Yea unfortunately swimming is one of those things that you can’t really fix unless you’re actually swimming. @caesium32
From what I remember when I used to competitive swim, our coach would make us run drills targeting certain limbs. So you’d do 50-100 meters right arm, then left arm. Then 50-100 meter practicing kicks. We’d use either a foam between our legs to engage our arms more, or hold a foam board to engage our legs more. Then we’d swim our style of choices afterwards. For us lifters I’d say focus more on endurance not speed. A good template (rough draft), would be something like this:
Warm-up: style of choice 50m freestyle (alternate left and right as over-hand (the hand that hits the water first in sequence)
Drill: 50m right arm freestyle (hold a foam thing), 50m left arm, 100m kick drill. Same thing again but back or breast.
Freestyle 500m (take as long as you need)
Back or breast (your choice) 150m
Cool down: freestyle 25m, breast, 25m, freestyle 25m (do not swim fast for this) and work on form as well. Stomach in, reach like you’re trying to grab something, when you kick don’t try to kick faster necessarily, kick harder. When you catch a good rhythm you’ll notice the kicks actually propel you forward.
That’s kind of the jist of that. When you reach an advanced state it depends how you view it. You can swim faster, or you can swim longer, so it’s up to you how you wish to progress. I’m basically starting over too so let me know how you fair play? Also practice the stroke you suck at because they really help if you’re a dominate freestyler. If you need a run down on either three I’ll try to explain the mechanics.
These are mostly thing I remember from my competitive days in swimming. The thing with swimming (espeacially for intermediate or beginner swimmers), is that it somewhat mimics HIIT types of training, and sometimes mimics training like you would with weights. I’d recommend swimming to any powerlifter, Oly lifter, or Strongman, mainly because the majority of them are already heavy which is great in the pool because you’re working everything to slice through the water. I wouldn’t recommend this to folks who are already slim. And sometimes you’ll yield completely different results by switching your focus to either speed or endurance. I haven’t written down any notes on how to tweak diet yet if you’re wishing to swim but I’ll get to it eventually lol. However once you’ve reached advanced or are approaching Micheal phelps status, your body adapts really quickly and you’re no longer really gaining any strength but more so endurance. Which is great for translating progress into physique goals, but not so much anything else unless you’re target goal is speed. So for speed= Most folks should stay with the interval type training in which you’d focus on time, and for endurance= most people have to suck it up and swim lap for lap regardless, no matter how it takes.
I’ve discussed swimming (briefly) with a couple of bodybuilders, they have told me that when they were nearly contest-ready they would quite much just sink to the bottom of the pool due to the lack of fat and weight of muscle. (And swimming itself was very taxing)
Planetcybertron, I prepared a reply to one of your posts but thought long and hard about posting it because I’m not an authority on squatting but hope this helps.
It’s… an adaptation.
You can have your cake and eat it. Try training fasted and indulging in the fast-food post-workout? Not only will you have a reduced appetite, it makes for better nutrition partitioning right?
At least, they’re sharing their enthusiasm, right? We’re all enthusiasts, no pro. athletes (cept physique/BB/PL) here I think.
Hey, you’re getting quite harsh here.
You’re their squatter, they ain’t insulting you or anything. You got me there though.
I completely agree. I wouldn’t swim vigorously, fasted.
I recommend it as an intro workout or recovery workout from heavy sessions.
You will ache with the correct weight but within 1.5 - 2 weeks you should be able to shoulder more weight if you don’t keep plying yourself with triples or that rubbish. Just 1 set of 1, 3 and 5 should be enough for starters. Then do 5/3/1 before doing partials and decide if you’re a vol/int guy.
Many gravitate towards intensity but they are actually volumers. If you are an intensity guy, you should be able to train heavy 4 times a week minimum. Volume guys do better with 3 sessions a week.
Be careful of injuries when doing volume. Note rest quality when doing intensity.
As the weights get heavier it’s imperative to already have your form set up perfectly to unrack. I wasn’t all the way locked out and I hadn’t spaced my grip accordingly and thought I could only max out at 155lbs, but turns out I wasn’t set up properly and once I locked my shoulder blades together everything went well.
Keeping the lats tight really really helps. Once I maxed out my lats felt tight from squeezing them, but they weren’t sore or hurt just super engaged.
The arch doesn’t need to be ridiculously high either because if you’re pushing through your feet, legs, and glutes on up into your back the push seems and feels well executed.
