A marathon swimmer lifts so he can swim long

[IronMike]

You had me on a wild goose chase with this one. I had not run across TFF covering Gimme Shelter, so I had to give it a listen. I do love a good cover, and I know that TFF can do that. Does this cover even exist? Or was it Pale Shelter (still a damn fine song)?

Ha! yep, I meant Pale Shelter. But for a cover, try their version of Creep.

[IronMike]

Today was greater than I thought after set 1.

SQ: Programmed for 4x4 @225#. Managed 3, 4, 4, 4. The first one killed me and I figured I'd barely manage 2 or 3 in the following three sets. But when I did set 2 rep 1 it hurt, but I thought: I can do 3 more. Same with the remaining two sets.
Bench: Bringing it back slowly, so 45x5, 60x5, 80x5, 100x5. But this time, no deltoid or forearm pain! (Thanks for the recommendation, Bill.)
Row: 3x5 @135#

Tomorrow morning I'll swim before work. Can't wait.

Great songs listened to today: "Stay with Me," by Faces; "Trash," by London Suede, "Pearl Cadillac," by Gary Clark, Jr., "White Rabbit," by Jefferson Airplane.
Book read between sets: The Passage, by Justin Cronin.
Show watched while reading this: America's Funniest Home Videos. Always funny!

[Fred J]

Another good one...faces-I know i'm losing you - YouTube

[IronMike]

Another good one...faces-I know i'm losing you - YouTube

That song rocks!

[IronMike]

Great swim this morning. Another 2400y due to not having enough time to swim more. I might take a late-in later this week or next and do a nice 2-3 hours swim. The base pool is open for laps from 0600-1100, for God's sake. Would be wasteful to not take advantage of that.

The back of my right knee hurts like crazy. I just put Icy-Hot on it. I'll judge tomorrow if squats will happen or not. Last time that area hurt I was able to still do DL. Programmed tomorrow to do 1x5 @270#. Can't wait for that to be 300+.

[IronMike]

Another 2400y this morning. Felt great.

Today:
SQ: 2x5 @200#
OHP: 3x5 @107.5#. That's what was programmed. But I managed one rep and couldn't get it up from rep 2 on. So after that first set failure, I dropped weight to 100# and I did 2x5 @100#
DL: 1x4 @270#. Couldn't get the fifth rep up.

May push the DL to every 10 days vice 7 days. OHP, who knows.

[Bill Anders]

Another 2400y this morning. Felt great.

Today:
SQ: 2x5 @200#
OHP: 3x5 @107.5#. That's what was programmed. But I managed one rep and couldn't get it up from rep 2 on. So after that first set failure, I dropped weight to 100# and I did 2x5 @100#
DL: 1x4 @270#. Couldn't get the fifth rep up.

May push the DL to every 10 days vice 7 days. OHP, who knows.

You're discovering why the recommendation for running an NLP is to not do conditioning simultaneously. What happens if you alternate swim & lift days? Or at least swim & press days? Or accept that the lifts won't necessarily go up or enjoy complete sets during the conditioning training? I'm not being snarky here, just throwing out questions for your consideration. The tough part, especially when we've collected as many birthdays as we have, is balancing recovery with all of the other activities.

[Fred J]

The tough part, especially when we've collected as many birthdays as we have, is balancing recovery with all of the other activities.

This is key! I noticed that after adding the cardio conditioning that I needed.

[IronMike]

Correct, but I can't lessen the swimming. No one is going to swim the 10+ miles in October for me.

What I'm challenged with is last summer I dropped down to 2 days per week lifting. Pretty much an H and an L day. But then after the swim season I went back to 3x per week and my strength went down. I guess in the long run, no big deal, but it hurt me that I lost so much strength (but completed all my swims). Again, maybe I shouldn't care since swimming is so important to me (and I'll be upping to 5x a week soon). And maybe I should switch to a 2x a week program now (there's one in BBP I think). I'll see what next week brings. Here's what today brought:

This morning only swam 2000y because I arrived too late.

SQ: 3x5 @205#
BP: 3x5 @65#, 85#, 105#. Left shoulder teased me but still good. Right elbow/forearm thing didn't say anything.
Single-arm row: 10 each arm of 25#, 30#, 35#. Easy, next time will go up by 5#. Thinking about adding in curls.

Unsure if I mentioned above, but National Harbor sold out our pier to REI, without telling our coach. He showed up a couple weeks ago to prep the gear and all his kayaks and equipment had been removed. We were supposed to start Thursday evening swims two weeks ago and nope. He's in consultations with Nat'l Harbor now (we've been swimming there as a team for 12 years!) but we have no idea when we'll start. (We're a non-profit; all proceeds go to Special Olympics.) Our first competition was supposed to be last weekend, and now that is postponed to sometime in July. No open water swimming yet. Will just have to be happy with the pool for a while

[Bill Anders]

I hear ya, Mike. I do similar, but opposite you. Warm months are my programming lifting months, the cold months are my snowboarding months in the resort and backcountry. So that's a maintenance season.

You need to be in a maintenance season mindset for the weights right now. While you don't have the foundation of a fully-run NLP+, you can still minimize your losses as your swimming frequency and volume increase.

I had a good discussion with a SSC several years back about how to approach this. His recommendation was one Intensity set per lift per week, with backoff sets as time and recovery allow. And it works.

Using your latest programmed 4x4 Squat as a baseline, ignore the results of that other than the weight. For your next session, do one set at 230, with a couple of backoffs, one at 90% (207lbs), one at 80% (184lbs) [honestly, round those to the nearest 5lbs for 205/185]. The next session, add 5lbs to each of those, and so on. Run that as far as you can.

For your presses, still only one intensity session per week. But if you have time, throw in a light session for each of those lifts too. The added frequency will help keep those numbers moving.

You can run that out the rest of the swimming season. After your 10-miler, we can talk transition to a regular programming season.

In the meantime, a couple of resources that may be helpful:

Andy Baker - How To Train Without A Plan

Andy Baker - Strength Training For Swimmers (podcast) — I haven't listened, but it may be geared towards short course/pool races.

ETA: Don't be tied to 3x5 workouts or whatever. Just get the Intensity set done. The rest is gravy (but will help). Just don't start piling on Volume just to do it, as it will impact your swim.