1. Whats your race distance?

For shorter races weight training has more benefit, than for longer ones. It has some anyway.

2. Whats your build?

A 240 pound former wrestler will benefit less from strength training, than a 90 pound weak office worker

3. How much do you swim?

Swim less than 9 times per week (4 times for a triathlete) --> swim more

4. Logistics

Can squeeze in a lifting workout in your lunch hour, but no swim -> lift

1. Ironman

2. skinny build 6ft1, 160 pounds

3. Average would be roughly around 12km per week over 4 sessions

4. Could fit in the extra time, but am just not sure if it would make a significant impact

If you’re not doing any strength training at all you should consider it. A 10-15 minute body weight circuit following an easy run or bike isn’t a big investment time wise, but goes a long way in keeping your chassis strong. Do some pull ups, body weight squats, planks, lunges, and pushups and you’ve got a well rounded workout.

A TRX system is a good investment, along with some theraband, to really focus on some swim specific exercises. Each of these are portable and can give you a good workout in not much time. I really like the TRX system as it really makes your stabilizing muscles kick in as well.

For most people who club swam as a kid, they have developed swim muscles to a greater degree than adult learners.
So for an adult learner developing those swim muscle groups wouldn't hurt.

As a Masters AG swimmer for a couple of decades my experience is...
I have never met a national level swimmer who hadn't weight trained.
But then I'm sure someone would point out I haven't met them all.

this trx exercise helped my butterfly ... i go a bit more parallel to the ground than this picture shows

How the heck can you give any meaningful advice given the information provided? Maybe the OP swims 2:15/100scy, and the issue is terrible form. Maybe the OP can do 1:05/100scy, but can't swim a 200scy under 3:00. Maybe the OP already can hold 1:10s on 10x100 on 1:20.

Swimming, in any case, is not strength-limited.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Strength training is universally good, therefore, it’s generally good advice that someone who doesn’t do it to begin doing it. That seems meaningful to me.

It is not universally good. It is quite possible that it would be detrimental if it prevented the swimmer from maximising return from, you know, more and better swimming. Any quality workout, strength training included, imparts a cost on the body if it is to do any good. The recovery from that training effect can interfere with other, more individually valuable training.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Swim more than 9 times a week???? I know an Olympic swimmer that only swims 9 times a week.

Which is no contradiction to what I said. If you are an "only swimmer" training 6 times a week, do you profit more from 8 swims, or 6 swims and 2 lifting sessions? And here my opinion is, that the cutoff for even considering strength training is 4 sessions for triathletes and 9 for swimmers.

 "Maybe the OP already can hold 1:10s on 10x100 on 1:20."

If they could, they wouldn't be on here........
But it would be useful to let the experts know their baseline.

Weight training is a very, very important.

WITHOUT weight training you are EITHER going to have to:
1) Train
2) Or admit that you are out of shape.


WITH weight training you can say:
1) "I am a super-serious athlete working really hard."
2) "You can't expect a super muscular and athletic guy like me to compete with skinny swimmers, runners or cyclists."


It doesn't matter how fat and lazy you are, nor how little weight training (or any other kind of training) you actually do-

this will work for you.

IMO, he’s training for Ironman, so weight training is pretty low on the list of things to do to improve swimming performance. That time is better off spent swimming.

There may be other reasons to do some weight training for an IM triathlete, like general athleticism, injury prevention, etc, but it’s not really going to help someone swim faster over that duration that swimming more and swimming smarter won’t do more effectively.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

While I do not profess to be anywhere near your league as far as swimming is concerned, I would take a moment to give you my initial response to swimming more and smarter. The OP has been a little vague on information, the only thing I got was that they are swimming 12,000m a week in 4 sessions.

If they are a 2:00 per 100m swimmer. that's at least 4 hours a week at the pool, probably 5. If they are a 1:10 swimmer that's 4 sessions of less than an hour. If they are at the 4 hour plus end of the spectrum, then they are all in, as far as time allotment goes for IM training and at the 1:10 end they really don't need more (and we're all jealous) unless they are going pro.

If they are at the 2:00 minute end of things, we don't know their 1 x 100 speed, versus their 25 x 100. and so on.

If they are a 2:00 swimmer who has a 1 x100 of 2:00 then stroke, aerobics and strength are all factors. Building swim strength can be done faster out of the pool than in it. Stroke and aerobics, endurance require pool work, but even there paddles certainly have a place. Each of those will change with their 1 x 100 and 25 x 100 time.

So stating that strength training is not relevant could do with more information before I would consider it (and vice versa)

All rather long winded, on my part.
Sorry.

I do understand that top pure swimmers, esp sprinters ALL weight train to improve their swimming (?sprinting) but as a counterpoint, I'm always amazed at how fast both Alistair Brownlee and Javier Gomez swim with no bulging arm or lat muscles. I mean, I know he's still pulling like a beast to swim as fast as he does (clear FOP in ITU) but you'll never convince me that he can match even a moderately trained HS football player in benchpress, shoulder press, and all the back pulls for low rep strength.

