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)