So I got the swimming bug again after the World Championships so I decided yesterday to do a swim meet without having swam at all in 12 years. It was more fun than I expected and I swam about as fast as I was when I stopped swimming (at age 17).
What changed since then? (1) I have no cardio (i.e. died on 35-40m of the 50m LCMs I swam) and (2) 40 extra pounds of muscle with not a lot of extra fat.
I have always been of the view that strength/weight training is vastly underutilized in sports in general and am going to put it to the test in swimming.
My training will consist of only technique training, sprints, kick and very very little yardage (like ~1200 yards a WEEK).
I figure that will be enough to get my cardio to where I can sprint a 50 without dying and I figure all you need for a sprint is to be able to go all out for the whole race, with the remaining factors being power and technique which don't require much yardage I don't think.
Anyone ever try it?
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It is too bad you aren't an identical twin.
You could train the 1200 yards per week/heavy dry land & lifting approach.
And your twin could take the more conventional approach.
It is, furthermore, too bad that you aren't an identical twin in a pool of several 100 identical twin pairs that would agree to try this experiment!
Keep us posted on your progress. My gut intuition tells me that it is too hard to simulate swimming muscles precisely enough in the gym to optimize performance in the water, but I could well be wrong.
My larger question is this: do you like swimming? If so, why not do more of it? If not, what is the point?
To answer your last question, it's because I enjoy lifting more and doing a lot of both is too much on the body... at least my body... This is the crux of the issue. Ideally, we would lift 5x a week and swim 8000 yards a day and put on 20lbs of muscle while having the cardio of 5 Michael Phelps. Unfortunately, without massive amounts of steroids this isn't really possible so we have to pick. Most swimmers effectively pick 'swimming' I am curious what happens if you pick 'weightlifting.'
As for this having any chance to be close to a scientific experiment, I agree with your point and since I already made most of the strength gains I'm likely to make (at least the significant ones) the timing of the experiment messed up. However, the "anecdotal conclusion" one would be able to make if I manage to improve significantly on my times is that the main source of my improvement from 12 years ago is from strength increases. And furthermore, I swam about 1yr with essentially the same body with very minor improvements, so there is at least some sort of comparision to the conventional method, albeit very far from perfect.
As an aside, we already are seeing some of this to a less extreme degree playing out with swimmers like Dara Torres and even guys like Lochte who had pretty major improvements in his swimming post his leg injury when he couldn't do much but strengthen his upper body in the weight room etc. etc. (www.csscswim.com/index.php
It is too bad you aren't an identical twin.
You could train the 1200 yards per week/heavy dry land & lifting approach.
And your twin could take the more conventional approach.
It is, furthermore, too bad that you aren't an identical twin in a pool of several 100 identical twin pairs that would agree to try this experiment!
Keep us posted on your progress. My gut intuition tells me that it is too hard to simulate swimming muscles precisely enough in the gym to optimize performance in the water, but I could well be wrong.
My larger question is this: do you like swimming? If so, why not do more of it? If not, what is the point?
To answer your last question, it's because I enjoy lifting more and doing a lot of both is too much on the body... at least my body... This is the crux of the issue. Ideally, we would lift 5x a week and swim 8000 yards a day and put on 20lbs of muscle while having the cardio of 5 Michael Phelps. Unfortunately, without massive amounts of steroids this isn't really possible so we have to pick. Most swimmers effectively pick 'swimming' I am curious what happens if you pick 'weightlifting.'
As for this having any chance to be close to a scientific experiment, I agree with your point and since I already made most of the strength gains I'm likely to make (at least the significant ones) the timing of the experiment messed up. However, the "anecdotal conclusion" one would be able to make if I manage to improve significantly on my times is that the main source of my improvement from 12 years ago is from strength increases. And furthermore, I swam about 1yr with essentially the same body with very minor improvements, so there is at least some sort of comparision to the conventional method, albeit very far from perfect.
As an aside, we already are seeing some of this to a less extreme degree playing out with swimmers like Dara Torres and even guys like Lochte who had pretty major improvements in his swimming post his leg injury when he couldn't do much but strengthen his upper body in the weight room etc. etc. (www.csscswim.com/index.php
