Stretching Doesn't Work (the Way You Think It Does)

Does stretching make you more flexible? I know the obvious answer to this question, based on what we’ve all been told about the merits of stretching, is, “Duh! Yes!” But it turns out that might not be the case. But it might be the case. At least a little. But not totally. Okay, let me explain.

Stretch Your Bits or Stretch Your Mind?

I’ve had a few things come up recently that have me rethinking the common stretching belief that goes something like this: stretch tight bits in your body and they will get longer/more flexible/more supple.

The things that have me rethinking this are:

1. An interview I did on the Liberated Body Podcast with Jules Mitchell who is writing a book (and just finished a thesis) on the science of stretching.
2. A guide I am putting together on how to resolve short hamstrings (it’s out on Liberated Body in October), which had me immersed in the research about how hamstrings specifically manage to return to a more functional length.
3. And last but not least, I am reading Katy Bowman’s new book Move Your DNA where her insights on sarcomeres have my attention (plenty of other things too, but I’m already trying to keep this post from becoming epically long).

I’ll do my best to summarize the a-ha moments that have sprung out of these three things.

Your Nervous System Runs the Show

In her interview with me, Jules Mitchell* talked about how she began her thesis with the intention of taking a biomechanical view into yoga asana, which is exactly what she does. However, because she started her work from the perspective of a yoga teacher- with all the training that had told her that stretching leads to increased flexibility, she was surprised to discover that the research on stretching did not bear this idea out.

She discovered this idea - that if we stretch more and stretch harder that our tissue will change - was untrue. In reality, we are not lumps of clay that can be molded by persistently tugging on things. This is because our nervous systems are running the show.

So what does that mean? That means that unless you are under anesthesia (where you will miraculously gain full and even excessive range of motion, but I do not recommend attempting to go through life under full anesthesia simply for its flexibility gains), your ability to stretch at any range is determined by your nervous system’s tolerance to that range.

As in, when you have super short hamstrings and you try to forward fold and meet rigid resistance, it is not that you need to pull on your hamstrings like they are inanimate taffy, because you can’t. Your nervous system is the thing giving you that firm end range, and it’s basically saying, “Nope. Sorry buddy. I don’t feel safe there, so I’m not going to let you go there.”

Getting pushy about it and trying to force your hamstrings into ever deeper end ranges will have one of three outcomes:

1. Nothing will change
2. Your hamstrings will get shorter
3. You will injure your tissue (which, P.S., has about a two-year healing period if we’re talking about a tendon injury).

I recommend not trying to force override your nervous system on issues of flexibility. It will win. It will be unpleasant.

Your Body's Emergency Brake

Why would the nervous system not feel safe and therefore limit your mobility? Because that range is unfamiliar, or because compensatory patterns in your body have determined that certain parts of you need to function as an emergency brake in order to hold it all together (and of course these two things are not mutually exclusive). Both boil down to issues of motor control (plenty more to chew on here) and of Davis’ Law, which can be (over) simplified to, “use it or lose it.”

While working on the Liberated Body Short Hamstrings Guide, I kept coming back to the issue of how the hamstrings function, in some chronically short-hamstringed people, as an emergency brake. This kind of compensatory pattern happens for plenty of reasons, but top among them might be under active deep core musculature, too rigid core musculature (yes, underactive and too rigid can come together), weakened adductors, and more. If these or other key stability structures can’t fully do their job, the hamstrings are at the ready. They sub in for a lack of support elsewhere by battening down the hatches.

To go back to the emergency brake analogy - if your car were parked on the edge of a cliff and was held there only by its emergency brake, would you release it? Not if you are sane.This is the same decision your nervous system is making when you attempt a forward fold and are stopped prematurely.

Those Naughty Sarcomeres

In regards to the use-it-or-lose-it part of the flexibility equation, let’s talk Katy Bowman**, moving your DNA, and the sarcomeres. Bowman has been a champion of getting people to understand the difference between frequency and intensity. In short, that what we are doing with our bodies most of the time thoroughly trumps how hard we may be capable of working out (or stretching) for a small portion of our day. In relationship to flexibility, this means that if we, for example, sit in a chair with our hamstrings contracted from both ends all day long, we will gradually develop short hamstrings.

