Although it’s hard to measure “accurately”, I think this factor is huge in terms of predicting maximal performance. It’s a no brainer with boat design for example, that reduce weight for a given hull size, you increase speed. Applies to kayaks, canoes everything. (eg. I put my ski boat on a massive diet and saved a 30% in fuel costs).
So if you look at the new school swimmers, ones that are blowing up in the pool at a young age, they are all a) lightweight/ super lean and b) tend to be taller
5 ro 10lbs extra weight for the same basic surface area/height is a lot to be dragging around if we splitting seconds.
I’m skinny and chubby people are always smoking me in the pool (probably says more about my crappy swimming).
Typical ex-swimmer usually. Slouchy guy or kind of heavy gal doesn’t look very fit or athletic standing on the pool deck. Damn fast in the water.
That doesn’t happen when i’m running and it’s not like i’m an elite runner. People typically run more or less how I expect them to run.
Weight and swimming performance is not as directly linked as it is in running or cycling. First off, because of buoyancy, you are not carrying your weight in nearly the same way you would be in land activaties. Then, there is the fact that part of that weight is made up of fat which floats so it actually can in theory be helpful until drag from increased size starts to out weight the buoyancy benefits. (There is a difference between taking 10 pounds of lead out of your ski boat and 10 pounds of fat off a swimmer. In some cases, that could actually make an individual swimmer slower, not faster).
Also an often overlooked fact is there is very little acceleration in pool swimming. On diving starts and turns, even world class swimmers are significantly exceeding their swimming pace so you are basically timing the start of your stroke to come at your ultimate swim speed so if you do it right, you do not have to accelerate your mass with your stroke at all during a race save for tactical reasons which, frankly, are limited It feels often feels like you are trying to accelerate but really you are just struggling to hold speed as fatigue creeps up. This is a huge difference from cycling and running where there are changes in speed and the energy costs are directly impacted by weight.
You sited the hydrodynamic benefits of bigger (longer) vessels. Longer vessels move faster with the same power input. In order to be longer (i.e. taller) you are very likely to weigh more too.
Swimming really fast does favor bigger people. While not universal, your average elite swimmer is going to be quite a bit bigger than your average elite runner or cyclist. For men, anything smaller than 6 foot and over 170 pounds and you’ll be the little guy and 6’ 4" or even taller and close to or slightly over 200 pounds is very common (e.g. Michael Phelps). Heck, close to 6 foot is not uncommon for elite women. Swimming at an elite level is a power sport which takes a decent amount of muscle and, there is no real performance penalty from being big if you big frame has muscle on it. Add in the fact that fast swimmers train 16-20 hours a week and you don’t see too much fat.
Reminds me of the advice I got from a good swimmer when as a pretty good, pretty skinny runner, I started to swim at the Princeton NJ YMCA. He told me ‘‘eat more donuts!!!’’
That’s funny. When I went to college after a far from stellar high school swimming and water polo career, I joined the club water polo team. I was 6’1" and MAYBE 160lbs. Every single guy on the water polo team was at least 185 (we had one tall lean guy, the rest were over 6’ and over 200lbs). I got tossed around like a rag doll AND I was the slowest guy on the team.
Now 175lbs. Been out running plenty of times and felt fat. Been climbing on my bike and felt fat. I have never been in the water and thought “wow this would be easier if I had skipped that bowl of ice cream last night”.
Although it’s hard to measure “accurately”, I think this factor is huge in terms of predicting maximal performance. It’s a no brainer with boat design for example, that reduce weight for a given hull size, you increase speed. Applies to kayaks, canoes everything. (eg. I put my ski boat on a massive diet and saved a 30% in fuel costs).
So if you look at the new school swimmers, ones that are blowing up in the pool at a young age, they are all a) lightweight/ super lean and b) tend to be taller
5 ro 10lbs extra weight for the same basic surface area/height is a lot to be dragging around if we splitting seconds.
On top of what everyone else said, when you successfully (i.e. it doesn’t make the boat sink) remove weight from your boat, that was weight that wasn’t making the boat start, stop or turn.
When you remove weight from a swimmer, that weight was either helping them float (fat) or helping them move (muscle). Absolutely elite swimmers will be extremely muscular, but it is definitely not entirely a skinny person’s sport like running or uphill cycling. Weight loss to optimize distance swim speed comes a very distant third to technique and cardio. To put it another way: if you sucked 20lbs of fat off a runner or cyclist, they’d instantly become faster, no doubt. If you sucked 20lbs of fat off a swimmer, it may not be the case that they’d be any faster. They’d actually have a greater percentage of their body in the water when swimming (thanks to their new higher average density), and if the fat removal didn’t improve drag, they could easily be slower.
My BMI is about 27.5. I’m not the fastest guy on the forum, but I’m not the slowest either.
