Then, yesterday, we confirmed that strength is correlated with sprint swimming performance.  Now, we can compare the effects of dry-land training with assisted and resisted swimming training techniques to see which is more effective.

Swimmer (photo courtesy of the talented Jim Bahn)

***

What was the study again?

It’s called Effects of dry land vs. resisted and assisted sprint exercises on swimming sprint performances, by Girold, Maurin, Dugué ,Chatard and Millet, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2007.

And what did the researchers do?

Basically, the researchers took 21 sprint swimmers (both males and females) and divided them into three groups, as follows:

• Control
• Assisted and resisted water-based training
• Dry-land strength training

The researchers had the control group do their normal swimming programme of five sessions of 1hr45mins per week (covering c. 5,000m) plus an additional 1hr30mins of aerobic cycling.  The additional cycling was intended to match the additional volume of work that the other two groups were doing.

The strength training group did the normal swimming programme plus two additional strength training sessions of 45 minutes.  In those 45 minutes, they did three sets of six repetitions of three different upper body and three different lower body exercises with a rest of two minutes between each exercise.  The upper body exercises used were:

• Barbell press
• Pull-up
• Barbell row

The lower body exercises included:

• squat variations
• plyometric jumps

The resisted and assisted swimming training group did the normal swimming programme in addition to two 45 minutes of special training, described in the study I reviewed last week (see assisted and resisted swimming).

The researchers tested the swimmers in each group for their 50m freestyle sprint time before and after the study.

***

So what happened?

Basically, the control group did not improve their 50m time during the 12 week period of the study.  But you wouldn’t expect them to, unless they were doing lots of sprints.  The dry-land training group and the resisted/assisted swimming group both improved their 50m times as follows:

• Dry-land – start – 29.6, finish – 26.8s (improvement 2.8s)
• Resisted/assisted - start – 31.0, finish – 28.7s (improvement 2.3s)

So the researchers conclude that the dry-land strength training and resisted/assisted swimming techniques both increase swimming speed by roughly the same amount.  I thought that the dry-land training was materially better based on those numbers but I am not a statistician.

Other things of note are that most of the benefits of the dry-land training were in the second six weeks of the 12 week training period.  There were noticable results in the first six weeks but nowhere near as significant.  However, the assisted/resisted swimming techniques gave a smoother improvement.

The assisted/resisted swimming programme also increased stroke rate, which is something picked up by the other assisted and resisted swimming article.  I have not quite got my head around this but I am not certain that it matters.

***

Is it really that remarkable?

Well, it is to me.

I think that it is hard to convey to a non-swimmer how significant those numbers are.  If you told a masters swimmer in the UK that you could take their 50m freestyle time from 29.6s (quite a common time) to 26.8s (an uncommon time) then they would almost certainly laugh at you.  To do it in 12 weeks is remarkable.

And what makes it even more interesting is that the dry-land training only used very basic exercises like pull ups and barbell rows.  If you study the James Counsilman book, you will find that he was an advocate of various different angled pulling movements, which he felt were much more transferable than more conventional gym staples.

Swimmer breathing (Photo courtesy of the gifted cmaccubbin)

***

What’s the study?

It’s called Muscular power predicts freestyle swimming performance, by Hawley, Williams, Vickovic and Handcock, British Journal of Sports Medicine, 1992.

It is quite a simple study in that the researchers just tested the 50m and 400m times of 22 swimmers and then correlated them against their upper and lower body anaerobic power measures.

***

So how was the study done?

The researchers worked with a group of swimmers including both male and female athletes who were already training six days a week with an average of c. 5,000m per training session.  For those of you with some experience of these things, fo reference, the male 50m times ranged between 27s and 31s.

The researchers tested the swimmers 50m and 400m freestyle performances and recorded them.

Then they recorded the swimmers’ anaerobic power measures using a Wingate test.  The Wingate test is bascially a progressively increasing ergometer either for the hand or the feet.  The ergometer resistance is increased by a set integer every 2 minutes until the subject cannot continue.  This determines the peak power output that the swimmer is capable of for the upper and lower body.  Essentially, the researchers are testing the power output of the upper and lower body in a non-swimming specific environment.

