Swimming To Burn Fat

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
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[quote]Overlander wrote:
Burke, L. Swimmers: body fat mystery! Sportscience News Nov-Dec 1997.
http://www.sportsci.org/news/compeat/fat.html[/quote]

I think this study is a little dated after reading it and it even says that “One of the limitations of this study is that each method of measuring energy balance is subject to considerable flaws” also they dont really seam to be able to tell us why swimmers have a higher BF% that other athletes.

Could part of it be a lack of “resistance or impact” on the body?

22

If you read to the end you might have caught this little nugget.

It shows that there is no proven reason why but that swimmers are predisposed to carry more body fat. Unless you can come up with some more recent studies this thread is just a stab in the dark.

To the OP you’re probably better off taking up a land based fat loss regime for optimal results.

23

I’m not a physiologist but I’m currently recovering from injury so as I can’t run all my physio work is in the pool and I’m getting progressively more obsessive about it so I’ve given this some thought.

It seems that the a few ideas have been overlooked in this thread.

Firstly Swimmers, particularly distance swimmers, can get away more easily with carrying a bit of extra fat.

Their main obstacle is the resistance of the water and an extra inch or two in circumference is hardly any handicap compared to carrying an extra 10lbs round a track.

Secondly, and I’m not absolutely sure this one makes sense, Even if your breathing technique is perfect you’re still not going to breath as efficiently as a runner this would lead to Swimming becoming less Aerobic and more anaerobic leading in turn to you burning less fat and more blood sugar explaining the excessive hunger that people report particularly if they’re technique isn’t very good and you can’t get enough air on board

An Australian friend of mine who used to swim in State championships told me that for fat loss I should work on sprints rather than long slogs and that would make some kind of sense.

I’d suggest sprint intervals. My sprint drill is doing 10 sets of 100 yards setting off every 2 1/2 minutes and usually taking between 1:20 and 1:30 per set although I’m getting faster. The point is that you’re work and recovery periods are roughly balanced and you get plenty of air on board.

I’m not a nutritionist so if I’ve got it all wrong here then I’d welcome being corrected.

Anyway here’s a picture of a 10km Olympic trialist illustrating most of the points on this thread

24

[quote]tompage wrote:

An Australian friend of mine who used to swim in State championships told me that for fat loss I should work on sprints rather than long slogs and that would make some kind of sense.

I’d suggest sprint intervals. My sprint drill is doing 10 sets of 100 yards setting off every 2 1/2 minutes and usually taking between 1:20 and 1:30 per set although I’m getting faster. The point is that you’re work and recovery periods are roughly balanced and you get plenty of air on board.
[/quote]

The one thing in my opinion with high intensity training for fat loss is that you’re diet needs to be immaculate to avoid losing muscle mass.
I would go with long steady state training up to an hour of low intensity work.
This could be done on land or in water.

Although I have heard the argument that doing cardio in water is not gut for fat loss purposes due to the reasons above with the insulation and whatnot. I’m not too sure how true this is but anyway.
That’s my 2c.

25

As far as cold water and metabolism goes, it works. I remember my physics teacher told me the same thing. And in Flex Wheelers book he would talk about sitting naked in a cold ac pumped room so he would burn more calories. A bit intense but it works.

I get the same swim hunger, but i’ve also noticed the same thing when i started kayaking for the first time. I was done and tore through my fridge. I’m wondering if it has something to do with exercising in ways your body isnt used to and that really ramping up metabolism.

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Some time ago I was trying to incorporate a swimming interval training program 'cause a friend wanted to loose excess fat and was way more effective at swimming than running.

The thing is that, maybe lagging research, I don’t know the optimal time frames to maximize each interval’s fat burning potential.

27

IDK if any of you guys read the thread where I added in a swimming class for the exact purpose of burning some fat. I think it’s a bad idea. It raped me.

I lost 5 lbs after 3 classes, and it wasn’t fat. I guess for you skinnier guys it might work, but damn dragging 260+ lbs was extremely difficult for me. I found it waste my muscle very quickly. . . I think it burns too many calories lol.

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I did swim team all of high school. I think I benefited the most from all the dry land work and stuff in the gym. I think that swimming might get your endurance up but if you really want to lose weight try running or jump rope. It’s what I did to tone up for swimming.

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I do 50-70 second intervals as fast as I can to build lactic acid. It begins as 75, then, as I get tired and it takes longer than 70 seconds, I drop the distance to 50. I usually do like 6-8 of them and that is it. I don’t see how that can be any different than running 400m on the track… Granted, it’s probably not as good as metabolic pairings but none of the arguments presented here make me think it wouldn’t work.

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RMorrison the only issue I have with it is I have yet to see a jacked guy who uses swimming as his primary form of cardio. I just think it’s overkill. I experienced this first hand.

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peanut butter

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Swimming is great for a healthy heart. Swimminng uses carbs as primary fuel source, hence the reason you get rather peckish afterwards.
Remember swimming is a NON IMPACT form of exercise so if you want to burn stored body fat you need to do lots of short rest/interval work.
INTENSITY is the key.

