One of the most ancient and basic religious concepts- is that there is a animating force that gives movement to life.

But what of the obese nd muscle bound narcissists of today?

Alternately eating, and weight lifting.

Turning the body into rock, clay, mud, sand.

Sedentary, delusional.

A vessel unfit for spirit.

A black hole, sucking matter inward.
Food, social media, attention.

Emitting only delusion.

Jut salty because people with more body fat than them glide effortlessly… it’s called proper technique!

Haha....Dressel and Lececky are non muscular...... LOL!

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Kiwami Racing Team

Preach!

Think how fast Thorpe and Phelps could have been had they larded it up.

This is the same think a couple of buddies keep telling me - they're shiite swimmers who are slower than me in water because they don't eat as many pies as I do 🤔.
It must be true as one of them is 6' 7", low body fat, and size 13 flipper feet. Yet I take 15 mins off him on an IM swim.
And NOTHING at all to do with technique or that they rarely get in water unless it's 29C, and even then reluctantly.

Alright, I'll bite.

Technique, then fitness, in that order, play a larger role than the interplay of body composition and muscularity on swim efficiency & speed.

But...

There are cases where body density & muscle mass are so high, that the body will indeed ride lower in the water than someone with the same body fat percentage. Especially in the case where muscularity is biased towards the lower body.

Reason: low body fat percentage paired very high muscle mass results in greater body density than identical body fat percentage with lower muscle mass. Unfortunately, things like the Siri equation don't take that into account because they're "good enough" models (which they are).

Example:
Someone who is 10% body fat and 225 pounds will indeed be denser than someone who is 10% fat and 185 pounds.

I can confirm this. I have been both of those. I absolutely sink faster to the bottom of a pool at 225. In fact, I sank faster at 230 and about 11% fat than I did at 10% and 185. Muscle indeed is more dense than water, and it matters when it is taken to extremes.

Technique is still a bigger player for sure.

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Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
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agree to some degree. When I'm fatter I'm a faster swimmer. But still technique matters most.

Also, someone who’s gone through tremendous weight loss may need to adjust

yeah, its not wrong even though its often not the real issue... i'm not really sure what the point of this thread is...

for me its even worse as not only am i lean and sinky, i've also got long legs so the sinking weight is a long lever pulling my legs down and creating drag. i know my technique is average at best and if i improve it i can largely overcome those challenges but its still true that someone with more fat/less muscle and shorter legs will float more and flatter, hence being able to swim faster for the same technique and effort. fortunately i can smoke them on the run so its all good :)

Ya, that Caeleb Dressel guy should never have won 7 golds at the 2021 Oly, he's way too muscular to swim fast.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Good point. Let's examine it.

Caleb Dressel is 6'3" 200lbs, 7-9% body fat. That's an FFMI of ~22.5. One of the highest FFMI's in elite swimming.

As FFMI grows, there is an efficiency penalty. Hence, highest FFMI athletes are usually sprinters, unless they carry slightly more body fat.

Further, as FFMI increases, it tends to grow in the form of distally oriented muscle mass. The only way to get FFMI up >24 is through weight training which biases muscle growth distally, especially in the lower body. The effect: more energy and faster pace required to keep legs from riding too low in the water.

I was a strength coach to dozens of swimmers when I owned a coaching facility. Caleb Dressel and especially Katie Ledecky were useful tools to convince parents that their weak swimmer children could get faster by lifting weights. And they did. To a point.

There are diminishing returns, until there are real negative returns, especially for lower body muscle mass, and especially in endurance swimming.

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Dr. Alex Harrison | Founder & CEO | Sport Physiology & Performance PhD
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📱 Check out our app → Saturday: Pro Fuel & Hydration, a performance nutrition coach in your pocket.
Join us on YouTube → Saturday Morning | Ride & Run Faster and our growing Saturday User Hub

I dunno... I'm also a bike racer.. 5'11, 163ish, with no upper body but significant quads and calves. From my very first master's swim the coach said my hips and legs were very low because my lower body was so muscular compared to my upper body.

I can flatten out a bit at faster paces, but I absolutely struggle to swim a very easy pace because I just start tilting downwards to a very large degree.

I have a friend that won't kick because Katie Ledecky doesn't kick.

I've tried to explain that the kick is a part of the rhythm of the stroke but he still won't do it. His swimming is not pretty. Maybe when he gets down to 2:30/100 he'll figure it out.

I think you actually do sink more with less fat but it's obviously not something you can't conquer... elite swimmers as my example.

There's a guy that is generally swimming when I'm doing laps... he uses 3 or 4 kick boards when he does a kick set. Which is almost every other lap for him... swim with fins front crawl, grab his stack of boards and do a 50. I'd never talked to him until one day I come in and all the boards are gone and he's got like four... I asked him if I could borrow a board for a 100 kick warmup and he mumbled something about how he was 'negative buoyant'.. I didn't know how to respond and said I just need one for two laps... grabbed one of his stack and got on with it...

Curious if you did any sprinting. In college I knew a guy who got a little bigger and buffer every year. He got a little slower in practice but a little fast in the 50 every year.

That guy should be careful: after two consecutive quarters of Negative Buoyancy, technically that puts him in a Buoyancy Recession. It’s hard to get out of those.

You need to learn what keeps your legs at the surface and not sinking (hint: it has nothing to do with how muscular is your lower body compared to your upper body).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Probably. That and all the other things preventing me from swimming faster than a 6 year old.

For some reason I was thinking about this thread this morning. I thought that some of you might not know that they throw an open water swim into the CrossFit games every once in awhile. Search it on YouTube if you’re really interested in how really muscular guys and girls swim.

Most of them really struggle, but there’s always one or two that know what they’re doing and are fast.

Ding ding ding… put your head down!

Dong dong dong...wrong.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

The Donger:

I love it when the lean triathletes in their 30’s get frustrated when I, at 50 years old and carrying a tiny bit of a muffin top, crush them in the pool…

… of course, I’m crap on the bike, and my last BQ was 15 years ago. They get to crush me on the roads.

At a very strong masters squad in Colorado, the fast lanes had a bunch of dudes in our late 40’s and early 50’s and a few top AG triathletes in their 20’s and 30’s. A triathlete never once led the lanes: the dudes wearing the size 34-36 drag suits were always out front.

Anyway, the muscle/fat thing has nothing to do with who swims fast. Technique and swim-specific ROM in the ankles and hips is the reason, gained from thousands of hours grinding it out in the pool when we were growing up in the 80’s.