3 week break (and swimming)

[bhindibhagee]

In a few weeks I'm off travelling around Africa for 3 weeks - no gym, no protein shakes, no endless piles of food. The one thing exercise-wise I should have access to is a swimming pool...

My first question is, what does swimming actually exercise in the way of muscles? Is it basically just cardio or ca it lead to strength or size gains?

Second, I'm keen not to lose out on the gains that I've made recently by taking this time off, so, short of a few push-ups has anyone got any advice of how to minimise the losses?

Cheers

 

[Liquid Tension]

I think swimming's great. I go whenever I can because my university has a nice 50m pool although sometimes it's restricted to 25m. I try swimming for 30 minutes straight at a moderate pace. Go faster and it's better for cardio. I usually find my muscles around the shoulders, and my arms are tired afterwards. Pecs are also enlarged afterwards. Well I've read on this forum that maintaining high protein intake helps maintain muscle so a tub of protein powder might help.

oh yea and with swimming, the pool should have flutter boards. Use those and if you use only your legs then it can be pretty tough if you try to do the basic kick and go for fast speed in the water. If you go continuously swimming using only the legs then I think it would be a good workout.

oh yea I forgot to mention, when I swim I do the front crawl. Most people do that. If you want to blast your body then do butterfly if you know how, it is VERY HARD to do more than 25m if you're not trained for it.

 

[Fil]

Swimming is a great cardio workout, and a full body resistance workout. You tend to become more lean than large in swimming, which is something I personally prefer.

Like Liquid Tension said, swimming with just your legs is a GREAT upper leg workout (since, ideally, those are the muscles you're using to kick) - though even when you're doing freestyle or any other stroke with your arms, your legs should be producting quite a bit of the forward thrust.

In high school I was on the swim team, and I had massive upper arm strength but poor endurance in my legs, so most of my stroke came from my arms. If I had the kind of dedication then that I do now, I would have spent a lot of time working those legs.