Swimming to get ripped

paky

How much swimming do i need to do to get ripped? i swim twice a week, 1600 meters in 40 minutes at each session. i run three days every week, six miles each session. since i started swimming my physique has become quite muscular. how much swimming would it take to get ripped?

airscotty

hmmm...subjective i suppose. I'd say get a bitta gym work in there as well. some core stuff and swimming specific stuff like the back etc and it'll help a lot with the swimming and allow you to generate more power.

Also if you can use paddles or drag shorts if will develope your strength and power.

Burkatron

Swimming WONT get you ripped without a decent diet, nothing will! It will help if the other factors in your life are good, i.e good diet (80-90% of the time), good sleeping habits. You also need to balance the areas you're working. Do you swim 1 stroke exclusively? 1600 metres Front crawl sessions will cause you problems (& the other way around) with your chest/shoulder (internal rotators) in the long run if you're not balancing it out with back muscle work for example backstroke or weights accompanied by stretching.

Tropheus

Amen to that. Was swimming mostly front crawl and breast stroke for a couple of years and eventually ended up with rotator cuff problems in my right arm. Six months later and I'm not fully recovered.

I've started stretching and a lot of back work with weights which is definitely helping. I need to keep it up and make sure the muscle groups are balanced. I learned the hard way.

pgibbo

ksimpson wrote: »

Amen to that. Was swimming mostly front crawl and breast stroke for a couple of years and eventually ended up with rotator cuff problems in my right arm. Six months later and I'm not fully recovered.

I've started stretching and a lot of back work with weights which is definitely helping. I need to keep it up and make sure the muscle groups are balanced. I learned the hard way.

What stretches and weights are you doing to balance things out?

erogonamalu

Light weights as many as u can takes alot of endurance but it gets the muscles and veins popping out. If u want more mass slow heavy weights

Clseeper

As mentioned by Airscotty – it depends what you mean by ripped? Are you talking Arnie type body or just tone up so you can see a six pack? Are you looking for a stereotypical swimmers body?

Swimming has numerous advantages:

• Engages a large portions of muscles all over the body
• Good cardiovascular fitness
• Encourages flexibility
• Over long periods good muscle and bone structure. Like the broad shoulders and small hips of a stereotype swimmer

However the fact that a large portion of your body weight is supported by the buoyancy of the water, this reduces the load on your muscles. So to build muscle mass, you would need to x amount more swimming to build the same muscle mass as a comparable land program.

So what are your initial goals? I’m with Burkatron on the diet though. Nothing is more immediate than an overhaul to your diet. A large portion of being ‘ripped’ is a low body fat percentage. A healthy approach to your diet with a balanced training program and you should see noticeable effects soon enough.

Tropheus

pgibbo wrote: »

What stretches and weights are you doing to balance things out?

I'm doing a lot of peck stretchs as they tighten up and pull the shoulders forward causing the problem. The fact that the trap muscles are weak, doesn't help so I really need to strenghten. I'm doing light weiths (5kg) with long reps to build up the strenght. If you do a search on Youtube, you'll see a lot of good exercises for stretchs and strenghtening the rotator cuff/trap muscles.