This thread is an expansion of Ande's Swimming Faster Faster Tip 31: Get Strong. This is where I give advice on how to get stronger for the purpose of swimming faster.
I'm an authority on this subject only in a limited sense. I'm not a swim coach or a strength coach. I made a lot of improvement in my swimming when I started lifting weights, and I've given advice to a few other people (swimmers and non-swimmers) on how to get started on strength training. I draw a lot on conventional strength training wisdom. That's general strength training, not strength training for swimming.
In my opinion, and this is probably the most radical theme I'm going to stick with here, strength training advice for swimmers has always sucked. It is most often some kind of perverted and watered down version of the strength training that actual strong people do. A lot of buzzwords get added (e.g., "functional") and actual weight (i.e., iron) gets subtracted. My number one principle for strength training is this: it's not swimming! Don't mimic strokes, don't worry about skills. Just get stronger. The strength will transfer.
Safety
I'm starting with this at Jim Thornton's suggestion. Your first priority in the weight room is to avoid getting hurt.
Joint pain
This is just like swimming. The rule is: if it hurts, don't do it. Tendonitis comes on slowly, and when you feel it, you should stop doing whatever exercise causes it. There are also rehab/prehab exercises for strength and flexibility targeting any joint you can think of.
Lower back
Some lifts, particularly squats and deadlifts, require you to bend over at the waist. Do these in a mirror where you can see your side profile whenever possible, or have somebody watch your form. You need to keep your lower back slightly arched at all times, never flexed while supporting a significant weight. Some techniques to promote good form are: looking up, trying to point your chest to the ceiling, and trying to push your butt backward. Use whatever combination of these cues work for you, and check your form visually.
Dropping weight
Common sense. Overhead weights are dangerous. Don't drop heavy stuff on your head. When doing any exercise, ask yourself what would happen if you suddenly passed out and collapsed. Would the weight hit you? Would it choke you? I'm not saying to avoid exercises like that, but be careful. End your sets before you start feeling shaky. Use stops on a power rack. Ask somebody to spot you (unless you are doing squats and you aren't good friends already). Again, this should really be common sense.
Muscle soreness
Sorry, this is not an injury. I just put it here to make sure nobody mistakes it for one :) It's going to happen, and it's probably going to be far more intense than what you get from swimming.
Exercise selection
Exercise selection is all about variety. It's important to strengthen all of the muscles on the body, and you can do that by focusing on three basic movements: push, pull, and squat. Do these basic movements at different angles and positions to strengthen the entire body. Choosing different grips and equipment can also keep you from getting bored with weight training, and it can prevent joint injuries.
Push
In pushing, the elbows straighten and move away from the body. The two basic angles for pushing are forward and upward. Here's the barbell bench press, a forward pushing movement:
YouTube - Instructional Fitness - Bench Press
And here's the standing barbell shoulder press, an upward pushing movement:
YouTube - Build Muscle: Barbell Shoulder Press
And of course there are different angles and hybrids. For example, incline bench press is in between shoulder press and bench press. Also, any of these things can be done with dumbbells or other equipment.
Pull
Pulling means elbows bend and come toward the body. The two basic angles for pulling are downward and backward. Here's the dumbbell row, a backward pulling movement:
YouTube - Instructional Fitness - One-arm Dumbbell Rows
And here's a pull-up, which is not just a downward pulling movement, but the downward pulling movement that all beginning lifters must do, because of all of the different muscles it stresses:
YouTube - dead-hang pull ups with 70lb kettlebell.AVI
Squat
The squatting movement is the basis for all lower body development. My favorite squatting movement is the barbell lunge, which puts less relative stress on the lower back by working one leg at a time:
YouTube - Lunges 225 X 7
If you bend over without bending much at the knees, squatting turns into a deadlift variation. Here's the sumo deadlift:
YouTube - How to Sumo Deadlift
Load, volume, and frequency
These are parameters you need to balance. Load means: how heavy is the weight? Or, more specifically: how much force are your muscles required to produce to move it? Volume means: how many repetitions do you do? How much total work are the muscles doing? Frequency means: how often does a particular muscle get worked? You can do a full-body workout three days a week, or maybe upper body two days a week and lower body one day. Or you can get even more specific. Bodybuilders like to have days like "chest", "arms", and "shoulders" over the course of a week.