Here is an extremely pared down, Cliff’s Notes version of Bowman’s writing inMove Your DNA and also here on her blog on the role the sarcomeres play:Sarcomeres are the basic contractile units of our muscles. Muscles move because sarcomeres generate force and move. When you are often in the same position - as with our contracted-hamstrings-in-the-chair example - your sarcomeres change on the cellular level in a way that makes it easier for you to do more of what you are already doing. Yes, those naughty sarcomeres will actually cannibalize themselves and grow themselves to set your chair-shape as your new normal.

That said, the way to approach rehabilitating this would be to move with more normal hamstrings length more frequently. For example: to use a standing desk for all or part of the day, to sit on the floor with our legs outstretched in front of us (if we can accomplish that without rounding our backs, another symptom of short hamstrings), wearing neutral-heeled shoes, and to walk and to take frequent movement breaks, among other things.

The road to rehabilitation would not look like stretching the bejeezus out of your hamstrings at their absolute maximum end range for somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty and ninety seconds per day.

Bringing Mitchell’s and Bowman’s work together, this kind of rehabilitation accomplishes a few key things. First, it reminds your little sarcomeres what length you would like things to be by gradual, incremental loading of your body in healthier ranges of movement. Second, taking more opportunities for natural movement more frequently (oversimplified definition alert: natural movement = accomplishing the movements that our ancestors used to need to do to survive - like walking, or bending, or climbing - with proper alignment) develops strength and adaptability. This allows your nervous system to feel safe about testing out new ranges of motion, while simultaneously unraveling the compensatory patterns that make your nervous system put on the brakes in the first place.

A Tale of Two Feet

What might this look like in practice? Let me tell you about my feet. Last summer I still had to slap on my rigid hiking shoes in order to get out on the rocky trails here in New England. Whenever I attempted to wear a more flexible-soled shoe, I was one sore-footed girl. Determined that my feet could be more supple, I spent the year wearing only neutral-heeled, flexible-soled shoes, taking plenty of barefoot time, increasing my walking mileage, and intentionally seeking out as much diverse terrain as I could find.

Fast forward to the end of this summer and I have been hiking daily - up steep inclines, on slick shale, on rocky ground and tangled stumps - only in my Unshoes. And what’s amazing is that these hikes also manage to feel like a delicious foot massage no matter how long I’m out on the trail. I find myself intentionally stepping on the rockier areas of the trail because it feels good on my feet. What happened there?

I incrementally - over one year - loaded my feet differently, and as a result the 33 joints that live in my tootsies are now much more supple and flexible. My feet are also stronger. Flexible and strong like to show up to the party together. Go figure.

Some Stretching Movement Rules to Live By

So is stretching the devil? Nah. Frequent, intermittent stretching that is within your range and not red-lining it for your abilities helps you to explore your movement ranges and therefore helps you to (very gradually) remodel yourself at the cellular level to a more mobile version of yourself.

This is a complex issue for which much more could be said, but I have already written a short novel, so in closing here are a few bullet points that we might want to consider so that we can re-frame how to become more flexible. Perhaps we should:

• Stop with the no-pain-no-gain crap and instead accept that The Goldilocks Principle holds true for human tissue: not too much, not too little, but just right amounts of input keep us healthy and mobile.
• Stop with the “stretch tight bits to make them looser” and “we are inanimate lumps of clay” models. We are alive. Our nervous systems are in charge. We need to have a long-term dialogue with it, not pretend we can boss the CNS around.
• Stop pretending we can put movement into a bento box of “exercising” and “non-exercising” time when what we are doing all the time - movement not exercising -is what is determining our shape and mobility.
• Stop stretching at extreme maximum capacity at rare intervals and instead take kinder intermittent stretch breaks.
• And while we’re at it, let’s altogether drop the idea that being bendy is somehow better. Functional length is better; hypermobile is trouble.

