Swimming for Fat Loss/Fitness

The above points about correct technique are hugely important and often overlooked. Many trainees suddenly add swimming sessions to their training programmes to reap the unique advantages, without having learned the correct stroke techniques.

That said I think that somebody with basic swimming technique can still use pool sessions as a valid recovery tool. For example, a powerlifter who has no aspirations of becoming a competitive swimmer. However if you have had very little or no swimming lessons previously it might be best to pick something else or, better still, take lessons from a qualified coach.

The benefits for mobility are something I have overlooked, but I agree breastroke is great for hip mobility as well as conditioning and both freestyle and backstroke are good for shoulder mobility.

x 2 on the lessons. Even just as few can make the stroke much better with a decent coach and the extra efficiency will massively increase the distance and speed you are capable of. If you thrash about and don’t have a good stretched streamlined stroke you will not be going anywhere fast.

Having good technique is really only crucial if time is a factor. I think just about anybody can get in the water and do a marginal freestyle, backstroke, or breaststroke. Butterfly is just such a technical stroke that minor mistakes have drastic effect on the ability to even move. With poor techinque you won’t be doing 1000+ yard workouts but you can still get that benefit just less yardage. You will be burning more calories per lap than a person with better abilities.

I have built workouts for people with very poor swimming skill. Just break the stroke work up with kicking sessions. This allows you to keep the high intensity without exhausting your upper body as quickly. You aren’t going to get any better at swimming but I am guessing you are really just in the water for the conditioning not to swim faster.

Also one of my favorite workouts is what I call “active rest”. I am sure some of you would love to try this out. It’s a 200 that is broken into 50’s. At the end of each 50 climb out and do a dry land set(push ups, sit ups, etc). I usually run through this as many times as I can before my body give outs. Taking a minute rest in between each 200 is crucial. Use this when I am short on time, you will be destroyed in under 20 minutes.

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:

Back (100), Free (50 and 100), and Fly (100). I grew up in Pennsylvania, and I swam for Wheaton College in Illinois. How about yourself?[/quote]

100 fly and IM. Raced free but I always loved to do fly, so it was my focus.

[quote]renzema wrote:
Having good technique is really only crucial if time is a factor. I think just about anybody can get in the water and do a marginal freestyle, backstroke, or breaststroke. Butterfly is just such a technical stroke that minor mistakes have drastic effect on the ability to even move. With poor techinque you won’t be doing 1000+ yard workouts but you can still get that benefit just less yardage. You will be burning more calories per lap than a person with better abilities.
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I agree wholeheartedly that a person with poor technique will burn more calories per lap than a person with stronger technique, but that’s not really the issue. Taking the football players I’ve coached as an example again, they were working VERY hard on every single lap, even just trying to stay afloat. But if they can only swim 5-10 laps (with significant rest periods in between) before total exhaustion, their total training effect is minimal, particularly if conditioning is the goal.

This is a difficult type of conversation to have when I’m unsure how the two of us define “swimming skill,” and what sorts of individuals we are envisioning using swimming as a conditioning tool. Again, I’ve worked with guys who don’t even have sufficient ankle mobility and body awareness to kick properly. And it’s been demonstrated that, especially in the untrained, the kick eats up most of the body’s oxygen while contributing minimally to propulsion. You take a decent sized dude with no ankle flexibility who is most worried about breathing and tell him to “start kicking,” and you’ll regularly find that, even with a kick board, he either tires himself after 10 yards of kicking as hard as he can, or else he meanders from one end to the other. A proper flutter kick still requires some schooling in technique.

[quote]
Also one of my favorite workouts is what I call “active rest”. I am sure some of you would love to try this out. It’s a 200 that is broken into 50’s. At the end of each 50 climb out and do a dry land set(push ups, sit ups, etc). I usually run through this as many times as I can before my body give outs. Taking a minute rest in between each 200 is crucial. Use this when I am short on time, you will be destroyed in under 20 minutes. [/quote]

Sounds like the stuff they used to make us do in high school. I’ve never understood this idea; if you’re going to use swimming at all as a conditioning tool, and reap the benefits of developing the cardiovascular system and lung capacity with zero eccentric stress on the muscles, why interrupt the swimming every 50 to do some push-ups? If someone has the technique to swim 50’s at all, I’d rather have them do repeat 50’s with descending intervals.

swimming for cardiovascular fitness = as good as it gets

swimming for ‘fat loss’ goal = ravenous hunger = good luck sticking to diet/kcal deficit

[quote]hb50p wrote:
For fat loss use cold. After your swim stay in the water it drains energy/calories. Any cold bath, shower is a tiny good thing. If you have options choose the coldest water available.[/quote]
The cold water burns more calories?? That is GREAT news for me… There is a natural spring pool where I live and the water is 72 degrees year around… that might not sound that cold but it is like getting into an ice bath!!

