If you swim and/or weight lift long enough, chances are you are going to get hurt.
I maintain that you are probably more likely to get hurt weight lifting than swimming, partly because there is considerably more force involved in the former, and partly because most of us on these forums are swimmers first and weight lifters second (if at all), and hence our bodies are more used to swimming than to weight lifting.
I could, certainly, be wrong.
In any event, please participate in this simple poll. Assuming you swim and at least occasionally lift weights and/or do dryland exercises in hopes of improving your swimming performance, which do you personally find more problematic for injuries?
You will have to make a judgment call here, especially if you spend MUCH more time swimming than lifting. (For example, say you swim 6 hours a week and lift 3 x 30 minutes or 1.5 hours a week. Your swimming time is 4x greater than your lifting time, so if you've suffered the same number of injuries from swimming and lifting, then lifting--hour per hour--more dangerous. )
Thanks for participating!
I have had more minor injuries from strength training/dryland workouts (circuit classes and plyometrics) than swimming, mostly due to poor/sloppy form. I jumped into a circuit class not too long ago and let my competitive nature get the better of my by trying to keep up with a group that had been attending the same class for quite some time. (I admit that I should know better!) Tweaked my shoulder a bit doing push ups. As a charter member of the "used to be" club (as in I used to be stronger, thinner, faster, etc.), my brain remembers what my body has forgotten. I have to remember to allow a little more recovery time and to ease in to activities that I haven't done for a while.
This is quasi-related to weights. My air conditioner weighs, I don't know, 700 pounds? I don't do anything but push it with my core (yeah, right) from the closet where I keep it over about 30 feet to my window. Then I precariously balance it on the ledge, letting the window hold it in place, while I fumble for various nails that no longer need to be hammered into place since they just slide in. As in the window holds the air conditioner in.
Heck! It blocks my sunlight and my evening breeze! I hate having it in the window. So what I did yesterday was the wet T-shirt treatment: stand under the shower and drench myself. Then stand in front of the fan. This works but drips. My life is just full of dilemmas.
Also, when my friend and I were hauling the air conditioner up the steep third flight of steps, my friend thought we were done (she was facing forward; her back was to me) so she let go. Ha! I wasn't about to watch $250 go bouncing down those stairs. So I caught it! Ouch! I turned and used the wall as my brace and caught it and held on to it for dear dinero.
It really hurt my hip but that $250 did not go bouncing down the stairs.
So let me think: was this my left side/left shoulder (the shoulder that is now kaput and lifting 5# weights to the back (I's) and 3# weights to the side and front (T's) and maybe shouldn't be? Ah, so it was.
Don't lift air conditioners to get in swim shape, is the moral of this story.
Don't have friends toss them to you like medicine balls.
A few years ago I would have answered weight lifting for sure --
Since my non-triumphant return to swimming, however, I have had shoulder and elbow pains galore. Weight lifting seems to help. So for the past 2 years, I think I have to vote swimming (sorry swimming, you are still my favorite).
I do think there should be a option for air-conditioner carrying -- I guess it is dry land-- the worse injury I have had in many years came from trying to install an air conditioner at my parents house.
I've never had a weight lifting related injury, but I've had plenty of swimming injuries. Mostly limited to muscle pulls or on rare occasion strains, and both usually are from "oversprinting". Kindof like throwing your shoulder out. Once I also did a hard finish during a race and hyperextended an elbow :badday:. I never had an injury or muscle pull of any kind from weight lifting, only muscle soreness, which is to be expected.
Once I also did a hard finish during a race and hyperextended an elbow :badday:.
Ooooh, I've done that! On my one and only foray into the 50 free, in a college dual meet. There can be no surer sign that is was an ill-fated attempt; I slunk back to my mid-D events...though I did have an awesome start, smoking those wimpy sprinters off the blocks...
I've also broken my hand on a backstroke finish. And I've had one single bad-shoulder time (I know, lucky me) from using paddles that were too large on a backstroke set (again, college age). Now I only use paddles on freestyle.
Doing pullups and similar exercises aggravates my tendency to have "golf elbow." And I once had terrible tennis elbow that was largely due to weight training, I think. But mostly weight training has also been injury-free for me.
Knock on wood. I'll probably throw out my back next time I swim or do dryland.
Ooooh, I've done that! On my one and only foray into the 50 free, in a college dual meet.
For me it was back in HS... i was anchoring the 200 fr relay at a dual meet and i dove in 3/4 of a length behind the leader. Ended up touching the guy out for the win but at the expense of the elbow :afraid:
I managed to get nine stitches hitting my heel on the wall about two years ago. The nice thing about Masters swimming is that we had three doctors in the pool, one of whom was a podiatrist who bandaged me up and sent me on my way to the emergency room.
Despite this, I did vote for weight training causing more injuries per unit time than swimming simply because I swim more. But I've found that a combination of weights, swimming and other activities (like Yoga or biking) mixes things up enough to avoid most injuries. As an aging athlete, if I hit one muscle group too much and don't allow any recovery time, I'm much more likely to hurt myself.
If this were a presidential election, I think we would all be forced to agree: swimming enjoys an overwhelming relative safety record compared to that disastrous activity, weight/dryland training, which would be an abject laughing stock were it not so potentially dangerous.
One might dare say that dumb bells are the Sarah Palin of exercise--attractive to some in a weird way, but ultimately a horrible, horrible mistake to get involved with.
Finally, we forumites have managed to identify a subject with absolutely no controversy! And they said it could not be done!
Ha! I retort.
Ha! Ha!
Which, alas, probably means that this will be the last posting on my poll, everything that can possibly be said on the topic having now been said!