8 Common Squatting Mistakes and How to Correct Them For Stronger Squats

Everyone makes mistakes. I make a lot. Everyone squats. (Don’t they?) I squat a lot. Through the combination of these two things, in addition to coaching a lot of squats, I’ve worked out eight common mistakes that limit squatting potential. Thankfully, I’ve also worked out how to correct them. Have a read over this list and see if you recognize any of these mistakes in yourself or others.

Mistake #1: Squatting Too High

If all the Internet memes are to be believed, squatting deep is possibly the meaning of life. While this is not quite true (everyone knows deadlifts are the meaning of life), squatting deep makes a whole load of sense, beyond proving doctors wrong and motivational posters right. I always think of squatting deep as something that is counterintuitive. When you have a heavy weight on your back, the last thing you want to do is to squat deeper with it. However, getting your ass to the grass has a number of direct benefits to you. You can harness the power of your glutes and hamstrings far better. It also puts you in a better position to get your hips directly underneath the bar quickly. Both of these things actually make the squat easier and have direct transfer to Olympic weightlifting (think getting pinned at rock bottom under a heavy clean.)

Mistake #2: Having Pins That Are Too High

Nope, nothing to do with long legs. In fact, this is the opposite. For those of us who are vertically challenged, we need to ensure we don’t challenge ourselves further by working off pins that are set too high on the rack. By the time you’ve gotten onto your tip-toes to get the weight off the rack, you’ll have lost a good deal of the tension you’ve worked so hard to generate. So don’t be lazy. Move the pins to a height that suits you. Slightly too low is better than slightly too high.

Mistake #3: Being Unconfident

One of the cues I use most often, out of both necessity and effectiveness, is “confident hips.” You know the type of squat I’m talking about - the one where there are no glaring technical issues, but the squat still looks unstable and unconfident, particularly on the way down. It can look like the hips are making their way down in an “S” shape, unsure which way they are going. Cueing confidence with the hips allows the squatter to focus on moving one part of the body correctly and confidently. Whichever style of squat you are going for, when you create a confident path with the hips, many other aspects of the squat will tend to fall into place.

Mistake #4: Always Wearing Assistance Gear

I’m the first person to advocate the use of legitimate lifting accessories, such as belts and knee wraps. They can be powerful aids in allowing your whole body to experience the strengthening benefits of heavier squats, while also keeping injury at bay. However, save these accessories for when it matters. Take a belt, as an example. I believe wearing a belt can actually help to teach the lifter to brace hard (rather than lessen the lifter’s ability to create pressure, as is commonly believed). However, I also believe that lifting beltless has great benefits in terms of creating and maintaining pressure and position, too. Get the best of both worlds, and use the belt when it gets heavy. Actually, just before it gets heavy, as using a belt is a skill to be learned just like any other.

Mistake #5: Breathing Incorrectly

I see this mistake take many forms. Two of the most common are taking a breath as you make your way down to the bottom, and taking a breath into your chest as opposed to into your belly.In fact I’ve often seem both together, and I put this down to the fact that taking a breath into your chest has little impact on the lifter in terms of anything else apart from intake of oxygen, so when it’s done doesn’t really matter either. The two fixes are simple. Point one: take a breath into your belly. This works to create intra-abdominal pressure to make your squat safer and more effective. Point two: this breath should be done before you begin this lift, just as you wouldn’t put your belt on after starting your lift. Maximize pressure before you begin your descent.

Mistake #6: Going Too Heavy Too Often

All you badasses out there will disagree I am sure, but yes, there is such thing a squatting too heavy. Actually, I’ve changed my mind. There isn’t such thing as squatting too heavy, as when you do so, you are no longer doing a squat. You’re doing some bastardized version of the lift. If you’re all caved in on a front squat or your back squat looks more like a good morning, then you are risking injury and training crappy movement patterns. Yes, it happens from time to time, but don’t make a habit of training this way or your body will think that is how it should be done.