Then, the researchers looked to see if there were correlations between the data.  They were looking primarily to see whether there were correlations between anaerobic power and swimming performance but also to see which of upper or lower body power was more significant.

You don’t really need to know a massive amount of statistics to follow this but you do need to understand what correlation coefficients are.  They are not complicated and in this study, like most others that I have read so far, the coefficient used is Pearson’s coefficient.  This is just a measure of the correlation (or linear dependence) between two variables.  It is presented as a figure denoted as r = X, a value between +1 and −1.  The higher the modulus of the value, the stronger the correlation.

***

So what were the results?

The researchers found that there were strong relationships between both upper and lower body non-swimming specific power measures and 50m freestyle performances.  For example, upper body power was correlated with 50m sprint speed with r = 0.63, and lower body power was correlated with r = 0.76.  Strong correlations in both cases. 

The researchers also found that neither upper nor lower body power alone were better predictors of swimming performances than together.  This is interesting, as many people assume that freestyle is predominantly an arm specific stroke.  I suspect that hip drive has more to do with swimming that many people realise.

The researchers were also surprised to find that there was a highly significant relationship (r = 0.70) between maximum anaerobic power and 400m freestyle times.

Interestingly, the researchers point to similar observations in other fields.  They note that there are studies of both runners and cyclists showing that the variable that best predicts endurance performance is the highest workload an athlete attains during a maximal test.  They also note that there are studies showing a poor correlation of VO2-max with swimming performance.

This suggests to me that more time should be spent improving muscular power through resistance training and resisted or assisted sprints than is perhaps currently the case, with the extensive focus on aerobic base training.

The Science of Swimming: old school rules

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Who on earth was James Counsilman?

James Counsilman was an Olympic swimming coach from the USA.  He was the head swimming coach for Indiana University from 1957-1990 and head swimming coach for the USA national swimming squads for the 1964 and 1976 Olympics.

He is widely regarded as one of the most innovative and important swimming coaches of his era.  He died in 2004 and you can read his remarkable obituary here.

Why was Counsilman so important for swimming?  He brought sports science to the poolside.  Before him, it seems that swimming coaches didn’t taken sports science very seriously.  And once his swimmers started getting results, everyone wanted a piece of what he was doing.

***

So what did he write about?

Everything and anything you can think of relating to training for swimming.  Here’s a chapter list:

• The mechanics of swimming
• Front crawl
• Butterfly
• Back stroke
• Breast stroke
• Starts, turns and pace
• Teaching swimming skills
• Training techniques in competitive swimming
• Planning a season’s training programme
• Dry land exercises
• Age-group swimming
• Organisation of practice
• Additional principles – stress, diet and nutrition
• Example training schedules of champions

The first interesting thing about Counsilman, that you notice when you start to read his material, is that he likes to understand the why of training and not just the how.

The second interesting thing is that when he talks about training athletes, he really was training athletes.  And the example training schedules of champions are real, live programmes of named national and international swimmers.

I would also note that there are 450 pages of closely-typed text in this book.  It definitely has the thud factor.  When Counsilman starts talking about programmes and periodisation, he doesn’t run out of things to say very quickly…

***

Land training

Rather than try and do justice to all of the sections in the book, let’s instead devote a proper length of time to land training, as I suspect that is where most amateur swimmers can make the biggest improvements without stressing their swimming coach too much by asking for the programme to be tweaked.  It’s also the area that most non-swimmers will be interested in.

In his discussion of training schedules, Counsilman details three land-training sessions per week.  He doesn’t specify exact routines of sets and reps but discusses varying parameters over a cycle, noting the applicability of low reps (2-3), high reps (10) and very high reps (35).

Counsilman also suggests various exercises that might be appropriate strengthening exercises for each different stroke, some categories of which I have detailed below.  He doesn’t say that all will be appropriate for all swimmers in all cases.  They are a selection that can be helpful.  I’ve included all of the barbell, dumbbell and bodyweight exercises  that Counsilman recommends.

