Does swimming "inform" muscle growth? A dryland/weights q.
Former Member
Ok, so here's the thing. I know well and good by now that swimming does not really build substantial muscle mass. If there was any doubt, all you'd have to do is look at someone like Mark Spitz- an Olympic champion who clearly would have swam enough to see any of the benefits swimming had to offer:
www.tierraunica.com/.../6a00e551962103883300e55419aa128834-800wi
Compare that though to today's champions:
4.bp.blogspot.com/.../ryanlochte.jpgwww.popstarsplus.com/.../MichaelPhelpsPicture.jpg
Obviously huge by comparison. Now, the simple answer might be "weights. These guys do a lot more dryland than they did back in the day". But here's the thing- in all my years of lifting, I have never once seen anyone lifting beside me at the gym built like these guys. The people I see are jacked, sure, but proportioned very differently- and I've seen hundreds if not thousands of guys who were serious about weights!
The only time I *did* see, in person, people who looked like the pics above were, no big surprise, the guys on the local college's swim team.
So I contacted the coach and she was kind enough to send me their dryland routine- and guess what? Incline bench, deadlifts, flys, laterals, etc. etc. etc. In other words, the same identical program that countless weightlifters use every day. There was no magic formula to it.
So this left me really confused. Swimming alone doesn't build this sort of physique. But weights alone don't do it either.
Is their some sort of magic I'm missing here? Does something happen with the combination of the two that results in this type of build?
Please chime in if you have a lot of dryland experience or, even more so, if you're actually built like this from doing these things!
Thanks so much for your help,
BB
Parents
Former Member
You started a thread less than a year ago to ask this exact question, and I answered you in some depth. I told you to quit over-analyzing everything and go do some freaking chin-ups. I'm going to make a wild guess here and presume that you continued to freak out and over-analyze without actually doing any work. So go away now.
A few years ago I personally designed a program for a guy who was originally shaped like a twig and is now shaped like an Olympic swimmer. Here's the program:
Weighted chin-up, 5-8 reps
Barbell bench press, 5-8 reps
Trap bar deadlift, 5-8 reps
Three days a week. Do it and stop thinking for a while. You'll feel better.
No, you didn't answer me in depth at all, and did not sufficiently answer my question. Had I been content with what I had heard, I wouldn't be asking again.
All you recommended was "weights" and then "chinups". Go look up our own posts. Lats are not the part I'm concerned with and neither of the pictures I posted show enormous lats. You want enormous lats, this is it:
image.exercisesfacts.info/.../img_793_big-back-workout-and-lat-workout-training-back-lat-pulldown-train-lats.jpg
And is exactly the sort of build I said I'm not going for. What the target pics above show are a large chest and upper back, but relatively modest traps, bis, tris, lats, etc.
Was there some wisdom in the previous thread? Yes. Did I get the answer I was looking for? No. And certainly not from you. So I posted again thinking some new blood might have joined and might chime in.
If your goal is to help, you've already told me what you know. If it's to be right, congrats. I've already absorbed what you have to say and frankly, I'm not impressed, nor did it answer my question. All the routines you mentioned are already in my workouts.
It's time for you to go away now.
You started a thread less than a year ago to ask this exact question, and I answered you in some depth. I told you to quit over-analyzing everything and go do some freaking chin-ups. I'm going to make a wild guess here and presume that you continued to freak out and over-analyze without actually doing any work. So go away now.
A few years ago I personally designed a program for a guy who was originally shaped like a twig and is now shaped like an Olympic swimmer. Here's the program:
Weighted chin-up, 5-8 reps
Barbell bench press, 5-8 reps
Trap bar deadlift, 5-8 reps
Three days a week. Do it and stop thinking for a while. You'll feel better.
No, you didn't answer me in depth at all, and did not sufficiently answer my question. Had I been content with what I had heard, I wouldn't be asking again.
All you recommended was "weights" and then "chinups". Go look up our own posts. Lats are not the part I'm concerned with and neither of the pictures I posted show enormous lats. You want enormous lats, this is it:
image.exercisesfacts.info/.../img_793_big-back-workout-and-lat-workout-training-back-lat-pulldown-train-lats.jpg
And is exactly the sort of build I said I'm not going for. What the target pics above show are a large chest and upper back, but relatively modest traps, bis, tris, lats, etc.
Was there some wisdom in the previous thread? Yes. Did I get the answer I was looking for? No. And certainly not from you. So I posted again thinking some new blood might have joined and might chime in.
If your goal is to help, you've already told me what you know. If it's to be right, congrats. I've already absorbed what you have to say and frankly, I'm not impressed, nor did it answer my question. All the routines you mentioned are already in my workouts.
It's time for you to go away now.