Mistake #7: Never Failing

Not to be confused with going to heavy too often, this is in fact the concept of not going heavy enough, due to not having the balls to do so fear of getting pinned under a heavy bar. Almost always, as with many things, the fear is worse than the reality, and the only way to overcome it is to experience failure. In this situation, I may choose to take the lifter up to and through a controlled fail, with good spotters and under my watchful coaching eye. More often than not with this type of lifter the mind gives up before the body does. Form remains intact, but the lifter has given up mentally and is unable to make it out of the bottom of the squat. However, I have found a controlled practice of failure helps to alleviate the fear of being stuck, and gets the lifter to start making more aggressive choices with weight selection. If you’ve never failed a squat before (and I’m always surprised how many people haven’t), then consider this as an option.

Mistake #8: Being Too Quick Between Sets

Looking at this from a wider perspective, I can see lots of possible reasons why people don’t rest enough in between sets. The hasty pace of modern day living leaving little time to train, the desire to fit in as much training as humanly possible, and the CrossFit mentality of doing everything quickly are three potential reasons why I figure I often see squat sets performed back to back (there’s a pun in there somewhere). But to not allow adequate rest is to short-change yourself from strength gains. Allowing full recovery, or as close as possible, in between squat sets is going to ensure that you get the best out of every set. And before you tell me you don’t need the rest, that you are fine without it, have you ever tried it? I bet that not only could you lift heavier across more sets, but also the quality of your reps would improve, too. Rest more, lift more.

Want Faster 5K Times? Listening to Music Might Help

When I coach runners, I often suggest they do not listen to music. I think there are many benefits to running that can be lessened by listening to music, but I’ve often wondered if this belief is true.

Many successful competitive runners find music to be a mental distraction that helps them push through difficult runs. Likewise, beginning and intermediate runners often find music can provide a tempo when pacing proves tricky. A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research addressed the issue of music.

Study Design

In the Journal study, fifteen competitive male runners engaged in five different running conditions, which were used either during or after a 5K test.

1. Medium-paced motivational songs that ranged from 110-150 beats per minute (bpm) during the 5K
2. Slow motivational songs that ranged from 80-100bpm during the 5K
3. Fast motivational songs ranging from 140-160bpm during the 5K
4. Calm music played after the 5K
5. No music at all

The songs were selected not just for speed, but also for the ability to influence the runners. Before the tests, each runner had his brain activity measured while listening to samples from each playlist to ensure that the songs had the desired effects while at rest.

In addition to measuring performance, the researchers studied heart rate variability, rate of perceived exertion, and mood. Some of these tests were performed just after the run to see if music would aid recovery.

Results

On average, the first 800 meters of the run (the first half mile) was performed faster in the slow and fast motivational music conditions. It was almost ninety percent likely that these two types of music would boost performance. The medium-speed motivational songs had a forty percent likelihood of improving performance when compared to no music during the run. After the first 800 meters, the researchers noted running become more neurologically demanding, which prevented the music from continuing to enhance performance.

Music also provided neurological stimulation that indicated the runners were more motivated before running. They were also calmed by music after their run, which would increase their rate of recovery.

Conclusions

Music provided the biggest improvement in performance during the first half mile of the run. Overall, listening to music, particularly slow and fast motivational songs,improved the time over the initial test by about a little over a minute. Selecting songs you find to be motivational seems to be of critical importance, and both fast and slow music seems to do the trick.

7 Exercises to Maximize Hand, Wrist, and Forearm Strength

It is extremely important not to neglect working your forearms during your exercise routines. The hands, wrists, and forearms should be prioritized while warming up and while working out. Below, I will review and demonstrate several stretches and essential exercises that will allow you to build strong and symmetric forearms.

The Benefits of Forearm and Wrist Exercises

So often, the biceps and triceps are the focal point of upper extremity development, while theforearms and wrists are given minimal attention. But the forearms and wrists allow us to perform the exercises that develop and maximize biceps, triceps, deltoid, chest, and back strength. Therefore, it is imperative that we devote time and energy to optimize the strength of our hands, wrists, and forearms.