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:

[quote]Gorthaur wrote:
Swimming and fat loss is an interesting topic. On average, elite swimmers tend to have higher bodyfat percentages than runners or cyclists of the same standard. Theories for this include exercising in cold water (less blood flow to subcutaneous fat) and an increased appetite, as has been mentioned in this thread. Also, some subcutaneous fat may be beneficial to swimmers - it aids buoyancy and reduces drag.

HOWEVER, as a method of conditioning/recovery used alongside a strength training program, it is fantastic. Think of a swimming session as the ultimate form of active recovery from a hard training session. All the stretching/mobility/foam rolling work in the world cannot compare to the four swimming strokes performed correctly in terms of improving hip, shoulder and ankle mobility. This is especially true for breast stroke. PLUS it is non-weight bearing, so your joints get a break.

FINALLY, as a form of pure performance conditioning (i.e. not necessarily just fat loss), interval sprints are a fantastic way of getting some work in in the anaerobic zone and improving your lactic acid system (with the added benefits listed above). Plus there is no eccentric element so recovery tends to be less of an issue.

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The one thing that no one has brought up yet (and really needs to), is the issue of technique. Running fast, of course, requires attention to technique, but running is a basic human movement, something programmed into our genes. Swimming is not. It’s a fact that most (not all) of the fastest swimmers in the world have very low levels of strength. They have exceptional technique, however.

This is important because the number of calories you can burn swimming is in some sense relative to your abilities as a swimmer. For example, I’ve had the opportunity to teach over a dozen football players how to swim proper freestyle. When we started, most of them were absolutely gassed just doing a single lap; 5-10 laps over the course of half an hour was enough to exhaust them. Their strokes were so inefficient that every single lap was exhausting. Once they learned proper technique, however, they could go for much longer. This would be my one caveat - swimming is great for conditioning so long as you have good technique. It is much less effective of an exercise regimen if your technique is poor.[/quote]
to me if you have bad technique and that makes it harder… wont you actually get a better workout? because it drained you more?

Who said the goal was to have zero stress on the muscles??

[quote]krummdiddy wrote:

Who said the goal was to have zero stress on the muscles?? [/quote]

You didn’t read very carefully, Krummdiddy - I said ECCENTRIC stress. Most muscle damage occurs during the eccentric or lengthening phase, as the muscle is stretch under tension. One of the benefits of adding swimming for cardiovascular fitness to your lifting regimen is that it doesn’t overwork already damaged muscles, because there is only really concentric stress. This allows you to work out fairly frequently cardiovascular-wise without causing further eccentric damage to your muscles and impeding progress in your lifting sessions. This is one of the reasons why Christian Thibaudeau has encouraged many of his clients to do eccentric-less workouts to add volume to their training without causing much further muscle damage and impeding their progress.

You didn’t really pay attention to what I said here either. The purpose of training is to elicit an adaptation, Krum, not simply to exhaust yourself, and training to exhaustion does not always elicit an adaptation. You can do 8 rounds of triple drop sets on the bench press, but if you aren’t working with a sufficient percentage of your maximum, your 1RM isn’t going to budge. The same is true with swimming - exhausting yourself over one or two lengths of the pool isn’t going to suddenly enable you to swim three. I’ve seen that myself with dozens of people. A person who gets exhausted after one lap cannot burn as many calories as the person who can swim multiple laps without resting, and moreover, the extended rest time that people with poor technique need between laps virtually negates any cardiovascular benefits.

[quote]KingKai25 wrote:

[quote]krummdiddy wrote:

Who said the goal was to have zero stress on the muscles?? [/quote]

You didn’t read very carefully, Krummdiddy - I said ECCENTRIC stress. Most muscle damage occurs during the eccentric or lengthening phase, as the muscle is stretch under tension. One of the benefits of adding swimming for cardiovascular fitness to your lifting regimen is that it doesn’t overwork already damaged muscles, because there is only really concentric stress. This allows you to work out fairly frequently cardiovascular-wise without causing further eccentric damage to your muscles and impeding progress in your lifting sessions. This is one of the reasons why Christian Thibaudeau has encouraged many of his clients to do eccentric-less workouts to add volume to their training without causing much further muscle damage and impeding their progress.

You didn’t really pay attention to what I said here either. The purpose of training is to elicit an adaptation, Krum, not simply to exhaust yourself, and training to exhaustion does not always elicit an adaptation. You can do 8 rounds of triple drop sets on the bench press, but if you aren’t working with a sufficient percentage of your maximum, your 1RM isn’t going to budge. The same is true with swimming - exhausting yourself over one or two lengths of the pool isn’t going to suddenly enable you to swim three. I’ve seen that myself with dozens of people. A person who gets exhausted after one lap cannot burn as many calories as the person who can swim multiple laps without resting, and moreover, the extended rest time that people with poor technique need between laps virtually negates any cardiovascular benefits.
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Okay I stand corrected… I will just say this, when I would swim after my lifting for cardio it left me drained… But my form isn’t terrible, I just have a gut that catches a ton of water!! LOL