This list digest contains the following message subjects:

A shorter digest today. I just had another miserable flight back from Chicago to Toronto. First, they were down to one runway at Toronto because of the snow. Now, I'm at a bit of a loss on this one, because you would think after a bazillion years of snow in Toronto during November they'd be prepared for this, right?

Wrong.

Then they lose my clothing bag. No big deal, who needs clothes anyways, right?

So even though there are more posts, we'll save them for the next digest.

Oh yeah, one note. If you have any problems or comments with the digest or whatever, e-mail me at MY address, not the Cyberpump! address. My address is

rspector@earthlink.net

I prefer to hear from single women...whoops, sorry. It was worth a try.

-- Rob

The discussion that I have been involved in over swimming and strength training prompted me to do some research into the subject, and, judging by what I found, the person that I was discussing with (sorry, I can't remember your name and I don't have any back issues to refer to)

[Check the footer of the digest. Someone's been kind of enough to archive past issues on the web -- Rob]

made some very good points that definitely made sense when I thought about them more heavily.

While power is extremely important in sprint swimming performance, which I found by personal experience and which has also been demonstrated in the laboratory (1), it becomes increasingly less important with the longer the distance of the swim. Distance per stroke, and not stroke rate, is a much more important factor the longer the distance of the swim, and power has little effect on distance per stroke (2). Stroke technique and genetic factors (such as arm length) play the big roles in distance per stroke. The notion that power has little importance in longer swimming distances has been demonstrated in the laboratory (2).

What does this mean to the competitive swimmer? In short race distances (specifically the 50 m, and maybe the 100 m to an extent), power plays an important role and increased strength in the weight room will probably mean increased swim performance. At longer race distances, however, increased strength in the weight room will have little, if any, effect on swim performance, and the purpose of a strength training program for such a swimmer would be more for injury prevention than performance enhancement.

1. Sharp, R.L., J.P. Troup, and D.L. Costill. Relationship between power and sprint freestyle swimming. Med. Sci. Sport Exer. 14, 53-56. 1982.

2. Tanaka, H., P.L. Costill, R. Thomas, W.J. Fink, and J.J. Widrick. Dry-land resistance training for competitive swimming. Med. Sci. Sport Exer. 25, 952-959. 1993.

James Krieger

R.E. James Kreiger's post in digest#39 I would tend to disagree with his premise in the main but agree with the example he gave. While I appreciate the erudition of many of the posts, I find many of them not only difficult to follow but think them pointless from a "practical" point of view. Sure, talk about training methods and even why they may be better or worse than another but when you start getting down to sarcomeres, organelles and calcium (slow) channels you lose most (I think) of the readers in the morasse (heh-heh He said more ass, heh-heh) of your intellectual perambulations.

[Kindly leave the Beavis & Butthead refs at home, please. And I have no idea "perambulations" means and I don't have a dictionary with me, but I trust that it's not meant as an insult, as we don't tolerate that here.

Thanks -- Rob]

Ken "Quantum theory: the dreams that stuff is made of"

In response to Lyle's post in digest #40; Hasn't your own experience shown you that you can in fact make gains andlose body fat on the Body Opus diet. I know from my own experience that, despite difficulties going into ketosis, I lost 3% B.F. while making about 3 lbs. in actual gains over 5 weeks on this diet. It's grueling, boring and perfect for a group of masochists like weight trainers (JOKE!!!). Ken "To err is dysfunctional; to forgive, codependent"

In a message dated 11/12/97 4:04:02 PM, David wrote:

<<My question is, if running will lessen the effectiveness of my weight training, but it seems to be working to get rid of bodyfat, then what should I do?>>

Choose what's most important to you now -- fat loss or muscle gain -- and focus on it. That's how I train for bodybuilding competition. For 8 or 9 months of the year my focus is on increasing muscle mass and I don't care if I put on a little blubber at the same time as long as I don't go much over 10-12% body fat. I do a minimum of cardio at this time. Then I'll spend 3 or 4 months slowly trimming off the fat while maintaining (most of) the muscle mass I've built.

Truthfully, you're not really doing an excess of cardio. The amount of running you're doing may not hinder your weight training progress much, if at all. I do 30-40 minutes on the treadmill or Stairmaster two or three times a week in the offseason and it doesn't hurt my progress at all.

I have been doing various HIT routines with good results (twice a week full body). I also feel good and have no problem with recuperation between workouts.

I do have two problematical bodyparts and I would appreciate suggestions from all HITters:

1. Calves: I am 1.88m. and 76kg.(that's 6"2 and 167lbs). I have long thin legs. Thanks to HIT I have made good muscular gains in my upper legs. However, no matter what I do my calves refuse to grow. I have tried standing, sitting and one legged calf raises, varying rep ranges between 12 - 20. I am pretty depressed. Any suggestions ? BTW: I used to do a lot of running and still run twice or three times a week (about 20 - 30 minutes at a moderate pace) - could this be a factor ?

2. Abs: What is the proper HIT way to train abs ?

Thanks in advance. Josh

In HIT Digest #39 <MSG8> J. Krieger wrote:

> Many years ago, I tried Power Factor Training, which espouses using extremely heavy weights in only the strongest range of motion. I bought into the theories behind the Power Factor philosophy. However, no one ever pointed out to me some of the flaws behind the philosophy, such as that _strength_gains_are_specific_to_ _the_range_of_motion_that_an_exercise_is_performed_in.

["Underlining" by me.]Any physiologists out there who could explain this phenomenon? I've heard this before, but do not know why it is so. Since you can't contract only some part of a muscle fibre, it must be "a nerve thing". I've often lost sleep over this :)

Rolle