For shorter people it’s a good idea to put plates under your feet for even ground support instead of your tippy toes, but if you don’t use plates it’s not extremely detrimental, so long as you can drive enough force from the ground up.
The thing with me training fasted is that it sparks these unhealthy habits I used to struggle with for a while. It’s not even that I don’t know how to train fasted, but back when I weighed very little it was something I did for hours everyday, and not doing that just gives me peace of mind. For the fast food thing, I honestly don’t mind having to suck it up and just not eat it. However I don’t think I’ll give up a cheat meal…ever lol. As I go further into my recovery training fasted won’t scare me as much as it does now. I’m still a baby as I’ve only been recovered for almost 3ish years.
I don’t mind the enthusiasm part. I do my part to not rain on anyone’s parade, but it semi bothers me when I see certain things. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve spent well over a decade struggling with body image and food and whatnot, but I was talking to this woman in person, and I’m not gonna approach anyone, I just don’t usually, so she asked me a few things because she sees me regularly and one thing led to another and we landed on the subject of YouTube fitness videos. I’m not saying every single last video is the same but you can definitely tell which videos are hella misinformed or just useless. And there are levels to being a lifter/athlete. Like You, Mark, Botslayer, Danteism, Activitiesguy, etc. You guys have been training longer than I have so expect you guys to know waaaaay more than I do. Even if you’re not recognized by the world or don’t have trophies or whatever, you guys are still on a certain level I believe. And i think everyone fits somewhere, but it’s when people do not actively let others know that what they’re doing isn’t something everyone should follow. I thought about making a YouTube channel, but I realized that it’s kind of up to the people to chose what works best for them. I don’t know if I’m making any sense, but I hope I am. I always see someone whose just starting out and they will ask what they should do I immediately see people bombard them with, “you should do this”, “no do this”, “do this”, and they just end up confused or being rendered a jack of all trades because they tried to do everything. If it were me, I’d suggest asking them what they’re goals are and then go from there. Its like a powerlifter being given advice from someone who knows only about marathon running. If you aren’t well versed in something it doesn’t make sense to give advice as though you are. And that’s what I was trying to get that lady I was talking to to understand. If you know your goals you can weed out everything to figure out what you need to do, but if you don’t then it’s like walking in a never ending circle. I apologize about the harshness, but it’s just something that ticks me off. I won’t go blasting it to the whole world but on here at least I can complain lol.
I wasn’t upset that they didn’t choose me for any upper body stuff, I hoped they wouldn’t because that’s something I still need to work on lol
And I’ve noticed I’m a volume chick. When I first started lifting I could get away with intensity a lot more, but as I shift into intermediate type of stuff, volume is my best friend. I haven’t actually laid out a plan yet for 5/3/1, because I’m still sticking to Westside programming for now and I still want to work on it for a bit. Once I accomplish a few PRs I want, I’m going to give Westside a temporary break and construct a good 5/3/1 plan because you and a few other people have suggested it so I will try. But thank you for giving me some pointers to use for future reference
I think overall volume is the more sustainable path. I’m not a fan of fasted training, although there is an article on here that has a pretty good approach to fasted cardio. It involves Plazma or Surge if I remember.
I’m learning that for myself - and I’m pretty average - the important thing in training is balancing just enough intensity to keep limit strength on the boil (so within reach if needed) while incorporating a base of volume which is the real progress driver. Too much intensity and you quickly get ground down, not enough and you lose that edge.
The key is finding what the ratio is for you - for me, it’s probably skewed towards volume, but ONLY working in volume ranges pushes the equilibrium out of balance. I think it’s something like 3:1 volume to intensity for me.
I agree. I’m thinking my ratio is a 3:2 If we’re talking about days of the week, out of 7, volume hits a three and intensity is two. I’m making steady gains so I’ll stick with it for as long as I can.
Took a three day rest, with a bit of active play consisting of playing soccer, pool polo, and trail biking with hubby. Feel good, no more back pain, can take in a lot more air, don’t get winded as fast.
I wanted to go 10x3, but had another accident with my bladder (which hadn’t happened in a while), so I left to buy some shorts and only had roughly 30 mins to finish.
Secondary
Leg extensions: 130 3x7
Body weight lunges: 10 each leg
Leg press: 315 for reps
Hip adbuctors and adbuctors: ~ 110lbs each: supersetted for 4x15 each.
