education and/or instruction from a qualified source. That's right, Wolfy! Jim's statement seems like excusifying. I've had more injuries swimming that doing drylands (and hasn't Jimby had chronic shoulder problems, eh?), and responded accordingly on the last poll. I like to have power in both the water and on land, and drylands do help keep me injury free in the pool. Plus, wholly apart from swimming, I want be a strong, flexible, athletic person and not a piece of mush. Swimming alone doesn't give me that. And, unlike many others apparently, my purely anecdotal experience is that my cross training and drylands make me faster in the water. If I abstained from drylands to await a perfectly well controlled study on the topic that passed the Jazz Hands & Jimby scrutiny, I'd be in a retirement home.

I think dryland makes me faster. Does it make you Faster Faster? (Sorry, couldn't resist the Ande pun)

And, unlike many others apparently, my purely anecdotal experience is that my cross training and drylands make me faster in the water. If I abstained from drylands to await a perfectly well controlled study on the topic that passed the Jazz Hands & Jimby scrutiny, I'd be in a retirement home. You're not alone. Although admittedly it's hard to know for sure what makes us faster or slower, I intend to increase my time spend in the gym from 1 session up to 2, maybe 3. I think dryland makes me faster.

Does it make you Faster Faster? (Sorry, couldn't resist the Ande pun) :D Funny the testing I am doing at the moment. Let me briefly explain. I cut all speed work in the pool for summer time. That got my aerobic pace to drop significantly. I can usually hold 1:30 quite easily, but these days I am struggling holding 1:40. I am discovering that every time I spend little time in the gym doing dryland, the swim session that follows (my gym and my pool are in the same building), my aerobic pace is getting a boost. Either the same day or the day that follows. Does it make me faster faster, no. I do not think so. I think that fast sets remains the best way to swim faster faster. But I still find this link between weights and its impact on basic aerobic pace fascinating enough to continue on this scheme for a while.

If I abstained from drylands to await a perfectly well controlled study on the topic that passed the Jazz Hands & Jimby scrutiny, I'd be in a retirement home. Your comment brings up a great point. If we waited for science to prove training methods we would be 20 years behind the curve. The bottom line is that for every research study that proves something we have another one that contradicts it. So really, at the end of the day science proves very little and it proves it to late. All we can really do is train our athletes or ourselves off of our own experience and base our theories off the research that exists and the education we have.

If I abstained from drylands to await a perfectly well controlled study on the topic that passed the Jazz Hands & Jimby scrutiny, I'd be in a retirement home. Your comment brings up a great point. If we waited for science to prove training methods we would be 20 years behind the curve. The bottom line is that for every research study that proves something we have another one that contradicts it. So really, at the end of the day science proves very little and it proves it to late. All we can really do is train our athletes or ourselves off of our own experience and base our theories off the research that exists and the education we have. Grif, with all due respect, this idea that science is too contradictory and too behind the curve to do much good seems to me just a rationale used by anyone who wants to do his own thing and feel 100 percent righteous justification in so doing. Do not get me wrong--I definitely believe in doing ones own thing. But I also believe that the scientific method is as close as we can come to objectively proving what works best, if not for each individual, then at least for large numbers of individuals. Clearly, the answers to optimal swim training aren't all in yet, and I suspect that with anything as complex as this, there will be ongoing refinements and new insights for decades to come. But to just relegate those who are trying to make such discoveries as too little, too late fuddy duddies whose findings can be disregarded whenever they contradict any individual guy's personal experience, it seems to me, is the kind of Bush-era anti-science, anti-intellectual "gut reasoning" that sets back progress substantially.