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
Jazz Hands, do you happen to have any shots of this guy? Maybe before/after? I'm willing to listen, but I'm curious to see the results. Your notion and mine might be a little different.
No I don't. And you're so missing the point it hurts. The guy is not you. It's just an anecdote, which is the only type of evidence you're ever going to get on this subject of bafflingly intense interest to you. To believe that strength training always makes people look ugly and bulky, and that swimming is magic fairy dust that bestows beauty and proportion, you would have to have zero (0) knowledge about how muscle hypertrophy actually works.
The way a sensible person would deal with this is to start building muscle with a simple full-body routine. Then, if you can identify some muscles that you think are overdeveloped, figure out where they are being trained in your routine, and dial it back. Unfortunately, you're not a sensible person.
Jazz Hands, do you happen to have any shots of this guy? Maybe before/after? I'm willing to listen, but I'm curious to see the results. Your notion and mine might be a little different.
No I don't. And you're so missing the point it hurts. The guy is not you. It's just an anecdote, which is the only type of evidence you're ever going to get on this subject of bafflingly intense interest to you. To believe that strength training always makes people look ugly and bulky, and that swimming is magic fairy dust that bestows beauty and proportion, you would have to have zero (0) knowledge about how muscle hypertrophy actually works.
The way a sensible person would deal with this is to start building muscle with a simple full-body routine. Then, if you can identify some muscles that you think are overdeveloped, figure out where they are being trained in your routine, and dial it back. Unfortunately, you're not a sensible person.
