A sprint experiment

+1 There is no requirement to swim X amount to participate in masters. Do what you want -- swim mega yardage and feel pure or swim the bare minimum and compete in 50s. Just ignore the bashing of sprinters that is fairly commonplace. Is that why there are 10x as many open water events as "regular" meets? :)

Are you Mark Foster in disguise ? :weightlifter: I hear his warm up was a cup of coffee

Speaking of mark foster... www.guardian.co.uk/.../swimming.olympicgames2008 A little more anecdotal evidence for ya Maybe...but he still swims 15k a week, which is perhaps somewhere around the median for masters swimmers. (I'm sure his gym workout is harder than the vast majority of masters swimmers.) But weekly yardage is a poor standalone summary of a training plan. Foster's approach seems to be to eschew aerobic and lactate-tolerance training in favor of building strength and raw speed, and working on technique. He does full-speed work in the pool and lots of easy swimming. Seems like a fine approach for training for 50s. I wish you luck in your experiment. A few things that raise red flags in my mind: -- you say that you cannot swim (say) an easy 200. This implies either that your muscles are not used to swimming or that you have poor swimming efficiency. A key point in your experiment is the ability to transfer strength gain from the weight room to the pool. I don't doubt that lifting weights can hit the major muscle groups that propel swimmers, but there are probably many small muscles that swimming depends on that might only (or best) be exercised by actually swimming. Maybe 2k per week is enough to get them properly conditioned, but perhaps not. The saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link may apply here. -- Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the impression that you plan to avoid or only do minimal race-pace training (or any hard swimming) because it might interfere with your strength gains. If true, I think this is a huge mistake. While there are a variety of training philosophies on this forum, I think perhaps the one thing almost everyone agrees on is the need for race-pace training with adequate recovery between sessions. Both Mark Foster and Jazz Hands (to choose a masters swimmer with a comparable philosophy) do plenty of race-pace work. -- you mention you don't have the "cardio" to complete a 50 at full speed. I am not sure how you are using the term, but if you mean it as "aerobic fitness," I would strongly disagree. I think the aerobic component of a 50 sprint is very small. Again, IMO the best way to train in the pool is to do race-pace 15s, 25s and 50s as well as work on technique (drills, starts, breakouts, turns). One thing I found interesting about the article Jazz linked to was that assisted swimming (eg, swimming with a stretch cord) can be as effective as resisted swimming or weight training. I can certainly see the value in encouraging/developing a fast turnover. Another useful tool to develop a fast (but still efficient) turnover might be a tempo trainer. These sorts of swim-specific things are hard to replicate in the gym. Enjoy.

Are you Mark Foster in disguise ? :weightlifter: I hear his warm up was a cup of coffee Speaking of mark foster... www.guardian.co.uk/.../swimming.olympicgames2008 A little more anecdotal evidence for ya

One thing I found interesting about the article Jazz linked to was that assisted swimming (eg, swimming with a stretch cord) can be as effective as resisted swimming or weight training. I can certainly see the value in encouraging/developing a fast turnover. Another useful tool to develop a fast (but still efficient) turnover might be a tempo trainer. These sorts of swim-specific things are hard to replicate in the gym. Actually, there was no assistance-only group. Resistance and assistance were combined in the group referred to as "RAS."

I'm taking a moment here to recognize a masterpiece of trolling by Mr. Thornton. Well done sir!

... they have to go slow. :) That's not true! We don't have to go slow! I mean, like, we can always stop entirely.

WHAT THE HELL DUDE Read the thing I posted. I've posted it for you before. You didn't read it. I posted it in this thread and you ignored it. You keep saying with absolutely certainty that there is no scientific evidence. You're wrong. Here it is again: www.teamunify.com/.../EFFECTS OF DRY-LAND VS. RESISTED- AND.pdf You need to get over your absolute denial of the existence of any evidence at all, and come up with some other, less stupid, argument. I'm sure you can do it. The article makes a case that strength training, including weight lifting, helps swimming performance. But the resisted/assisted swimming training was not distinguishable from weights: "dry-land weight training does not seem to be the only way to overload functional muscles." Don't get me wrong, I think weight training helps swimming performance (and is healthy besides). Though I do differ from conventional wisdom in some respects -- I think you can maintain strength gains in the water for longer than is commonly believed (this article may support that view). It was an interesting study; I like how they tried to correlate swimming performance with other measures. Although the improvement due to weights and the "RAS" treatment was similar, the reasons seemed a little different. Why not try both and see if the effects are at all additive? I wish they had a larger sample size. I wish they had specified the type of swimming training that was done a little more (the magnitude of the gains will probably depend on the type of training). I wish they had tested the effect on other distances and strokes; I've sometimes wondered if butterfly, for example, is more strongly helped by upper-body strength gains than backstroke. And the authors themselves noted the need for a longer-term study.

? So what if his motivation is some variation of laziness? Trying to find an easy way to improve swimming still seems to me like a fun thing to do. It doesn't hurt anyone. It will almost certainly improve his swimming compared with not swimming at all. If he tries his program and it doesn't work (and he answers "yes" to one or more of your questions), then he has some hard decisions to make. Until then, what does it matter if his motivations are impure? Micky, excellent points, each and every one! I was being churlish, of that there is no doubt. Mr. Gaash, I apologize if my penchant for purist preachiness peeved you, or anyone else, for that matter. To each his own is usually my operative philosophy. For some reason, this experiment tingled a lobe of my brain wherein resides the most dimly remembered collegiate notions of Sartre's mauvais foi, what with its tendrils into the lands of self-deception and ressentiment. My tingled lobe's kneejerk reaction: disabuse Mr. Gaash of his delusions (as I perceived them) and help him escape this exercise in bad faith (again, as I perceived it). But when it comes to mauvais foi, those like me prone to judging it in others are no doubt riddled with it ourselves. Points not only taken, Mr. Young--points taken to heart!

I have yet to see any peer-reviewed journal article that shows convincingly (or even suggests possibly) that weight lifting helps swimming performance. WHAT THE HELL DUDE Read the thing I posted. I've posted it for you before. You didn't read it. I posted it in this thread and you ignored it. You keep saying with absolutely certainty that there is no scientific evidence. You're wrong. Here it is again: www.teamunify.com/.../EFFECTS OF DRY-LAND VS. RESISTED- AND.pdf You need to get over your absolute denial of the existence of any evidence at all, and come up with some other, less stupid, argument. I'm sure you can do it.