However, please note that I have not detailed the various pulley exercises that he stipulates, as these are just too difficult to explain without the pictures.  Basically, Counsilman uses a latissimus pull-down station and resistance bands to perform a large number of pulls.  This is why the barbell exercises seem to be biased towards pressing movements.  The pulls are quite varied and include:

• Vertical, 45 degree and horizontal pulls and rows
• Straight arm, partially bent arm and fully bent arm pulls and rows
• Shoulder abduction and adduction

Don’t go away with the idea that the barbell exercises are the whole land-training programme, as this would be a mistake.  If you think these would be helpful to you, just buy the book (affiliate links: UK, US), it is not expensive.

Also, please note that the following exercise names are not the ones used in the book but are my interpretations of Counsilman’s pictures and descriptions, as he uses his own nomenclature.  I decided to take this liberty in order to give people the chance of at least finding some of these on YouTube…

***

Freestyle and butterfly

1. The snatch
2. Behind the neck triceps press
3. Partial range of motion behind-the-neck triceps press
4. Skull-crusher
5. Straight arm pull-over
6. Wrist curls
7. Backward arm press – see note below
8. Squat
9. Partial range of motion squat
10. Jefferson deadlift
11. Jump squats

Breast stroke

1. The snatch
2. Behind the neck triceps press
3. Partial range of motion behind-the-neck triceps press
4. Skull-crusher
5. Backward arm press – see note below
6. Squat
7. Partial range of motion squat
8. Calf raise with toes elevated
9. Pull ups

Backstroke

1. The snatch
2. Behind the neck triceps press
3. Partial range of motion behind-the-neck triceps press
4. Skull-crusher
5. Straight arm pull-over
6. Squat
7. Partial range of motion squat
8. Jefferson deadlift
9. Calf raise

The “backward arm press” is like nothing I have ever seen before.  Essentially, the athlete takes the bar in a standing position behind the back, as if about to do a behind-the-back shrug.  However, the bar is very lightly loaded.  Then the athlete bends forwards, as if doing a good morning.  Finally, the athlete lifts the bar vertically through a small range of motion.

I would need to get under the skin of this programme to understand it more before offering a critique but I think there is probably scope for amateur swimmers and certainly barbell novices to streamline this significantly.

You can see the purposes of the exercises selected, however.  The key seems to be to develop the strong back muscles from a variety of different angles, to develop the leg and hip strength, and to develop the triceps without increasing the mass of the anterior deltoids or pectorals.

***

Wrapping up

Despite having been published in 1968, The Science of Swimming feels like it was only released yesterday.  It’s methods are way ahead of anything I have experienced in UK club swimming.  If you have any interest in improving your swimming ability, you need this book (affiliate links: UK, US).

 Swimmer breathing (Photo courtesy of the gifted cmaccubbin)

***

What’s the study?

What am I talking about?  Well, a good example might be the idea that Olympic weightlifters are better jumpers than triple jump or long jump athletes.  That pops up relatively frequently on forums.  If you are uncertain about whether this is a myth or true, read Zatsiorsky (affiliate links: UK, US).

Another idea that I am particularly fond of is the idea that swimmers have greater lung volumes than other athletes.  Let’s look at a study that does an experiment to find out whether it is true.

Swimmer (photo courtesy of the talented Jim Bahn)

***

What’s the study?

The study is called, Comparison of lung volume in Greek swimmers, land based athletes, and sedentary controls using allometrics caling, by Doherty and Dimitriou, British Journal of Sports Medicine, 1997.

The purpose of the study was to compare lung volumes in a large cross-sectional sample of Greek swimmers, land-based athletes and sedentary controls by means of allometric scaling.

***

Why is lung volume important for swimmers?

The study notes that many preceding works have shown that the pulmonary system (lungs and muscles associated with breathing) is not a limiting factor for land-based athletes.  If land-based athletes improve their cardiovascular fitness, it doesn’t come from being able to breath more air.  However, for swimmers, it appears more important.  Why is this?

Well, the fact that swimmers are partially immersed in water makes breathing more challenging.  Why is this?  Well, there is more pressure on the breathing muscles because of the water surrounding them.  In addition, being able to breathe more air with each breath makes it easier to swim more economically, as a breathing stroke is often less efficient than a non-breathing stroke.  Finally, having more air on board makes the body more buoyant.

***

How do you measure lung volume?

