More powerful, whilst gaining little weight

[Don Rooster]

Hey guys, I hope you can help me.

Right, I'm a national swimmer. I've recently changed training programmes and my coach doesn't seem to know much about the strength and conditioning side of things.

What I am trying to do is get more powerful and recruit more fast twitch fibers, but without gaining much weight, since being 500lbs will not help me swim fast. What should I be doing?

Now i've been trying to look into it but most workouts and exercises are about gaining weight and looking like a bodybuilder so i thought I'd ask here since I know some of you guys are very knowledgeable about this sorta thing.

Thanks.

 

[Zairi]

First thing you must realise is that strenght training and swimming are both taxing on the central nervous system, therefore, you must keep the swimming as a priority. A lot of atheletes who get into strenght training do at the cost of their sport - while their strenght might be increasing, their athletic performance might suffer, stay stagnant or improve only slightly. You should always do strenght training after swimming, as you know, swimming is your priority.

Do bench presses and squats. Do ywo sets of 5 repetitions for each excercise. And take a five-minute break between each so that you'll allow your central nervous system to recover.

By the way, you must also make sure that your central nervous system hasn't already been drained during swimming. If you notice that your times start to detoriate during swim practice, that is a sign of central nervous system and should mean the end of the work out. There is no need for you go further stress your central nervous system if it has already been broken down during swim practice.

There are a lot of variables at play here. How many times do you swim? Do you take sufficient rest during the swim reps? Are you completly recovered? Your question is hard to answer because I don't know all the variables, but I hope my answer helped you at least a bit.

 

[Quagmire911]

I recommend the book Infinite Intensity by Ross Enamait, www.rosstraining.com

All about increasing power/strength/speed/endurance without unnessasary bulk. It is quite cheap and filled with great info.

 

[MrS]

do some olympic lifts, good for power and strength but keeping the reps low won't get you a lot of hypertrophy.