Kalmarian wrote:
You are missing the point. The major component in swimming is reducing drag. The major component in running is p/w. Have you never met "fat swimmer guy" who hasnt been to a pool, nor worked out, for 20 years. but still swims laps areound you? Sure, there is some strength required to move properly in the water, but going sub 1.20scy once doesnt require any fitness. Doing series like 10x100 is a different story but that wasnt what MasteringFlow claimed.Nope. I literally have NEVER met 'fat Mr. never trained guy.' NEVER.
Now I've def met fat (or fattish) fast guy/gals in the water. Or gal. More than several, actually. When I was swimming at local pools and YMCAs, outside of masters, it wasn't common (rare actually) to see swimmers like this, so I did ask a few what they did for swimming.
Here are some of the answers I got:
- 60-120 minutes per day of swimming, for the last 20+ years
- Years of D1 swimming 'back in the day', actively coaching several highly competitive youth squads now, coaching a masters group of adults, AND training enough to race masters and train with ex-collegiate swimmers in another masters group
- Just left collegiate swimming 4 years ago (ok she def wasn't fat, but you get my point)
- Recent open water swim champion (I don't know what race/distance/etc.)
Zero of them were "huh - I literally haven't swam more than trivially in the past year." ALL of them were serious, diehard swimmers actively. NONE of them were out-of-shape with regards to swimming, even if they were carrying extra weight. It's just that in swimming, you don't have a weight penalty so you don't have to be as lean as a 21 year old runner to keep up when you're older and your genes are pushing you toward holding more and more body fat.
And I'll again cast serious doubt on that 1:20 takes no fitness. Again, it's no different than natural High school runners who run sub 17s - for them, 7 minute miles are a joke, it's literally slower than hobby jogging for them. But for an average ability age group triathlete, and even a good one it's faster than race pace. (I finish in the top 5% of overall run splits regularly, and 7 min/miles is a pretty firm effort for me, and is outright hard for most of the year outside of peaking.) If you're a natural-ability swimmer, you too may find 1:20s a joke. But look the swimmers who show up to most masters groups in most places (not just the 'elite' ones) - 1:20s are a hard effort for most of them. It's hard for me to believe that all these thousands and thousands of die hard pure adult masters swimmers can't swim at 'no effort' pace for most of their swim given that they swim year-round, seriously.