Swimming interference

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Dear Doctors,

I’ve been thinking of incorporating swimming as the HIIT/LISS components of the Hypertrophy/PB1 templates and some googling revealed that this might not be a good idea. These threads appear relevant:

https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/fo…s-conditioning
https://forum.barbellmedicine.com/fo…g-and-recovery

But I’d love to have some more context in how this would interfere with my training. For the past months I’ve been slowly cutting while alternating Hypertrophy and PB1. Recently I’ve stalled my progress, which I feel is due to cutting for a while and also catching colds etc.

I’m training for overall wellbeing, looks (~hypertrophy), and lastly strength, mostly because having a number go up is good for motivation (somewhat unfortunately). I’m considering swimming as a new side-challenge next to my strength training (but not set on doing this).

I used to swim regularly a couple of years back (was able to swim 50m in a little under 30secs). Today I tested 50m cold and it took me 39secs (after years of not swimming at all). My plan would be to swim 10 bouts of 25m sprints for HIIT (and increase this to 50m sprints once adapted), and swim 1km for LISS and slowly increase this to 2km.

How would you see this interfering with my strength/hypertrophy progress? I don’t have any important strength goals so I’m pretty sure you’ll say it’s fine-ish, but what can I expect? Will my numbers drop a lot? Lose muscle mass? Definitely no more progress while swimming (with potential for gains if not swimming)? Also, how will this change once I’m back to maintaining and then bulking?

What also be interested in why swimming is a poor choice compared to rowing, running, ski-erg (out of curiosity).

Many thanks for your time and for sharing your knowledge!

2

Butter,

I think if you’re not well-trained in a particular conditioning modality, it’s likely to reduce adaptations to exercise across the board, e.g. reduced hypertrophy, strength, and cardiorespiratory improvements. The “interference” is likely result of training load being too high. No one said swimming is a bad choice, but rather that folks are less likely to be well-trained swimmers and thus, it costs a lot more than other modes.

I cannot predict the magnitude of the effect, but it is unlikely you’ll lose muscle size or that your strength will decrease if tested in an unfatigued state. If you want to swim for conditioning, go for it- you’ll get used to it. I would advise slowly easing yourself into it rather than doing ALL swimming for conditioning all the time.

-Jordan

3

That makes a lot of sense. I’ll do some sprints for HIIT and then slowly ramp it up/incorporate more as I feel I improve.

Thanks!