I did a twelve week diet to lose my love handles using swimming as cradio and lifting 3 times a week. I am far from “ripped n stuff” but back to 32 inch waist…there a couple of before and after shots in my profile. I compete in masters swimming and train 5 times a week so can help you with program if you want help…let me know !

33

From my experience, it’s a mixed bag as far as fat loss results go with swimming. I’m a certified USA swimming coach (certified, not a national coach mind you) and I’ve been doing it for years. I can’t tell you how many teenage guys and girls I’ve coached that have swam over 5,000 yards per day, 5 days a week and look no different week in and week out.

I agree with the poster earlier who said that is has to be diet related. While some kids were fat and never lost weight, few who came to practice actually gained any fat. A few of the parents are nutrition PhD’s and their kids have normal to skinny physiques.

Another problem with getting into a really detailed swimming problem is efficiency. The more my kids swim and improve their technique, the easier it is for them to complete each length and the fewer calories they burn each workout.

The most jacked guy I’ve ever seen was half blind, 30 years old and swam with no goggles and awful technique for 3 hours a day and only got out twice to rinse the chlorine out of his eyes. It seemed a bit masochistic to me, but he looked like he had only around 5% body fat. Now I’m guessing his diet was great and since his technique was so bad, he fought through the water each length and burned a ton of calories.

I think its a combination between duration, efficiency (or lack thereof), and diet. If you need a routine let me know.

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So what’s the overall opinion then?

Swimming = good or bad ?

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It’s certainly possible that swimming may make you hold onto fat. Although as someone mentioned we’re not seals or dolphins, our fat deposition pattern and type is much more similar to aquatic mammals than it is to say, a dog, a monkey, or an ape.

Google aquatic ape hypothesis for more on that.

Swimming is a fantastic form of cardio and IMO fat loss or not depends on the type of swimmer you are. I was a breaststroker/50m freestyle sprinter. The breaststroke is a VERY fast twitch dependent stroke. And most breaststroke specialists look the part.

With that ‘sprinter’ look. The 50m sprint takes an olympian around 20 seconds. A good interval for anaerobic dominance. So even though the movement of the freestyle stroke is not as explosive, its still going to work in that context.

If you watched the summer olympics you may have noticed the same thing, the guys who weren’t sprinters, and who weren’t breaststrokers ‘looked’ a lot like endurance athletes of any type. Long slow movements, exercise times of well over a minute, makes sense.

Lap swimming is like any form of steady-state cardio. Not great for fat loss. For all of the same reasons. It’s worse in some respects for the lifting population.

I would also be concerned about lap swimming in the weight lifting population for a different reason. Fiber type conversion.

Cressey has talked about that at length in ‘cardio conundrum’ or was it ‘cardio confusion’?

Swimming uses more muscles at a higher intesnity than just about any other form of steady-state cardio. Which means, while its great for the heart, you are MORE THAN LIKELY going to have a higher degree of Type II–>Type I fiber conversion. Which is, umm, not good if you’re a weight trainer.

if you want to use swimming for fat loss, I would suggest 25 yards on, 50 yards off intervals. No offense, but unless you know how to swim, have great technique, and have times consistent with those of a FAST high school or college swimmer, 50 yards will take too long for a proper interval.

The breaststroke is probably the best stroke since its the most explosive. Butterfly is probably next, followed by freestyle.

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Shit remember Michael Phelps and his crazy food intake?

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Swimming is cardio I swear by. Go to the pool and race a friend down and back, picking a different stroke each time. Do this around 15 times and I guarantee you will be exhausted, and also after a week or so be dropping fat. Every time I think of the best best shape I have been in, it goes back to the times when I had a pool in my backyard and could swim everyday. The racing part just makes sure you are giving it your all every time.

But really what I think it comes down to, is just going out there and doing something consistently…

38

I’ve been swimming for over 15 years now. The cold water forces your body to burn more calories so that it can stay warm. Swimming in cold water is a great way to recover from grueling weight workouts and losing fat at the same time.

Swimming in warm or luke-warm water wouldn’t help much. Infact, you’d dehydrate fast, and get tired easily.

39

I lost over a 100#s swimming. I asked the trainer at the gym where I could achieve the greatest results for fat loss and he pointed me straight to the pool. No doubt I looked like a beached albino whale but I pressed on and swam as hard as I could…it worked. Now that I have lost the weight, I agree that it’s to hard on muscle mass so I stick to stairs and circuit training for my cardio.

I feel I should add that it took a year of swimming. I have kept the weight off for an additional 2 years now and gone from an 11 inch upper arm to 18 inches. I’m so addicted to the “pain” LIFT HARD MY FRIENDS

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[quote]Sepulnation wrote:
I’ve been swimming for over 15 years now. The cold water forces your body to burn more calories so that it can stay warm. [/quote]

Never heard this before. Any studies? It just doesn’t seem like there could be THAT much of a difference in total calories burned

on a side note

I was told that a professor at my college swam the English Channel hookeed up to a VO2 machine.Only ended up burning something like 3,500 calories. Is it really that good at fatloss??

Let your calories decide your weight, not what exercises burn the most fat!