That said, I'm still for the +strength training, but not with the expectation that it will supercharge your swim, but add resilience both in and out of the pool. Like stuff as simple as not straining your back or arms during daily life and thus setting back your tri training.

Swimming more and more effectively will make you faster.

Lifting weights will give you a bunch of great excuses
1) "I don't have enough time to swim, I am too busy doing important weight training"
2) "I am too muscular to swim, bike or run fast"
3) "The experts (non-swimmers) tell me that weight training is the key, so I don't need to worry about training hard or learning to swim well."
4) "The experts told me that weight training would make me swim fast. That didn't work! I guess I am just not made for swimming. Might as well focus on weights."

In the swimming world, there really aren't any "pure" distance swimmers (except maybe some of the OW specialists), even the 1500 specialists are usually pretty good down to the 200, even if it isn't their best event.

to Michael, quite honestly, for an ironman-distance triathlete, I simply don't care what their 100 free time is, in any capacity. It's never going to be relevant in an actual race. I would look at their 400 time, because that's going to give a pretty strong correlation to the 3.8k swim time, but the 100? nope. completely different energy systems, more dependent on a strong kick, it's really a different stroke altogether.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Weight training is NOT an effective way to make slow, moderate, or fast amateur triathlete swimmers faster.

Period!!!


On the other hand, more swimming and a greater variety of swim training- will make you stronger, and will do many of the things that weight training is supposed to do.

1) Butterfly kick is a very, very effective "core" workout.
2) Swim sprinting will do a lot to build strength in arms, legs and core.
3) Breastroke, backstroke and butterfly also strengthen muscles that are rarely used.

From the British Swimming Website

Strength training for swimming is not about replicating the work with is being completed in the pool. When elite swimmers are completing 20 hours per week of swimming it is unlikely that trying to mimic what is being done in the pool for an extra 2/3 hours per week will make a significant performance improvement.
The main propulsive muscles used during a swimming race are the latissimus dorsi, pectoralis major and quadriceps. We therefore want to use exercises which allow us to sufficiently overload these muscles. Remember the aim of strength training is not to replicate what is done in the pool but to develop a stronger swimmer who can then use their new strength when swimming. 3 of the more effective exercise for overloading the propulsive swimming muscles are the chin up, bench press and back squat.

Rather than looking for dumb excuses to get out of swimming......,.
"I am too busy lifting weights to swim."


You might swim in a way that gives you more strength benefits and also makes you swim faster.

Just an idea.

Re swim strength: an oldie but a goodie: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8371657. Conclusion: "In this investigation, dry-land resistance training did not improve swimming performance despite the fact that the COMBO was able to increase the resistance used during strength training by 25-35%. The lack of a positive transfer between dry-land strength gains and swimming propulsive force may be due to the specificity of training."

This whole thread is akin to someone asking how to improve the performance of their investment portfolio, and someone suggesting "buy more bonds." We don't know what are the goals of the portfolio, what are the current returns, and what is the makeup of the portfolio.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

That's from British SWIMMING. Not triathlon. Swimming. You're talking about a population that's already doing 17-20 hours in the pool, AND are largely focused on events lasting 4 minutes or less.

Not the same as an AG triathlete wanting to get better at Ironman.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

This makes no sense: "Don't replicate swim mechanics (i.e., don't use the same muscles), but overload those muscles nevertheless?" The best way to overload muscles in a movement-specific (range of motion, angular speed of joints, etc.) is to do exactly the swim mechanics. See the Costill article I linked above.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Not sure what your point is.

But I agree!!!

Once the OP is training over 20 hrs/wk, and can swim 100 yards in under 52 seconds ------ weight training MIGHT definitely help to unlock that extra 1.5%.

In fairness to the "pro-strength training" folks on here, strength training for swimmers in 2020 looks nothing like what it did in 1993. If you go to Swimswam, Coleman Hodges does a series called "Practice & Pancakes" and quite often covers some of the dryland strength training sessions at the clubs and college teams he visits. It's so much different now than when I was in University (I graduated in '93, so I would have followed much of the same protocols that are in that study you cited).

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Quoting from the same paper, written in 1993, because the world hasn't moved on since then.......

The lack of a positive transfer between dry-land strength gains and swimming propulsive force may be due to the specificity of training.


And for the other...always buy bonds, preferably Greek Bonds.

I didn't write it....

Some Brits can swim quite well.

really? name one....


;-)

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

You are the one who is arguing in favor of Greek bonds here my friend!!!!

Or better- corn futures. (A very appropriate investment for commercial corn producers. A wildly inappropriate investment for 99.9% of ordinary individuals)

This is an adult onset triathlete swimmer.

The easiest ways to get faster will be:
1) Fix strike
2) Develop swim specific fitness and strength.

The most appropriate way to do this is consistent, logical, supervised SWIM training.

Weight training, in the hopes of making a time strapped triathlete swimmer, swimming faster - is a distraction which will definitely make them SLOWER.

