Maintain muscle without access to a gym (swimming?)

[noonehh]

Hi all,

My local gym will be closed for nearly all of December due to refurbishment.

I have no weights or equipment at home for a home workout, and given my current financial position, I cannot really justify buying any for just a month away from the gym.

During this month, whilst I cannot access the gym itself, I will be able to use the swimming pool at the same sports complex, so I was thinking about swimming as much as I can to help maintain (and perhaps even improve?) my physique.

My knowledge about swimming is quite limited, so I just wondered if anyone more knowledgeable on the matter could give advice on:

a) is there any specific swimming stroke that would be most beneficial for physique maintenance?

b) is it possible to do 'too much' swimming?

c) are there any areas of the body that swimming does extremely little for? I could target these areas with some bodyweight/home workout work.

d) if I do not lift any weights for a month, but go swimming for 30-60 minutes perhaps four or five days a week, what should I expect the outcome to be for a) my physique and b) my strength at the end of that month?


Thanks in advance!

[Heisman2]

You can swim if you want but that's not going to be the best option for muscle retention.

Simply do push-ups, pull-ups, and various jumps/plyometric options, and this will let you retain your muscle quite well. Consider also one-legged squats where you sit on a low box/stack of books/stair/etc and incorporate pauses to make them harder.

If you want to purchase resistance bands you can do a lot more exercises. This is a good set: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Pull-Up-A...0?athbdg=L1400

[air2fakie]

As noted above, there are better options. However, if your physique isn't developed at all you may be able to maintain it with swimming.

[Sun tzu]

Swimming may give your body a chance to recover from any injuries you have. It should also improve coordination which should come in handy in the gym. I wasn't lifting but I swam a lot last year, predominantly front crawl, and I noticed the biggest difference in my lats, but other body parts were also enhanced. For legs, I noticed the most stimulus in the side stroke. I also got gained a lot of explosive power after the sessions, something that I don't feel after doing non-explosive weight training.

You can even do HIIT swimming. I also had plenty of fun learning dolphin kicks and turns.

[paulinkansas]

Do you have access to a friendly medium to large sized dog? I'll let someone else fill in the ______.

[Agent456]

Do Calisthenics.

[BenMcLeodNZ]

Chlorine wrecks test levels, just get a 4 week pass at another gym or even just 4 concessions and go once a week for a big session.

[evolutionaust]

Just go for pushup and pullups

[Heisman2]

Chlorine wrecks test levels

That seems extremely speculative at best: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.120-a18

[BenMcLeodNZ]

That seems extremely speculative at best: https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/ehp.120-a18

Strong enough for me bro

[Heisman2]

Strong enough for me bro

Seriously? One study with associative data that found a difference with indoor but not outdoor chlorinated water and that found no difference after age 10 is strong enough to recommend that an adult should not swim in chlorinated water? We will have to agree to disagree.

[BenMcLeodNZ]

Seriously? One study with associative data that found a difference with indoor but not outdoor chlorinated water and that found no difference after age 10 is strong enough to recommend that an adult should not swim in chlorinated water? We will have to agree to disagree.

Absolutely. There are very few studies because no pharmaceutical company is motivated to sponsor the research.

[Sun tzu]

I bet Phelps has really low testosterone.

[weiss1967]

H

a) is there any specific swimming stroke that would be most beneficial for physique maintenance?

b) is it possible to do 'too much' swimming?

c) are there any areas of the body that swimming does extremely little for? I could target these areas with some bodyweight/home workout work.

d) if I do not lift any weights for a month, but go swimming for 30-60 minutes perhaps four or five days a week, what should I expect the outcome to be for a) my physique and b) my strength at the end of that month?


Thanks in advance!

competitive swimmers spend as little as 20 hours per week in the water. Sometimes more, but generally 2o hours is a ballpark. that is about 3 hrs in the water every day. In your case, we are not talking "too much swimming".

perhaps the most beneficial stroke would be a dolphin kick with one of these:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/26...g?v=1629537283

[GeneralSerpant]

the exercise that's going to give you the best results is the exercise that you develop the best performance at. The most common swim strokes are most likely going to be the ones that allow your body to move the most water in order to displace you from one point to the other the quickest. Some strokes though might be dispositioned for different traveling conditions, so you have to determine for yourself which ones you think you take to the best. You might be relatively good at butterfly kick compared to other people even though free style is generally the fastest and most basic.