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?
Jazz Hands basically does what you posit. He has a blog on the forum you can check out. He dropped good time when he started lifting seriously a couple year ago. And he's very fast now in the 50s on the regimen you suggest.
I am a low yardage person myself and drylands are critical to my sprinting, but I am not as extreme. And there things I like to work on in the pool. How can you work on three things -- sprints, kicking and technique (all critical) -- in 1200 yards per week?
Are you talking about long course or short course 50s? For long course, I would say you need some sprint endurance work. But have at it and have fun!
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?
Have fun at the orthopedic surgeon.
You must be one of those who still think stretching for half an hour before doing exercises reduces chance of injury and that weightlifting makes you inflexible and all these other training myths that research is slowly but surely debunking.
You must be one of those who still think stretching for half an hour before doing exercises reduces chance of injury and that weightlifting makes you inflexible and all these other training myths that research is slowly but surely debunking.
No. But TANSTAAFL.
No. But TANSTAAFL.
I didn't include the dryland portion in the above ... that would be by far the biggest portion of the effort. The idea w/minimizing the swimming to the bare minimum is that too much swimming interferes with ability to gain strength/power/explosiveness. Since I swam age-group etc. I don't think I will need that much to make improvements in technique etc. Obviously this wouldn't make sense for someone who is just starting out who needs the time to ingrain the proper technique into their muscle memory etc.
And hey, for all I know it will fail! As or increasing chances of injury, the swimming part will clearly contribute less risk of injury than swimming more yardage that is just simple math. Lifting weights is of course a risk, but not sure how you figure this type of combination exposes me to any more than the usual risk of injury when exercising/lifting/swimming.
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
Jazz Hands basically does what you posit. He has a blog on the forum you can check out. He dropped good time when he started lifting seriously a couple year ago. And he's very fast now in the 50s on the regimen you suggest.
I am a low yardage person myself and drylands are critical to my sprinting, but I am not as extreme. And there things I like to work on in the pool. How can you work on three things -- sprints, kicking and technique (all critical) -- in 1200 yards per week?
Are you talking about long course or short course 50s? For long course, I would say you need some sprint endurance work. But have at it and have fun!
The more I think about it I probably need around 1800-2000 yards/week. I hope that I will build endurance for both short and long course 50s.. the meet I did yesterday were long course 50s and I died with about 10-15m left. This is after not swimming in a pool for about 12 years so I think even on low yardage I will build up the sprint endurance I need for a 50 of either form.
Well (1) is from personal experience with lifting and swimming. (lifting while swimming 12hrs/week = 5lbs muscle gained in 2yrs, quit swimming = 20lbs muscle gained in 3 MONTHS) There is also tons more anecdotal evidence and I'm sure some research on the matter. It's overtraining essentially.
Can't say I disagree. We used to lift three days a week when I swam in college and I never really seemed to get stronger when we were in heavy (swimming) training. I felt good in the weight room in the off season and felt like crap mid-season as a general rule.
Just curious, what is your lifetime personal best? If it's fast then yes. If it's slow (like me), then consider spending lot's of time and yards in the pool learning how to swim correctly. The most powerful person on the planet probably can't even swim
