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From: Turlo
Date: 5/14/2003
Time: 12:44:04 AM
Remote Name: 158.125.1.115
Another good question. when your injured swimming may be one of the only ways of maintaining your general cardio vascular fitness, so it has be to done. I would say that there were a few negitive effects of swimming on running performance, which are: 1 you might put on some unwanted msucle mass on your upper body (lats and shoulders), which would decreased your running economy, 2 when you swim your in a lying down position, which makes the hearts job of puming blood around the body slightly easier - when you go back to running your heart might find it quite difficult as it has to work against gravity to get blood back to the heart. 3. As your upper body muslces become more developed them require more energy+oxygen at rest to function (basal metabolic rate) and it could be the case that they would still be competing with the leg muscles for oxygen when you are running, meaning that less oxygen would go the the active muscles.
saying that though Frank i think that the fitness benefits that you could get from swimming while injured outweigh the possible negitive effects by a long way. The question is do would it be neitive to carry doing lots of swimming when you get back to full running training again? My answer to that is there shouldn't be to much warm in doing 1 maybe 2 swim sessions per week to complement your running as long as you dont put on any upper body bulk. Although biking and aqua jogging would better work the muscles involved in running! Hope this helps matey!
ps. most of what i say is probabley bulls**t!