If you recall, Total Lung Capacity (TLC) can be divided into Vital Capacity (VC) and Residual Volume (RV).  VC is the maximum volume of expired air after a maximum inspiration and RV is the remaining volume after this maximum expiration.  This experiment set out to measure the VC.

The researchers used a spirometer for measuring the maximum exhalation of the lungs by each of the subjects.

***

What is allometric scaling?

Allometric scaling is basically a mathematical treatment of the data, which allows the researchers to compare the absolute data about lung volumes between subjects of different sizes.

***

So what were the results?

The researchers report that the results were that both male and female swimmers had superior VC than both land-based athletes and sedentary controls.

The average male VC was: swimmers – 4.5L, land-based athletes – 3.9L and sedentary controls – 3.5L.  The average female VC was swimmers – 3.5L, land-based athletes – 3.3L and sedentary controls – 2.9L.

The researchers also isolated the data for national-standard vs. non-national standard swimmers and found that they were at the higher end for VC measurements.  Some of this increased capacity was found to be correlated with length of time spent training.

***

So how do you increase lung volume?

The interesting question, of course, which is not answerable by this study, is whether swimmers are born with extra lung volume or whether they develop it through specific training.

Many researchers hold that it is more likely genetically determined but others remain convinced that the training effects of breathing under difficult conditions trains the respiratory muscles and permits a greater lung volume to be developed.

What do I think?  Well, I suspect both factors are involved.  However, I wonder whether introducing some of the training ideas used by freedivers would have a beneficial effect on lung volumes in swimmers?

At times like that, it’s great to have something that only takes an hour or two to read but still gives you a feeling for what makes an athlete tick. The Quick Reads series is good for that and I enjoyed reading about David Davies, the Welsh swimming sensation (affiliate links: UK, US).

David Davies

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So who is David Davies?

David Davies was born in Wales in 1985, competed at the 2004 and 2008 Olympic games and is still competing as a swimmer for Great Britain.  He is currently training for the 2012 Olympics on home territory.

Davies performed well at the 2004 Athens Olympics, where he took the bronze medal in the 1,500m freestyle.  He swam 14:45.95s, which was a British and European record.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to repeat that same performance in the 1,500m at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he came sixth.

However, the open-water 10km race in 20o8 was a new race for the swimmers and Davies achieved a silver medal.

And if Wikipedia is up-to-date, he still holds the British records for the long-course 400m, 800m and 1,500m freestyle races.

***

What did I learn from the book?

The main thing I picked up from reading David’s autobiography was how choppy his training and race performances were and how he responded to these setbacks.  He seemed to have long spells when everything was going well and his times were flying down.  Then he would burn out and everything would go to hell.

The poor periods would generally lead to him changing something, usually his training programme.  Sometimes, though, he changed his trainer.  At one point in the book, after a bad spell, Davies mentions starting to work with top Australian trainer Bob Treffene, whose methods are not described.  However, it appears that he is a fan of heart-rate determined work sets and improving lactic acid tolerance (see this blog).

Right at the end of the book, Davies describes how at the end of a poor period following the 2008 Olympics, he decided to move from Cardiff to Loughborough, in the Midlands, where many of the British swimmers train.

However, from reading the press articles since the book was published, this seems to have changed again.  It looks like he had a bad year in 2010 and is now back training in Cardiff!

Obviously, it’s very hard to comment on what is happening from the outside but it reminds me a little of weight-lifting enthusiasts who programme-hop constantly, looking for the magic programme that works.

I can only hope that David finds the right programme in time to prepare for the 2012 Olympics and performs as well as he deserves to do.

***

If you want to learn more about David before he gets back in the water to defend his 2008 silver medal in the 10km open water race in London in 2012, you can check out his autobiography here (affiliate links: UK, US).

As Hodding Carter says, most men of his age (forty-one, at the time), are out buying large motorcycles, getting younger girlfriends and having plastic surgery to disguise their ageing bodies.  Instead of falling into line, he decided to start swimming competitively again.  The trouble was, he set his sights quite high.  Very high.  Like Olympics, high.

So it’s a little odd.  But it’s also the book that I have enjoyed most so far this year.

