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?
I think Chris is correct. If you have good hand strength, chances are you will be strong throughout the skeletal muscular system. I agree it's most likely an easy to measure proxy for strength in general.
I also found it interesting that strength doesn't seem to matter much in middle and longer distance events.
As for you, Mr. Jazzhands, I did, indeed, read your posted study in its entirety (though I admit I kind of skimmed over the Methods section a bit.)
I was glad to see that there is a study, albeit of 26 people, where some forms of weight lifting compared favorably with swimming with or against rubberized restraints.
Between these two studies, I can see where weight lifting might be beneficial to sprints. But I still maintain that most masters swimmers can derive the same benefits from race pace sets, which allows you to overload your muscles to the point of failure the same way lifting does. The advantage of doing this in the water is that you are using exactly the same muscles and kinetic chain of muscles that are required to swim fast; in the gym, the best you can do is train, in a rather general way, large muscle groups that are recruited--in slightly different ways--in swimming.
And even if you can train each individual muscle in the beaded necklace of the kinetic chain via weight alone, that still leaves somewhat questionable the connecting tissues that must work in perfect harmony to optimize performance.
Look at Tiger Woods golf swing. Every *** in the chain is perfectly coordinated. I'm sure he's strong, and I am sure he works out. But the only way to get that perfect whip swing is to practice the whole thing, over and over again.
I am sure there's a million guys with much stronger arms, legs, abs, obliques, etc. than Tiger Woods. He remains one in a million because of his ability to coordinate all the parts. Ditto for Michael Phelps and any elite athlete who depends as much on skill as raw musculature. Phelps, for his, part, didn't even lift at all until recently. Do you think this hurt his swimming?
I think Chris is correct. If you have good hand strength, chances are you will be strong throughout the skeletal muscular system. I agree it's most likely an easy to measure proxy for strength in general.
I also found it interesting that strength doesn't seem to matter much in middle and longer distance events.
As for you, Mr. Jazzhands, I did, indeed, read your posted study in its entirety (though I admit I kind of skimmed over the Methods section a bit.)
I was glad to see that there is a study, albeit of 26 people, where some forms of weight lifting compared favorably with swimming with or against rubberized restraints.
Between these two studies, I can see where weight lifting might be beneficial to sprints. But I still maintain that most masters swimmers can derive the same benefits from race pace sets, which allows you to overload your muscles to the point of failure the same way lifting does. The advantage of doing this in the water is that you are using exactly the same muscles and kinetic chain of muscles that are required to swim fast; in the gym, the best you can do is train, in a rather general way, large muscle groups that are recruited--in slightly different ways--in swimming.
And even if you can train each individual muscle in the beaded necklace of the kinetic chain via weight alone, that still leaves somewhat questionable the connecting tissues that must work in perfect harmony to optimize performance.
Look at Tiger Woods golf swing. Every *** in the chain is perfectly coordinated. I'm sure he's strong, and I am sure he works out. But the only way to get that perfect whip swing is to practice the whole thing, over and over again.
I am sure there's a million guys with much stronger arms, legs, abs, obliques, etc. than Tiger Woods. He remains one in a million because of his ability to coordinate all the parts. Ditto for Michael Phelps and any elite athlete who depends as much on skill as raw musculature. Phelps, for his, part, didn't even lift at all until recently. Do you think this hurt his swimming?
