Swimmers Physique

jph100

hi

was watching some of the olympic swimming heats and couldnt believe the physique of most of the swimmers. they must all do a lot of work in the gym aswell as swim loads+keep a good diet?

id love be in as good a shape as them!

thanks

irlirishkev

jph100 wrote: »

they must all do a lot of work in the gym aswell as swim loads+keep a good diet?

Yep!

jph100

cheers! so thats the secret,gym+swim+good diet?

sounds nice and easy doesnt it! wud they concentrate on certain muscles when doing weights or do they just do general exercises?

thanks

sock puppet

Well some of them would be swimming up to 100km a week in training. Now considering that your average club swimmer who would also be in fantastic shape "only" does 40-50km a week you have some idea of how much they train. And interestingly I read in an interview a while back where Michael Phelps said he does barely any training outside of the pool.

Andrewf20

sock puppet wrote: »

Well some of them would be swimming up to 100km a week in training.

Argh!! Thats 4000 lengths of my local pool.

hunnymonster

Mr HM has been doing a lot of swimming this year and I can't believe the difference it has made to his shape. To get the optimum shape I'm sure it's a combination of water time, gym time and diet but just the water time on it's own has a huge effect.

jph100

hunnymonster wrote: »

but just the water time on it's own has a huge effect.

about how much time are we talking about?

hunnymonster

Lots, should be about 30 hours a week but I think he is managing about 20. 1-2 long sessions of 6-7 hours and a couple of shorter ones of 2-4 hours. All open water, non-wetsuit at this time of year. He is training for an english channel attempt.

jph100

i heard phelps has a diet of 12,000 calories a day!

how come his face isnt that fat lookin? cos he burns so many of de calories training?

hunnymonster

I don't quite buy the 12000. I think 8-9000 is a more realistic figure but yes, he is burning that many calories a day. He swims 5-6 hours a day and a lot of that will be very intensive so he needs a ready supply of carbohydrates. Mr HM is taking about 5000 a day. Obviously he is not training as fast as Phelps but he is in cold water so needs a bit extra to generate warmth.

sock puppet

hunnymonster wrote: »

I don't quite buy the 12000. I think 8-9000 is a more realistic figure but yes, he is burning that many calories a day. He swims 5-6 hours a day and a lot of that will be very intensive so he needs a ready supply of carbohydrates. Mr HM is taking about 5000 a day. Obviously he is not training as fast as Phelps but he is in cold water so needs a bit extra to generate warmth.

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to diet and nutrition but I heard somewhere that swimmers tend to eat more than runners or cyclists who train similar amounts. Is this because of being in water or is it false would you say?

hunnymonster

it's a bit of a how long is a piece of string questions. Your average swimmer actually needs less calories than your average cyclist who in turn needs less than your average runner. This is because moving up the scale swimmin - cycling - running you use (A) more (by volume and mass) muscles (B) have more weight bearing on you in running. That said, Phelps is not an average swimmer so you can't compare him with Joe blogs who runs 5 miles a night. The intensity of his effort will throw all calculations out the window.

Clseeper

hunnymonster wrote: »

This is because moving up the scale swimmin - cycling - running you use (A) more muscles

I disagreed with the more muscles parts. Part of a swimmers physique is the fact that swimming is an all body workout. Especially if you rotate through all the strokes, you’re using a lot of secondary and motive muscles throughout your body. Your second point is spot on the money. The water supports a lot of your body weight so it’s seldom that swimmers are massively ‘big’ unless they do other weight work. The natural swimmers physique is very toned, slim and trim and very broad shoulders.

A lot of this physique is down to years of training, it’s essentially lifetime conditioning. Even at a young age and low level, competitive swimming requires an amazing amount of commitment and hours. Kids normally start in a club at a young age and even at U10 yrs may be doing anything up to 8 hrs a week. And it only increases from there.

hunnymonster

Clseeper, I was very careful to say your "average" swimmer. Most swimmers get less than 5% of their effort from their lower half and they quads, glutes, hamstrings (not so much calfs) are the biggest muscles on most people therefore moving these parts requires the most energy (calories). Cycling uses predominately these muscles and running uses pretty much everything. I stand by the comment.

Clseeper

Very valid point Hunnymonster. I didn’t mean to nitpicking at your post, it was just that I’d always champion swimming as a brilliant sport due to the whole body workout and toning. This was just what I read into it when skimming over your post.

hunnymonster

Csleeper, as a women who is living with a man who used to be a runner/cyclist but has switched to swimming in a big was in the last year.... all I can say is wow.... I would love him no matter what shape he was but again... wow!!! shallow me eh?

hunnymonster

The other thing people should keep in mind is that almost all the stuff I spout is in relation to front crawl. I still say the butterfly is one of the most powerful, beautiful things I have ever seen done with a human body!

Stark

I cycled out to Bray to watch the aquathon yesterday evening, and I must say, a good proportion of the builds on show were very impressive indeed. I think it's time for me to get more swimming sessions in