At 5’6" and 122 lbs, my BMI is 19.7. JasoninHalifax is a much faster swimmer than I am.
Like other posters have mentioned, if you try and correlate BMI with 100 free time (or any other event) it won’t work out very well for you. Go to a college meet; you will definitely see some people who don’t look particularly “fast” until they get in the water. It’s sort of one of the cruel things about swimming - you can be in super shape, and still carry a lot of body fat (like my college roommate), or have low body fat but carry a lot of muscle and hence look ‘big’ but be lean.
There is, however, a strong correlation between technique and speed… which is why some santa-shaped people can kick your little tush in the pool.
So if you look at the new school swimmers, ones that are blowing up in the pool at a young age, they are all a) lightweight/ super lean and b) tend to be taller
I’d like to point out that you may have the cause-and-effect backward here. Lightweight/lean/tall doesn’t necessarily lead to speed, but many hours in the pool may lead to lightweight and lean (and puberty does the rest of it).
My BMI is about 27.5. I’m not the fastest guy on the forum, but I’m not the slowest either.
My bmi is in the mid 40s (!down from the 53!) but I can hang for 3k+ with the medium-fast lane people on our masters swim team.
Growing up, the people on my swim team who were the fastest weren’t necessarily the most lean. Also, it was kinda stroke-dependant. A typical backstroker tends to be very long and lean, a sprinter/flyer can have more junk in the trunk, breaststokers could be kinda chubby. Distance free people were lean but not really “cut”- think Ian Thorpe vs say Ryan Lochte.
Sometimes I wonder once I get less gordo if my swimming will get worse because I won’t float as well. Right now pathetically enough I don’t even have to hold onto the lane line or the edge of the pool between sets, I am so damn buoyant. Mortifying…! lol
Although it’s hard to measure “accurately”, I think this factor is huge in terms of predicting maximal performance. It’s a no brainer with boat design for example, that reduce weight for a given hull size, you increase speed. Applies to kayaks, canoes everything. (eg. I put my ski boat on a massive diet and saved a 30% in fuel costs).
**So if you look at the new school swimmers, ones that are blowing up in the pool at a young age, they are all a) lightweight/ super lean and b) tend to be taller **
5 or 10lbs extra weight for the same basic surface area/height is a lot to be dragging around if we splitting seconds.
I think this is mainly b/c these kids are still only 15 to 18 yo; as they get older, they’ll put on more muscle and become somewhat faster. However, you’re right that some really skinny kids can swim really fast. Take a look at some pics of Phelps when he was in that age range, he was consid skinnier than now but he was very close to as fast as he was in the '08 OG.
Although it’s hard to measure “accurately”, I think this factor is huge in terms of predicting maximal performance. It’s a no brainer with boat design for example, that reduce weight for a given hull size, you increase speed. Applies to kayaks, canoes everything. (eg. I put my ski boat on a massive diet and saved a 30% in fuel costs).
**So if you look at the new school swimmers, ones that are blowing up in the pool at a young age, they are all a) lightweight/ super lean and b) tend to be taller **
5 or 10lbs extra weight for the same basic surface area/height is a lot to be dragging around if we splitting seconds.
I think this is mainly b/c these kids are still only 15 to 18 yo; as they get older, they’ll put on more muscle and become somewhat faster. However, you’re right that some really skinny kids can swim really fast. Take a look at some pics of Phelps when he was in that age range, he was consid skinnier than now but he was very close to as fast as he was in the '08 OG.
Well, that’s not what he is trying to say. He’s not saying that there are skinny kids who can go fast (obviously there are). He’s trying to say that BMI is somehow predictive of speed in the pool. That really isn’t the case. I know lots of people on the big and wide end of the scale who are faster than the skinny guys, with more or less the same training background. And vice versa.
Although it’s hard to measure “accurately”, I think this factor is huge in terms of predicting maximal performance. It’s a no brainer with boat design for example, that reduce weight for a given hull size, you increase speed. Applies to kayaks, canoes everything. (eg. I put my ski boat on a massive diet and saved a 30% in fuel costs).
**So if you look at the new school swimmers, ones that are blowing up in the pool at a young age, they are all a) lightweight/ super lean and b) tend to be taller **
5 or 10lbs extra weight for the same basic surface area/height is a lot to be dragging around if we splitting seconds.
I think this is mainly b/c these kids are still only 15 to 18 yo; as they get older, they’ll put on more muscle and become somewhat faster. However, you’re right that some really skinny kids can swim really fast. Take a look at some pics of Phelps when he was in that age range, he was consid skinnier than now but he was very close to as fast as he was in the '08 OG.
