I am thinking of getting back into swimming after about 8years off (I'm 26). I was never any good, but looking back, when I made my biggest gains in sprints was when I was slacking off the most in practice and lifting more weights. I never gained much muscle, maybe 5lbs over a year of swimming (going from 5'8" 130lbs to 135lbs or so), but I definitely got faster (from 25.2 in the 50y free to swimming that speed at the end of practice.. I was too lazy to go to meets at this point (like I said, slacker!) A few months later, I stopped swimming all together, kept lifting, and gained about 20lbs of muscle in 3 months!
This led me to thinking, now that I'm trying to get back into swimming, that maybe sprinters are doing way too much yardage for their own good, preventing their body from building muscle, and instead of their intermediate fast twitch muscles taking on IIb qualities, taking on slow twitch muscle fiber qualities (to be able to swim 5000yds a day or whatever)
Anyone have any thoughts, experimented with something like this/etc? I'm going to try it and will let you guys know the results. My logic tells me that as long as I am getting stronger/bodyweight (which I have been even though i am 40lbs heavier) I should be swimming much faster in the pool; but unfortunately, a lot of yardage makes it impossible to gain much strength, and very difficult to even maintain strength gains. So, I'm going to try to swim very low yardage (~6000 a week) and mostly high intensity and sprints (25-100 distances), kick sets, etc. with all distance work being warm up and technique focused... Sorry for the long and winded post.. just wondering if anyone has thought about this stuff before.. because looking at most swimmers (and having swam competitively for a while) it seems that not many people really have.
