NEED EXCUSE(for those with knowledge)

[Champ]

OK I am a swimmer in college. I am strictly a sprinter. My coach has been working me very hard in the water for 2 hours a day. This is good for most middle and distance people, but I need mostly raw strength and power to win my events. Due to my heavy course load I cannot make it to the gym before or after swimming long enough for a good workout. I need an excuse or a reason why I should get out early as a sprinter. If I could swim 1 hour a day and train for 1 hour, I feel I would be much better off. Coach will not let me get out to weight train. Can someone with alot of knowledge please give me some reasons I can give him...like scientific reasons

Thanks

 

[Champ]

bump

 

[VRider]

O.K., since no one else has answered yet, I'll give it a shot. But I am by no means an expert.

When you only train for an activity by doing that activity exclusively you get very good at the mechanics of the motions required by that activity or sport (assuming you are training correctly to begin with). But it becomes increasingly difficult to get stronger and more powerful (i.e. able to produce more force) without stressing the muscles using resistance greater than you would normally encoounter in the sport-specifc environment. This stimulus is the only way to grow stronger and more forceful beyond what the bio-mechanics of the activity demand.

Almost all successful competitive athletes (particularly in short-burst sports such as sprinting) do some sort of weight training for this purpose. While they may not train as a bodybuilder would (for hypertrophy and size) they use similar exercises to build a powerful base of core strength upon which to train sport-specific actions. It used to be that, with the exception of football linemen and powerlifters, coaches told thier athletes to avoid the weights or they would get "muscle-bound". These days, just about every coach (even in tennis and golf) incorporates some level of strength training in thier teams regimen.

I hope that helps.