As an orthopedic surgeon, I speak with many of my athletes and patients about forearm and leg development on a regular basis. Many of them complain about having thin, bird-like legsand forearms. But if you work your legs and forearms, they will respond and develop. We have to do the work and eliminate any excuses such as “my legs are always small” or “my forearms just don’t seem to bulk up.” Do the work and get the results.

7 Essential Forearm and Wrist Exercises

Here are my seven essential tips to really help you to develop strong and symmetric wrists and forearms. I recommend doing these exercises three times per week. Watch the video for a visual demonstration of the exercises.

1. Flex and extend all fingers, while making a complete fist for 30 seconds. Next, open and close your fingers do 2 sets of each for a total of a minute.
2. Flex your wrist and hold in maximum flex for 30 seconds with the elbow straight but not locked.
3. Extend your wrist with the elbow straight for 30 seconds. Do 2 sets for a total of 2 minutes. These initial three stretching exercises will prepare you for the more complex and more intense weight-bearing exercises to optimize muscular development and the strength of the forearm.
4. Seated Wrist Hammer Curls - In a seated position with your back straight, place your forearm on your thighs with your thumbs pointed upward. Use a 5-, 10-, or 20lb weight in a hammer position and lift it back and forth slowly for 3 sets of 20 repetitions. This will develop your brachioradialis muscle, which inserts at the distal aspect of the forearm at the wrist. Greater hypertrophy of this muscle will give more definition and balance of the forearm.
5. Seated Wrist Straight Curls - This is to develop your flexor muscles. In a seated position, with your forearms on your thighs and palms facing upward, with a 5-, 10-, or even 20lb weight in hand, flex your wrist upward. Keep the forearms well placed against your thighs for greater stability and isolation of the wrist and forearm musculature. Be careful to place the wrist three to four inches away from the knee to allow the full range of motion. Do 3 sets of 20 repetitions.
6. Seated Reverse Wrist Curls - This is to develop your extensor muscles and is also done in a seated position with your forearms on your thigh, palms facing downward, with the wrist three to four inches away from the knees. Grasp the weight and extend the wrist fully. Do this for 3 sets of 20 and be sure to not lift the elbows from the thighs when extending the wrists. Keep the palms down.
7. Finger Curls - This is an easy exercise to perform and will develop finger and hand strength. Simply sit and hold a 5-, 10-, or 15lb in weight your hand. Turn your hand with the palm upward with the back of your wrist on your thigh. Allow the weight to roll down your fingers, and now curl your fingers back holding the weight securely. Remember to keep the back of your wrist against your thigh throughout the execution of the exercise. Use weight which you can effectively control and execute the exercises properly.

Ultimately, these seven exercises will help to maximize the strength and contours of your hand, wrist, and forearm. This increase in the overall strength of your upper extremities will also help to improve your hand and wrist dexterity, which in turn can improve competitive performance in athletics, gaming, and even in day-to-day tasks.

3 Ways to Use the Kettlebell Swing for Overspeed Eccentric Training

In this article I will describe the mechanisms of plyometrics. I'll also tell you how to do a few relatively simple kettlebell swing exercises to elicit a plyometric response, and explain the benefits of these exercises.

Stretch Shortening Cycle

When you ask someone to jump, you will usually see the person bend down at the hips and then accelerate upward. There are two mechanisms why we take this little down-dip. They are known as the stretch reflex and the mechanical storage of kinetic energy. Both of these mechanisms improve our explosiveness and provide reason why plyometrics work so well.

Stretch Reflex of Plyometrics

When we land from jumping, we are activating the stretch reflex. The stretch reflex is the body’s involuntary response to muscles being stretched. It is elicited in the doctor’s office when the doctor taps on the tendon below the knee. The knee kicks outward involuntarily because of a feedback loop in the spinal cord. When we land from a jump, we activate this reflex (the dip down also activates this response but to a lesser extent).