I know this sounds arbitrary, but we have to start somewhere. Here are my can't-fail load and volume parameters for newbies:
1. Do a full body workout two or three days a week, involving one push, one pull, and one squat.
2. Do between 2 and 6 sets per exercise, excluding easy/warm-up sets.
3. Do between 5 and 15 reps per set.
4. Don't take less than a full minute of rest between sets.
Within that, knock yourself out. You'll eventually come to some kind of understanding of how you respond to different amounts of volume and load, and how much variety you want. In a bit I'll give you a specific program to start with, if that's too much choice for you.
Failure and fatigue
Fatigue means you start to shake or slow down. Failure means you are no longer able to lift the weight. In my opinion, these things are way overrated. It's fun to challenge yourself and see exactly how many reps you can do to failure, but if you are doing 30 reps of 135 pounds on some exercise, 3 sets of 10 is pretty much the same as 6 sets of 5. I often prefer to do the latter, although it might take slightly longer. It all depends on how much pain you want to be in. There are some minor strength benefits to failure in strength training, but it definitely doesn't have to happen on every set, or even in every workout. It's just another parameter that you can change depending on how you like it.
Introduction plan
This is a plan that follows my guidelines. It's very similar to what I did when I started lifting. The exercises in it are the ones I showed videos of above. If you have more questions about how to do them or set up for them, please ask.
This workout is built on sets of 10 reps. Choose a very light weight to start, and slowly add weight, never more than 20 pounds at a time (or 10 pounds per dumbbell) until you can't complete 10 reps on your last set. Once you learn roughly how much weight you can do on a particular exercise, you can choose a good point to start ramping up from without wasting time.
Workout A
Assisted pull-up machine (Remember, more weight is easier on this.)
Standing barbell shoulder press (Stop any set if you start to feel shaky. Don't go to failure on these!)
Barbell alternating lunge (You can also do this holding dumbbells at your side. Pretty much the same.)
Workout B
One-arm dumbbell row (Switch arms between sets, and stop when either arm fails to get 10 reps.)
Barbell bench press (Stop a bit short of failure, or get a spotter.)
Sumo deadlift (Check your lower back form! The set is over when you lose perfect form.)
Do Workout A, rest a few days, then do Workout B. Repeat. Take extra rest days if you feel like it. Feel free to substitute similar movements if you get bored or don't like the ones I prescribe.
Questions?
Ask me!
Former Member
Thanks Rich, glad you enjoyed the video.
I'm not sure what upper body stuff counts as pure strength.
If the continumum was magnified a little more, absolute strength would have power lifting at one end and body weight exercises at the other. You probably hit across the entire spectrum of the absolute strength/speed continumum focusing on the absolute speed end.
After watching the video, my mapping of swimming onto the continumum looked something like this.
Strength training plyometrics/medicine balls/stretch cords paddles/fins/toys swimming
For me, strength training is lifting but I am not going to tell a guy who shovels rocks, chops wood and pushes trucks out of the mud that strength training can only be done with a barbell. There are lots of ways to strength train, but some are easy to quantify and others are nearly impossible to quantify.
You've said in the past that you are tired and expect to be a little sore the day after your gym workout. As long as you feel your chest, shoulders and triceps are included in the soreness, you succeeded at the push aspect of things. If those muscles are just exhausted, you are further to the right on the continumum.
I disagree that masters swimmers are closer to novice runners than collegiate rowers. But if you are saying that swimming doesn't require the core much (another statement with which I disagree), then how would doing core work benefit swimming?
Wow, I must have done a horrible job explaining myself.
Masters swimmers, a group that includes fewer Olympians setting age group world records than recreational swimmers, have an underdeveloped cores. An underdeveloped core is a core that if strengthened further would benefit someone with increased stability.
One can argue that the principle of specificity is relevant here. Swimmers who train hard, with plenty of race-pace training, train their core as much as they need to do well in races. The question of how much swimming engages the core is irrelevant, in that case.
This is probably true, but my Masters team does not train that way.
Would "over" training the core help?
No, and I think the study on the rowers vs novice runners exemplifies this.
Advocates of weight lifting would say that additional stress on the muscles beyond normal swimming produces additional power that can be used in a swimming race, especially sprints. I am not at all sure that additional core training would do the same.
We are in agreement on this. If core strength provides stabilization in swimming, once stability is achieved, what is the benefit on increasing core strength?
As an aside: I never, ever finish a race and immediately think that I was limited by inadequate core strength. ("My abs just gave out on that last stretch!" or "I couldn't get my legs over on the last turn!") Others may be different, of course.
As an aside: I never, ever think of an Olympian when I think of masters swimmers as a whole, but think of someone who doesn't compete, doesn't do drylands, probably does open turns and swims with a team for the combination of organized cardio and friendship.
But maybe additional core training leads to overall better fitness and health, in which case the question of whether or not swimming provides adequate core engagement is quite important.
