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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I compete against a couple "strength" swimmers who are fast because they are strong and one got faster as their technique improved. Neither one of the pool trains serious but it is quite obvious that both of them spend a lot of time at the gym. Based on this HUGE dataset, I think your experiment will be successful.
This is a swimming forum, and you will find some swimming purists here. If you find yourself defending you approach 5 times in 2 days with 1 person, you might have found one of the purist who don't believe weight training has any place in the sport of swimming.
Your concern about aerobic exercise catabalizing your mass seems legit to me. A lean 175 is more difficult to maintain at 5'8" than it is at 6'2".
When you do real "ATG" do you eat rice?
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Lol to the rice... nope alas I don't. Yep I noticed Jim is more a purist than most and there is a chance he is right but I hope to find out one way or another soon enough!
Jim: Anecdotal evidence is quite strong, strong enough that I highly doubt the lack of peer reviewed literature really makes a difference. I could tell you 1+1=2 and whether or not it was peer reviewed it would still be valid. This is not to say that my extreme approach is valid, but to suggest that
(a) weightlifting does not benefit swimming (in particular, sprinters)
(b) that "too much" swimming (or any activity frankly) does interferes with ability of the body to buid muscle
are both hardly justified by both anecdotal evidence or any science, for that matter.
Plus, I should mention, I used to (and still do occasionally) do brazilian jiu jitsu ... even doing that 2-3x a week (about 1-1.5hrs each day) pretty much assured of at best muscle maintenance so I have some experience mixing lifting with other physically intensive activities to know how my body reacts to certain amounts of cardio (and muscle) intensive activities in conjunction with lifting. I also know that I am not some obscure unique case, as much as we all like to think we are special :)
I compete against a couple "strength" swimmers who are fast because they are strong and one got faster as their technique improved. Neither one of the pool trains serious but it is quite obvious that both of them spend a lot of time at the gym. Based on this HUGE dataset, I think your experiment will be successful.
This is a swimming forum, and you will find some swimming purists here. If you find yourself defending you approach 5 times in 2 days with 1 person, you might have found one of the purist who don't believe weight training has any place in the sport of swimming.
Your concern about aerobic exercise catabalizing your mass seems legit to me. A lean 175 is more difficult to maintain at 5'8" than it is at 6'2".
When you do real "ATG" do you eat rice?
t0.gstatic.com/images
Lol to the rice... nope alas I don't. Yep I noticed Jim is more a purist than most and there is a chance he is right but I hope to find out one way or another soon enough!
Jim: Anecdotal evidence is quite strong, strong enough that I highly doubt the lack of peer reviewed literature really makes a difference. I could tell you 1+1=2 and whether or not it was peer reviewed it would still be valid. This is not to say that my extreme approach is valid, but to suggest that
(a) weightlifting does not benefit swimming (in particular, sprinters)
(b) that "too much" swimming (or any activity frankly) does interferes with ability of the body to buid muscle
are both hardly justified by both anecdotal evidence or any science, for that matter.
Plus, I should mention, I used to (and still do occasionally) do brazilian jiu jitsu ... even doing that 2-3x a week (about 1-1.5hrs each day) pretty much assured of at best muscle maintenance so I have some experience mixing lifting with other physically intensive activities to know how my body reacts to certain amounts of cardio (and muscle) intensive activities in conjunction with lifting. I also know that I am not some obscure unique case, as much as we all like to think we are special :)
