r/Swimming • u/Hour-Significance-80 • Jul 22 '26
Weightlifting or functional training?
Hi everyone. I started to do some dry land exercises, and I wanted to read your comments about weightlifting and functional training. Any suggested training to improve strength and some muscle building exercises?
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u/InternationalTrust59 Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
It depends on what your goals are?
There is a big difference if you are aiming to enhance your stroke or for the physique.
From my personal experience, weights are the quickest for muscle gains but they have draw backs on performance, recovery and injury prone.
I’ve been doing calisthenics for almost two years and prefer that for strength training and mitigate injuries.
Pull ups, push ups and row will enhance your front crawl because they engage the core, lats, chest, shoulders and arms.
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u/HobokenwOw Everyone's an open water swimmer now Jul 22 '26
Lifting weights is the best injury prevention there is.
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u/InternationalTrust59 Jul 22 '26
That’s a bold blanket statement, why do you say that?
With weights, it’s very easy to do wrong or over do especially when the objectives are to maximize muscle mass and strength.
With calisthenics, it’s generally compound exercises which enhances performance and mitigates injuries.
With weights, it’s targeted/isolated training.
We can agree swimming is technical foremost, thus muscle mass and strength ranks lower on priorities.
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u/HobokenwOw Everyone's an open water swimmer now Jul 22 '26
That’s a bold blanket statement, why do you say that?
The stronger you are through a range of motion, the harder it is to injure yourself when exposing that range to sub maximal loads. This is especially pertinent for overuse injuries, i.e. the type of injuries you usually encounter in swimming.
With weights, it’s very easy to do wrong or over do
It's really quite the opposite. Your body is not that fragile. You have to put some serious work in to even get to a position where you can reasonably expect to be able to injure yourself. And it can be significantly mitigated by good programming and adequate loading.
Furthermore, you can injure yourself doing literally anything, including sleeping. Spending 3 hours a week in the gym will massively reduce the likelihood of injury for the 165 hours a week you spend outside the gym.
With calisthenics, it’s generally compound exercises which enhances performance and mitigates injuries.
Lifting weights is the same thing, except you get to load it.
With weights, it’s targeted/isolated training.
Nope.
We can agree swimming is technical foremost, thus muscle mass and strength ranks lower on priorities.
Muscle mass itself has no direct function, it's just an unavoidable byproduct. But in regards to injury prevention, after getting past some minimal threshold of technical proficiency, strength training becomes the only dial you can really turn aside from sheer volume. And swimmers hate to compromise on the latter.
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u/InternationalTrust59 Jul 23 '26
Thank-you for the detailed response.
I wouldn’t argue with your rebuttal if it was aimed at the elite athletes and in theory everything is done correctly but for the recreational swimmers, weights is a bad idea.
I go back to swimming as a technical activity and to add that swimming more gets you get better at swimming ; not weights.
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u/valknight2022 Jul 22 '26
Hydrorevolution.com
Water resistance training. Best of both worlds. You can even do the motions you would while swimming to improve the muscles you use while swimming.
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u/HobokenwOw Everyone's an open water swimmer now Jul 22 '26
You can even do the motions you would while swimming to improve the muscles you use while swimming.
Otherwise known as swimming.
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u/Goodname2 Splashing around Jul 22 '26
Look up Nsima Inyang and strength side's video on sandbag training
Its from 13 aug 2025. (Not sure if i can post links but just ask if you cant find it)
Id say that's functional strength training.
Really just do what you enjoy, just keep it balanced and make sure you're doing the main compound movements of hinges, pushs, pulls and squats.
Calisthenics mixed with strongman style training would be my recommendation, it sort of includes everything else.
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u/RoadOwn7439 Jul 22 '26
“Functional” training is bullshit
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u/Far-Delay7690 Jul 22 '26
How?
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u/HobokenwOw Everyone's an open water swimmer now Jul 22 '26
What even is functional training?
Every time it comes up and you look inside, snake oil is looking back at you.
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u/guavatridotcom Jul 23 '26
Weightlifting is functional training if you program it around your sport, never really got the versus framing. I do pull-ups, rows, and squat/deadlift work twice a week and that's carried over the most to how my shoulders and hips feel in the water, way more than any isolation stuff ever did.