Mechanical Storage of Kinetic Energy

We also store the kinetic energy when we land from a jump. Anthony Turner and Ian Jeffries described different theories for how we store this energy. There is an active debate about how much is stored in tendons and how much is stored in muscle fibers, and it’s actually an interesting debate. A simple way to think about it is that we are loading a spring when we land from a jump. If we jump again right away, then we can utilize the energy from this spring.

Benefits of Plyometrics

The more we do plyometrics, the more our body responds and builds explosive power. This explosive power can help our absolute strength (e.g., deadlift), speed strength (e.g., clean), and pure speed (e.g., sprinting). Basically, we are learning to load our muscles with potential energy to release it again later.

Depth jumps can be difficult for many athletes because they are complicated movements and increase the risk of injury. Teaching a good squat can be difficult, but a depth jump adds complication as the person has to land in a perfect squat position, absorb shock, and take off quickly. It is recommended that the person can handle squatting at least 1.5 times his or her bodyweight (with good form) before attempting depth jumps.

A Less Risky Method

A less risky method would be to do Russian kettlebell swings with an emphasis on the downward (eccentric) portion. Instead of the weight of our body being absorbed as it is in depth jumps, we absorb the shock of the kettlebell when it switches directions. The more we force the kettlebell to come down, the greater the plyometric effect. In the lab, experienced kettlebell instructors like Pavel Tsatsouline and Brett Jones can make a 24kg kettlebell come back down with the force equivalent to three times their bodyweight.

An analogy often used to compare kettlebell swings and the deadlift is that swings are like a bullet being fired and a deadlift is like a rocket. When a bullet is fired, it receives all of its force from the initial explosion of gunpowder. A rocket receives continual propulsion from the engine. The main point of doing kettlebell swings is to train our explosive strength when we reverse force. The more force we have to reverse, the more strength we will gain.

To continue our analogy, doing overspeed eccentric kettlebell swings is building a hair trigger that we can fire very quickly with a lot of force. There are multiple stories of advanced powerlifters adding strength to their deadlifts by doing these types of kettlebell swings. Kettlebell swing overspeed eccentrics can be accomplished in three ways:

1. Accentuate the Eccentric – Generally, we let the kettlebell float into position and let gravity take it back down into our next swing. However, we can actively accelerate it downward by throwing it down and between our legs. 
2. Partner Assisted Downward Throw – Have a person stand on the side and push down on the kettlebell when it reaches the top.
3. Band Assisted Eccentric – Wrap a band around the kettlebell and stand on the band. Once the kettlebell hits the top of the swing, the band will accelerate it back down.

3 No-Nonsense Ways to Build Fitness Through Swimming

I grew up at a time when we didn’t have all the information in the world at our fingertips, just a press of a button away. If you wanted to know something, you either went and found someone who knew all about it or found one of these things called a book on the subject. If you did the latter, you then tried whatever it was you were reading about to gain some experience.

The "Expert" Dilemma

The closest we get to this these days is watching a ninety-second clip on YouTube. On rare occasions, people may attend an actual workshop or certification to learn more about a subject in greater depth, but I’m often left feeling like most fitness certifications are equally as bad as watching clips on YouTube. Without standards, which represent skill and experience in the field, all you have is a bunch of theoretical knowledge. And as anyone who has been around training for a while will tell you, there’s a big difference between some of the things that work in labs and things that work in the real world.

Training can really be broken into three big chunks: flexibility, strength, and conditioning. And while someone can be an expert in one area, it is rare to find someone who actually knows what they’re talking about in two areas, and even rarer to find someone who can talk shop with authority in all three.

The biggest disconnect seems to happen between the endurance and strength people, with both at seemingly opposing ends of the scale. And when it comes to endurance activities, swimming is the hardest for people to understand.