Try competitive swimming instead of a mid-life crisis

***

OK, I’ll bite.  Why did you enjoy it so much?

Let me count the ways I love this book:

1. It’s about swimming

First and foremost, I love swimming.  If you’ve never swum and you hate the water then this book is probably not going to make you light up like it did me.

When I read the sections about Hodding’s races, my heart is in my mouth.  I know what it feels like to dive in at the crack of the gun.  I know how hitting the cold water burns briefly after a long session of waiting on the heated poolside.

I nod knowingly as he recounts the easy experience of the first leg and the progressively harder legs that follow, the cramping lactic in the arms, the burning in the lungs.  I boil with the same frustration that he does when he tops out and reaches his limit just metres from the final wall.

I get misty-eyed when he deliberately holds back in a relay and swims his best ever performance without knowing it because he maintains his form all the way through.

Michael Phelps swims – image by The Wolf

***

2. It’s abot using weights for swimming

I hope it goes without saying that you know I love lifting weights.

After trying (unsuccessfully) to repeat his old swimming programme of several miles a day and trying to swim with other swimmers who are still doing that type of programme, Hodding realises that for the shorter distances he wants to swim, he doesn’t have to put the miles in.  He can use resistance training instead.  This training takes the form of both free weights and specialised swimming equipment that allows him to swim against greater resistance than normally.

I am passionate about this partly because I fell into the same trap many years ago and partly because my countryman Mark Foster (the fastest man through water) made extensive use of resistance training in his programmes.  So it’s only patriotic of me…

***

3. It’s about sport as therapy

I strongly believe in the power of physical activity, lifting weights and competitive sport to help men through hard phases in their lives.  I believe it provides self-esteem, a much-needed goal to work towards and a distraction from other things that weigh on the mind.

I’ve reviewed a number of books now that contain the theme of sports as therapy for men at various points in their lives and for various reasons.

• In Wrecking Machine, Alex Wade uses white-collar boxing to help extract himself from a rut of alcoholism, smoking and self-destructive behaviour.
• In The Escape Artist, Matt Seaton finds that cycling competitively scratches an itch but he can’t bring himself to admit it.  Instead, he sees it as “escapism” from the realities of life.  However, it helps him get through a very hard phase in his life.
• In Record Breaker, Paddy Doyle finds that he needs a focus to channel all of his energy to prevent himself from going wild.

***

4. It’s about sport and life

Hodding has a nice turn of comic phrasing and some of the scenes describing how he has to creep out of the house in the early hours of the morning to get his workouts in made me smile.  I get pretty wound up when people I work with claim that they don’t have time to lift weights or go to the gym.  These are usually the same people who can quote large amounts of last night’s televsion.

I liked the fact Hodding realises that people have difficulty fitting sport around life and yet he makes the strong point that if you really want to do it then you can.

***

5. It’s about sport as a veteran (or master in swimming)

There is a generally accepted rule of thumb in masters swimming that you lose 1% of your speed each year as you age.  It’s well-quoted and Hodding refers to it in his book.  One big problem with such rules is that by being quoted a lot they acquire a sort of canonical status and nobody ever questions them.  Another big problem is that they’re usually complete rubbish.

Hodding quickly realises as he starts resistance training that he can reverse these so-called effects of ageing.  I guess that’s because they’re actually effects of inactivity and the consquent loss of muscle mass rather than ageing.

As Biomarkers shows, getting weaker as you get older isn’t because you’re getting older.  It’s because you’re losing muscle.

***

6. It’s about self-awareness

Without going into huge amounts of detail, Hodding clearly had a rough ride with his subconscious over a number of years.  He writes about it now with a knowingly wry smile but there is pain there too.

He has evidently done a lot of soul-searching (and maybe even some therapy) to get where he is today and the clarity he has achieved is admirable.  I like honesty and I hope that if I ever write memoirs then they are as open as his are.

***

7. It’s the story of a forlorn hope

The English love the underdog and they love stories about fighting against impossible odds (and losing): just look at our favourite stories.  Take, for example, Scott of the Antarctic.  Not only did he get beaten by Amundsen but he actually died in the process.

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More about Hodding Carter

If you’d like to find out more about the curious fellow that is Hodding Carter, he has a blog here.