It is true that weights might benefit some swimmers in some circumstances.

But you are overlooking the obvious, the practical and the consistently beneficial- in favor of the exotic and generally irrelevant.

Agree with all of this - in addition, I would point out that the weight training, especially upper body stuff, isn't going to help your running or biking either. Since the OP does ironman distances, this would probably hurt all 3 disciplines in the prescribed distance.

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Strava

You're right there is only one.....Peaty, but that's only because it's my stroke,(was my stroke in another life and century).

:0)

Triathletes need to stop placing so much weight on studies that are 8 weeks long with a total of 24 athletes. First, 8 weeks isn't long enough to integrate the new strength into the stroke and the design of the weight training program is important.

I can tell you from experience of working with well over 500 athletes at this point that a solid S&C program is important for any level of athlete swimming at any distance. If you aren't doing a strength and conditioning program you are leaving time on the table.

Hope this helps,

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Please stop posting

Let them think weight lifting is bad for triathletes

😇

Amen brother. As someone who works in research, the standard of study designs in a frightening amount of sports "science" is just grim.

Top tip everyone: unless the sample size is (very generously) > 20 per treatment group it's not worth looking at. Don't make any significant changes on the basis of any research unless there have been multiple replicated studies and a well-conducted meta-analysis confirming an overall effect. Even then consider the effect size carefully, think about who the subjects were (untrained randoms? elite athletes?) and ask who's been funding it.

I'll get me coat

Couldn’t agree more. While the researchers conducting these studies are increasingly coaching too or have experience as coaches there still tends to be a big gap between what is “proven” in the studies and what works in driving performance gains with athletes in a practice/racing environment.

I appreciate your point of view.

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

In this particular case, David Costill was 1) a well-known researcher, 2) a national-caliber Masters swimmer, and 3) coach of the college team whose members served as the test subjects. You can complain about the sample size or the length of the trial, I guess, but I don't think the test would have been fatally flawed due to poor design or funding issues. The main takeway I got from that study is that the swimmers who did dryland strength training got significantly stronger on whatever measures they used, but did not get faster than the control group.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Here’s where it’s important to have a lot of experience as a coach and see how strength training impacts performance over multiple seasons of competition. From a neuro-muscular point of view, it usually takes about a season to integrate the strength an athlete develops in the gym to the pool. It’s similar to when a young swimmer goes through a growth spurt. It’s takes the brain and body a while to figure out where everything is.

Hope this helps,

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Does this apply to activities other than swimming? Reductio ad absurdum, it doesn't apply to weightlifting (because the neuromuscular adaptations happen while actually lifting?). It is because the strength training isn't quite the same (motion, speed, range, etc.) as the actual activity?

Just trying to understand, not to be argumentative. I am willing to be convinced of the benefits here.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I couldn’t tell you exactly what’s happening in other sports. I can only tell you what I experienced as an athlete and now as a coach for almost 30 years with a lot of athletes. The first thing I would argue is that swimming is unique in the technical demands of the movement. Swimming is unlike running for instance where it’s a movement we were designed to make and begin to ingrain the “cross-connection” as soon as we begin to crawl. The cross connection with swimming is the exact opposite.

My experience from college is I went from not lifting much in high school to lifting 3x a week for 90 minutes. We lifted hard. In high school I swam at about 175-180lbs. By the end of my freshman year of college, I was at 190lbs and about 8% body fat. My college coach told everyone that the first year of integrating the lifting into training would be tough, but that by the second year you’d have a big breakthrough. In high school, I could routinely go 52/100 yards from a push. My freshman year in college was a step back. After lifting, it was exceptionally difficult to “grab” the water. By midway through my sophomore when the S&C work didn’t feel as hard, I could go a 49/100 yards from a push.

As a coach and particularly the last ten years there have been some great strength and conditioning programs that have online access. They are radically different from the S&C work I did in college and the ones that are swimming specific are very effective. I’ve worked a lot with two of the different online programs. In my coaching experience, I’ve seen drops of about 10-15 seconds/100 over distance with the athletes who have used these programs. In my personal experience using them, the biggest difference I noticed was they seemed to make the connection up and down the “kinetic chain” a lot stronger. And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the conditioning aspects of the programs which really help prevent repetitive use injuries. Amongst highly competitive athletes, the two biggest components of success in endurance sports are don’t get sick and don’t get injured.

Hope this helps,

Tim

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

Having read through all the responses and reactions (mine included) I thought I would go to the "horses mouth" so to speak and ask an Olympic medalist and as my Mandarin is a little rusty and besides we probably would have very different responses to Sun Yang I went to the best Canadian ( I tend to trust them for some reason) of the last decade in the 1500m, (among other distances) Ryan Cochrane and he was nice enough to respond.

Hi Michael. We did a weights and strength program throughout my career, but in general it was always supplementary to the swimming. And because we weren't necessarily a strength event - it wasn't ever the most important piece. That said, everything has its place in moderation.






I have to believe that what passes for moderation at Olympic levels would cripple the average person.

:0)