Well, that’s not what he is trying to say. He’s not saying that there are skinny kids who can go fast (obviously there are). He’s trying to say that BMI is somehow predictive of speed in the pool. That really isn’t the case. I know lots of people on the big and wide end of the scale who are faster than the skinny guys, with more or less the same training background. And vice versa.
Well, i see that but he appears to be getting this “skinny is fast” theory from watching fast HS age kids, hence my comment. Or at least, this is what I took from his comment about “new school kids”; i can’t believe he could actually believe that are not bigger swimmers at the elite level, since they are so ubiquitous:)
Although it’s hard to measure “accurately”, I think this factor is huge in terms of predicting maximal performance. It’s a no brainer with boat design for example, that reduce weight for a given hull size, you increase speed. Applies to kayaks, canoes everything. (eg. I put my ski boat on a massive diet and saved a 30% in fuel costs).
So if you look at the new school swimmers, ones that are blowing up in the pool at a young age, they are all a) lightweight/ super lean and b) tend to be taller
5 ro 10lbs extra weight for the same basic surface area/height is a lot to be dragging around if we splitting seconds.
I’m no expert, but have been around the block a few times, errrrr… I mean swam a few laps (umm… lengths, ahh 100’s)…
Not in exact order for your prototype swimmer:
Mental ability to tolerate: discomfort (aka pain), boredom, coaching.
Passion to be better/faster than the next guy
Bellows for lungs (aka large lung capacity). Great Cardio to match.
Flexible joints - even better would be double jointed knees, etc. (plantar flexion of the ankle “past flat”)
Big feet and hands.
Long arms and legs (relative to body size - think “ape” like).
For women - cute in a swimsuit (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Me? none of the above, but, since I’m a triathlete it doesn’t matter, because triathletes suck at swimming (mostly).
Mental ability to tolerate: discomfort (aka pain),** boredom**, coaching.
Passion to be better/faster than the next guy
Bellows for lungs (aka large lung capacity). Great Cardio to match.
Flexible joints - even better would be double jointed knees, etc. (plantar flexion of the ankle “past flat”)
Big feet and hands.
Long arms and legs (relative to body size - think “ape” like).
For women - cute in a swimsuit (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Ha, I was saying this to myself just an hour ago during my pool session. “this is booooooooring”
OK what am I trying to say?? I’ll try to be short form. BMI is not the right indicator. It’s body volume/weight = “buoyancy index” (BI) or more like that. You need to fully immerse a swimmer into a body size scientific test tube and measure @the meniscus. (ie vertically). You could even measure with high tech instruments. Full breath and air exhausted (2 readings) that would be a variable there unfortunately. Then you’d have to factor in cross section and length. It’s complex of course.
What if you found out that Ledecky had a buoyancy advantage equivalent to the speed suit era? Janet Evans was very light too, her “BI” might be very high despite her scaled down size for instance. I also was in a race “Beauty vs the Beast”. 6’4" South African BC open men’s champ vs Haley a 100lb 14 yo club swimmer taking on the field. Haley took down the beast in the Ocean Mile race - no wetsuit too. (Haley’s raced '15 AG Canadian Nats btw I think she was 3rd or 4th in the 1500 this year).
But at the World level - the event chooses or optimizes the participants. People were writing off Nathan Adrian after the 100M. But based on his size and capability, I suspected his 50M would be a different story - and was. The 50M race the power that comes with weight, trumps BI efficiency. He’s bulked up and just not as efficient stretching to 100M
So BI benefits efficiency and the longer distance events, which explains Ledecky (v/light for height), Cochrane, Jaeger and the Italian. But I wonder how Sun would stack up? We saw that his optimization dropped the greater the distance. His biggest “heat” or challenge coming in 1500 race. Chances are if he raced that race, he would have been taken down. Lighter, stronger faster.
Mental ability to tolerate: discomfort (aka pain),** boredom**, coaching.
Passion to be better/faster than the next guy
Bellows for lungs (aka large lung capacity). Great Cardio to match.
Flexible joints - even better would be double jointed knees, etc. (plantar flexion of the ankle “past flat”)
Big feet and hands.
Long arms and legs (relative to body size - think “ape” like).
For women - cute in a swimsuit (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Ha, I was saying this to myself just an hour ago during my pool session. “this is booooooooring”
to be fair, I listed boredom - but, a true swimmer wouldn’t see it that way. No more that a dedicated pianist would see practicing/perfecting their work on scales.
Or, a normal well balanced person might say my track workouts are boring, or how about my 3x30k TT on the road (bike, of course). I’ve learned to mentally make the boring, interesting. I think it’s a skill that some have, and, some don’t. Perhaps I should have said it that way in my first response. Because in swimming, those who can’t convert the boring to something else will eventually quit. And, I’m sure you’ll agree if they quit, they aren’t likely to perform so well -_-
(sorry, couldn’t resist)