Dry Land Work

Hi Old Navy I was just talking to the best swimming coach I know and he said "Don't weight lift". He told me the only reason he introduced weight training to his swim program was that the University coaches would not give his swimmers scolarships to college if they did not do weight training. He said weight training ruins swimmers.

just to put my 2 cents in. I'm a pretty average swimmer, but ever since i've started lifting weights I've consistently gotten faster basically every single meet I swim in (usually setting 2+ personal bests each meet) Advice i've heard from an olympian is that the tissue you build in the weight room does not directly apply to swimming very quickly. You kind of need to work the muscle into your stroke through time. I usually stop heavy lifting over a month before a taper meet. I'll keep tying to maintain that muscle but not breakdown the tissue so much every session.

I honestly believe that it depends on the person. I absolutely can't swim when I weight lift. It ruins my swimming, but I have some kids (18+) that I work with that really benefit from weights. Again, for someone built like me who is already rather muscular I think that just some pilates and plyometric type stuff really does the trick. Thats just my opinion.

Thanks for the input. One of the guys I swim with lifts a few times each week, light weight with high reps, to get through plateaus in time improvements. I've never been a lifter and have been feeling stronger just by working in the pool lately. I think I'll stick with just swimming that for a while. BTW Geochuck, I was in Vancouver just last week. You come from a beautiful part of the world. Just keep swimming, Pat

Just thought Iwould throw this one in body core stuff magthree.com/.../Core_Work.html

Thanks for the core work suggestion. I'll work that into the routine.

This is a very interesting debate in the swimming world. To sum it up there is a big difference of opinion as to the transferability of dry land strength to the aquatic environment. Here are my :2cents: 1. A beginner is advised to strength train in order to attain a base level of strength. It prevents injuries and allows better movement. I don't want to define base strength but say a reasonable number of pushups, situps, chins, dips etc. There are various tables on the net. 2. For many masters swimmers there are two big constraints: time and recovery. Most of us work for a living so our time is limited. I have to choose between swimming at 05:30 AM or strength training. As to recovery - I stopped lifting heavy because I was still recovering the day after squats or deadlifts. So basically I didn't swim 2 days a week and didn't swim fresh another 2 days. 3. I personally saw no corelation between my increased achievments in the weight room (reps/weight) and improved swimming times. 4. You can strength train in the water by using paddles, cords etc. 5. The general consensus is that if weight training is indeed beneficial to the swimmer then it's benefit increases as the distance decreases, i.e. more beneficial for a 50m. sprint than a 1500m. 6. I am convinced that specific training is the way to go for masters athletes. If you want to get good at swimming - swim.

The young swimmers of today are not as active as we were so they need the things that we did naturaly. In my youth I rode my bike or ran to the pool, hikes, baseball tag hide and go seek and all the things we did before TV. First thing we should do to get fit - get ride of TV, Computers, Cars, and stop living the easy life - but do we want to? When I was a kid my mother gave us money to take the street car, we ran to the pool racing the street car, used the money for french fries or milkshakes instead. Instead of getting a ride to the beach we took our bicyles, somtimes 11 miles there and 11 miles back. Sundays where picknic days we would rent either a row boat or a cannoe and go to Dundas Ontario 7 miles from where we rented the boats have our picnic and head back home. In the winter Ice skating played hockey even though I was the worst skater in the world. If we were not sleeping we had activity.

George: Excellent point. My older kids do not have TVs in their room. We have one computer in the house -- neither of them play computer games or IM their friends. They use it for school research only. 0My 14 year old son who is a runner/swimmer/triathlete threw out his video games at age 11 and hasn't looked back since. He runs to and from cross country practice or bikes. He bikes and runs on his own. My 12 year old swimming daughter bikes to her summer swim practices or runs. They've played other sports for years but are narrowing their focus. Not every kid is lazy. Now of course they have seen my husband and I fight over who gets to work out when. My 6 year old has to ask when it's her turn to go to practice. She doesn't want to be left out... Leslie