Conditioning

The conditioning of swimmers is the best of all athletes in the world. Why? Because the nature of their sport is so physically demanding that anything less makes performance of their events a physical impossibility. Weightlifters, boxers, and football players are all trained to push their bodies for short bursts of energy over a long period of time and while their bodies take a pounding, swimmers never get these rests. When a swimmer puts forth a burst of energy, it has to come on top of the energy that is already being expended in simply continuing to move forward in the pool. You might argue that this energy requirement is a lot like running, but a runner needn't expend energy to simply stand still. The water is constantly leeching heat and energy from a swimmer's body and the act of staying still in the water, requires that a swimmer float, requiring more concentration and energy than simply sitting still on land.

A swimmer, furthermore, lives in a world of almost constant resistance in the water. Every action is resisted a little bit by the water in which he swims. Thus, unlike weightlifting, swimming constantly works muscle groups that are just impossible to isolate properly with free-weights or weight machines. A swimmer in training will burn through millions of calories in a day and still be starving for more because of this resistance. Furthermore, since there is such a small amount of physical pounding that a swimmer must endure; swimmers will practice for hours and hours in order to be in good enough shape for their competitions.

In this section I'll discuss how the best swimmers in the world train for their events and what they do for those four to six hours each day while they're training. I'll also post some of the workouts we used to do so you can use them for your own benefit as you work your way through the process of training to be a swimmer. Swimmers aren't a terribly dainty crew, so this section isn't for the faint-hearted, but if you want to become a good swimmer, here's where to start.