Pick something heavy up off the ground and the core is engaged, but swimming down the pool does not have the same requirement (wagging legs?).
Swimming does not require adequate core engagement and supplementing swimming with outside activities that do might be the easier path to core stability. Hopefully that clearly summarizes my point.
I also think that core stability is much more important in daily life than swimming. A strong core prevents several causes a back pain as well as hernias.
A recent study showed that strength training can significantly improve muscle efficiency for older athletes:
www.theglobeandmail.com/.../Nice article and good support.
I look at these various articles, though, and wonder why these scientists are choosing such short periods (e.g., a few weeks to maybe a few months) to test these effects? Why aren't they following athletes for at least a year or, at a minimum, over some 'season' of training?
The previous paragraphs (in the article) explain how collegiate rowers, when they added core work to their training, did not show any improvement in rowing tests. Go poke a collegiate rower in the stomach, then go poke your average masters swimmer. Most masters swimmers are going to be closer to the novice runners group and will benefit from core work.
My opinion is that swimming does not provide enough "core work" and more needs to be done out of the pool. Outside of the pool there are lots of activities that would develop the core: crunches, hanging knee raises, rowing, squats, medicine ball exercises, planks, lower body plyometics. These (and many other) activities force core engagement, that swimming doesn't seem to require.
I disagree that masters swimmers are closer to novice runners than collegiate rowers. But if you are saying that swimming doesn't require the core much (another statement with which I disagree), then how would doing core work benefit swimming?
One can argue that the principle of specificity is relevant here. Swimmers who train hard, with plenty of race-pace training, train their core as much as they need to do well in races. The question of how much swimming engages the core is irrelevant, in that case.
Would "over" training the core help? Advocates of weight lifting would say that additional stress on the muscles beyond normal swimming produces additional power that can be used in a swimming race, especially sprints. I am not at all sure that additional core training would do the same.
As an aside: I never, ever finish a race and immediately think that I was limited by inadequate core strength. ("My abs just gave out on that last stretch!" or "I couldn't get my legs over on the last turn!") Others may be different, of course.
But maybe additional core training leads to overall better fitness and health, in which case the question of whether or not swimming provides adequate core engagement is quite important.
I look at these various articles, though, and wonder why these scientists are choosing such short periods (e.g., a few weeks to maybe a few months) to test these effects? Why aren't they following athletes for at least a year or, at a minimum, over some 'season' of training?
Frankly, because its much easier to finish and publish something even if it's not that useful or definitive -- you get to add it to your list on your CV faster. That's also a big reason why the sample sizes are so small (that and funding issues, of course).
From the NYT article:
The previous paragraphs (in the article) explain how collegiate rowers, when they added core work to their training, did not show any improvement in rowing tests. Go poke a collegiate rower in the stomach, then go poke your average masters swimmer. Most masters swimmers are going to be closer to the novice runners group and will benefit from core work.
My opinion is that swimming does not provide enough "core work" and more needs to be done out of the pool. Outside of the pool there are lots of activities that would develop the core: crunches, hanging knee raises, rowing, squats, medicine ball exercises, planks, lower body plyometics. These (and many other) activities force core engagement, that swimming doesn't seem to require.
I agree that collegiate rowers are already core powerful, and would not benefit from certain "core" specific extracurricular activities when compared to a runner or masters swimmer.
I wonder if certain studies might be reported in a misleading way.
From the NYT article:
But in another study, this time of novice adult runners who displayed weak core strength in preliminary testing, those who completed six weeks of core training drills lowered their five-kilometer run times significantly more than a control group of beginning runners who did not focus on their midsections.
The previous paragraphs (in the article) explain how collegiate rowers, when they added core work to their training, did not show any improvement in rowing tests. Go poke a collegiate rower in the stomach, then go poke your average masters swimmer. Most masters swimmers are going to be closer to the novice runners group and will benefit from core work.
My opinion is that swimming does not provide enough "core work" and more needs to be done out of the pool. Outside of the pool there are lots of activities that would develop the core: crunches, hanging knee raises, rowing, squats, medicine ball exercises, planks, lower body plyometics. These (and many other) activities force core engagement, that swimming doesn't seem to require.
Strength training improves "just about everything" related to muscles in all athletes. This is pretty well established common knowledge and supported by numerous research not that anyone who has ever gone to the gym needs research to know that this is true. The real question as it relates to swimming is at what point are the benefits asymptotic (i.e. diminishing returns) and for distance swimmers at what point is the oxygen requirements of extra muscle mass detrimental.