Swimming Is Watery Jiu Jitsu

Just about everything you normally apply to training can go out the window when it comes to swimming. For starters, swimming is difficult because unlike riding and running, you move through water, which has far more resistance than air. Secondly, you aren’t even partially weight bearing, unlike in cycling or running, as the water carries your weight. Finally, the muscles used to power swimming are much smaller and tend to be predominantly upper-body. In normal distance work you use the legs, which have a higher percentage of slow twitch endurance fibers in them.

For this reason, I see a lot of mistakes for people who add swimming to their training. One mistake is that people want to use swimming as a recovery from their regular training. Unless you’re already a good swimmer, you won’t recover much by trying not to drown as you struggle from end to end. While cold water is good for helping sore musclesrecover, most public pools these days are set far too warm, as they want to make sure the kids won’t freeze during swimming lessons. If recovery is your goal, you’ll be better off just getting in and moving around for half an hour, unless you're already a good swimmer.

If your goal is to use swimming to gain fitness, I have bad news for you. Swimming is incredibly technical. Think of it as being like watery Brazilian jiu jitsu – sure, you can muscle your way through it for a while, but ultimately technique wins out. That's why when you start swimming, every session will feel like an all-out effort to avoid drowning, aven though you won't actually be working that hard. What you’re feeling instead is local muscular fatigue from asking muscles to do something they’re not accustomed to.

If you are looking to increase fitness in the pool, here are my three pieces of advice for doing it effectively.

1. Work on Technique

My first piece of advice for anyone who wants to swim for fitness is to put in the technique work. It's going to take some effort on your behalf to become more skilled at swimming. I found this out a few years ago, when I was “lucky” enough to have shoulder surgery. I wasn’t allowed do anything with my arm for three months, so I spent that time doing body alignment and kicking drills. Then I was allowed use my arm gently, so I did other drills focusing on hand placement and how to catch the water.

All in all, I did nearly five months of skill training before I was swimming in earnest again. Funnily enough, I was faster at that point than I had been prior to surgery, yet had done no swim-specific fitness work. The difference was all in my technique and feel for the water.
 

2. Swim Hard

The next thing to keep in mind when swimming for fitness is that while your heart may feel like it’s going to leap out of your chest, you’re simply not working as hard as you do when you run or ride. Your maximum heart rate while running is always going to be higher than it is swimming. The more upright you are and the more load you carry, the greater your heart rate. This is one reason why using normal heart rate zones that you calculated for running won’t help much for swimming.

The second part of this to remember is that you use far smaller muscle groups for swimming than you do for running and cycling, so the load on the heart is less. The moment you stop doing that thing you call swimming, your heart will return to normal. Compare this to good swimmers, whose bodies will glow red from heat increases (because you can’t sweat to cool down in the pool) and who will drip sweat once they’re out of the pool as the body tries to cool itself down.

It might sound a bit odd, but all this means that even a hard session in the pool may only have the same effect on your fitness as a moderate running session, provided you’re actuallya competent swimmer in the first place. Have you ever wondered why swimmers spend so much time in the water? It’s because they need to develop the feel for the water, and because even at high levels of perceived effort they’re just not getting the same adaptation to the heart as a runner might.

If you are swimming for fitness, you need to bust your butt to swim hard. That’s the only way to get your heart rate high enough to get the top-end fitness you can get from running. While the impact on the body will be far lower doing this with swimming than running, the hard fact is that many people will never get to this point without years of dedicated effort.

3. Add Load to the Legs

Years of hard work can be somewhat mitigated if you choose to swim with fins. It may seem like fins would make swimming easier, and you will certainly go faster. But adding resistance for the leg muscles will jack up your heart rate tremendously. I actually recommend that clients who aren’t habitual swimmers only swim with fins for this reason. But don’t do this if you’re training for an open water swim or triathlon – you need to spend time swimming without fins for that purpose.

The three biggest things you can do if you’re looking to increase fitness in the pool are to get some technical coaching, swim hard, and use fins to add load to the legs and drive up the heart rate. Above all, though, put technique first as it will make the biggest single difference to your ability to swim hard for extended periods of time.