Why are female swimmers fat while their male counterparts are ripped?

I am surprised that no one has brought up the impact vs. non-impact sport argument of it.

I've nordic skied and cycled for large chunks of training. Both low-impact sports. And I could never lose weight like running.

I could push 20hr training weeks skiing, and never stay as lean as 80mpw running weeks.

In my younger days I was a competitive swimmer, and trained with many US Olympians and medal winners, both men and women. Not sure I necessarily have an answer to the initial question, but would echo the sentiment that swimmers of both sexes are both bigger (muscle) and flabbier (fat) than runners of a similar caliber. I would like to address some of the points made by others.

1. Swim training volume is HUGE. We used to double 5 days a week. 12K in the AM / 10K in the PM. Almost all intervals. Caloric intake is ALSO HUGE.

2. Not as much penalty to fat in the water, as there would be for running or cycling (up hills, especially)

3. To the poster who thought you couldn't breath hard while swimming: I later participated (as an elite triathlete) in research study comparing lactate thresholds / oxygen consumption / VO2 max across the three sports. My own minute ventilation was significantly higher swimming than in the other two sports.

Fun discussion

Don't know if it was mentioned upthread, but women are more apt to have overall sub-cutaneous fat deposition, conferring both buoyancy and hydrodynamic advantage, compared to men.

Nice post.

A couple of questions/comments.

On your 2. I guess I am not clear on why the lack of "penalty to fat in the water" would lead to greater fat retention. What would be the cause of the body reacting to swimming training so differently than it does to running training when it comes to fat levels? Surely the body does not observe, "Hey, I can still swim fast when I am 'fat' so no sense losing this stuff."

On your 3. I have noticed in training young athletes (runners) that the benefits of swimming can be extraordinary. At the elite (HS) level I suspect that this had something to do with Lukas Verzbicas remarkable high school career. I wonder if your note regarding minute ventilation might be at least partially responsible for the noticeable running benefits that swimming provides (at least in my experience).

doughy?

I generally see this out of the top swimmers...as naturally defined as one gets without weight workouts

Florent Manadou. More defined than Beckham to the right..

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/25192079144555073/

Cold pools over time can possibly lose a person's definition. The body adapts to being immersed in cold.

I'm swimming now, but luckily the pool's almost luke-warm- otherwise, I won't. I refuse to jump into "ice water". Winter brings along enough cold.

never thought about why this was before, but I'm going to guess that since women cannot put on nearly as much or as high a percentage of muscle, the extra buoyancy from fat would be more valuable to them in the pool than being lean, whereas the men can put on a lot of muscle with very little fat and the extra power overcomes the lesser buoyancy from a lack of fat. So, if the male swimmers got fat, they'd get slower, whereas the female swimmers up to a certain point get a benefit. None of them are fat but the women are not like distance runners.

whopper jr, I drank chocolate milk after a medium long run with 5M tempo the other day on my way to the pool and believe me, I felt it in my stomach while swimming. If you have three hours before practice, that is a different story.

My girls are competitive swimmers. They are quite lean, but there are plenty of flabby competitive swimmers, both boys and girls. I haven't notice there being more flabby girls than flabby boys, but maybe that's so.

I don't think it has anything to do with buoyancy or insulation or anything. I think there are just a lot of flabby people and the flab doesn't slow them down in the pool as much as it does on the track.

The observation, imo, is not that there are flabby swimmers, but that there aren't that many flabby competitive runners, because, as I said, extra weight slows down runners.

Cold body temp stimulating hunger might be a minor factor.

Sally V wrote:

Certainly not scientific but when I used to do hard swim workouts my appetite afterwards was enormous. I would often eat 2 dinners. But I am never really hungry after a hard running workout.

Funny, I've notices that too. Not that running doesn't make me hungry, but not immediately and not ravenously so. Even 20 mins of swimming (I'm a lousy swimmer) makes me want to eat the world.

Their bodies look different because there is very little muscle atrophy of the upper body/torso occurring in a habitual swimmer versus habitual runner (both men and women).

I don't believe female swimmers retain fat more than distance runners. Runners and swimmers menstruate less frequently compared with their age-matched counterparts. This suggests both swimming and running are highly strenuous, fat-burning, endurance sports. The butterfly stroke is probably the most strenuous workout of all. My understanding, however, is that running tends to increase one's metabolism for a longer period of time AFTER a workout due to increased body temperature. In reality, swimmers likely have higher basal metabolism rates due to their increased muscle mass so it's likely a wash anyway.

Obviously, if the women are shaped like a whale they will cut through the water faster.

shredder wrote:

Runners have atrophied arms whereas swimmers have tone and definition. It's like comparing a female anorexic vs. a fit woman with a healthy BMI.

Runners have toned arms, compared to fat swimmers who don't have any definition at all.

If they had definition like runners, they'd be runners, not swimmers.

Arnold Arnoldson wrote:

Numbnuts - you are referring to BMI, not body fat %. 20% bodyfat for bodybuilders is so dumb to say I don't know where to start. Guys in the Olympia are 3%-5%, and it takes A LOT of work and drugs to get that low, and they can't maintain that low for long.

All this "scientific" garbage from a fatty.

whatholyhell wrote:

Florent Manadou. More defined than Beckham to the right.

Put that guy on the track, and he'd make the decathletes look scrawny.

jjjjjj wrote:

never thought about why this was before, but I'm going to guess that since women cannot put on nearly as much or as high a percentage of muscle, the extra buoyancy from fat would be more valuable to them in the pool than being lean, whereas the men can put on a lot of muscle with very little fat and the extra power overcomes the lesser buoyancy from a lack of fat. So, if the male swimmers got fat, they'd get slower, whereas the female swimmers up to a certain point get a benefit. None of them are fat but the women are not like distance runners.

I agree with this, except the last statement, as some of them are extremely fat.

One of the 2nd placers in the women's breaststroke is an example.

The primary muscles used in running are the legs and gluts, whereas in swimming it's the arms and lats.

No one is addressing the OP's point. We all know fat is more buoyant than muscle. The question is less: why do the men not adopt more "buoyant" physiques, as well?

I would expect both men and women to look "fatter" than, say, a 400m runner, but only the women do (although the men are certainly more massive).

Side note: did you notice how much leaner the distance swimmers are than the sprinters? The men 1500m SWIMMERS looked like 800m runners (possible that my eyes were playing tricks on me, tho, after seeing so many "fat" swimmers, lol.)

I don't know that they are any fatter than runners, but they are going to be distributed differently due to the fact that they use different muscles and have different body types. Typically they have a lot more upper body muscle, where as distance runners have none (there is a penalty to it). Distance runners are typically shorter and use their legs a whole lot more and there is a tremendous penalty in regards to weight. In the pool, there is almost no penalty on weight as frontal area, arm length and body composition (ie. buoyancy) are more important. Swimmers are typically taller and have longer arms (a lot of the women's swimmers are 5'10" tall or more, which is 98+% in regards to height) and are typically younger (20 or less). A 5' 10" woman is comparable to a 6' 6" male. So really, you should be comparing the body types of professional swimmers against 20 year old giants, not mature shorter women. Plus, the longest women's Olympic swim race is 800 meters (and takes about 8:00), which is not exactly a long distance event.