Does More (exercised) Muscle = Better Efficiency?

[Eric Sedletzky]

I doubt that the little bit of training it would take to get you to the point where frog kicks no longer left you feeling sore would have a measurable impact on your SAC rate, and if anything it would improve it because you'd be exerting yourself less. But in terms of larger gains, I do think having more muscle means more metabolism and more breathing. That's why women generally have better SAC rates than men. Again, we're talking about significant differences, those that put athletes in entirely separate classes, not just the small difference an individual would gain from some sensible training. I don't think any diver should take this to mean they should be a couch potato. But if you're already in OK shape and wondering if you should roid out and become a bodybuilder or if that might harm your SAC rate...

Hey woah! nobody’s advocating roiding out and becoming an IFBB Pro bodybuilder.
A little resistance training to firm up the muscles and make what you have stronger and more efficient is all we’re talking about, not necessarily bulking up. There are lots of ways to tailor weight resistance training.
My sac rate gets worse when I don’t train probably because I’m fatter and have to haul the fat around with weaker muscles. I’ve let myself go on occasion through the years and gained body fat and softened up. Not a good thing. I’m doing pretty good now though. The older you get the more important it is to stay on top of it.
Lean muscle mass increases your metabolism and promotes fat burning. It is also more oxygen efficient so I would think it would actually improve sac rate.
Even if more muscle mass leads to less of a sac rate, I would rather be bigger and stronger even if it means using the next tank size up, instead of being a string bean just to claim a low sac rate.

 

[Jcp2]

Frog kicks use muscles and motions not used routinely unless you swim breaststroke fairly often. Practicing in the pool will help your efficiency a lot and get rid of a lot of wasted motion. Think of people able to do handstands or walk a slack line or ride a unicycle (or a bicycle with no hands).

 

[boulderjohn]

I am quite sure that increasing strength and skill in an activity like kicking will improve SAC rate. This is a well known phenomenon in exercise in general. If you start doing an exercise like bicycling to gain fitness, you will get more benefit from a 20 minute ride than would a seasoned bicyclist because you have to work so much harder for those 20 minutes.

In frog kicking, it is not just strength, it is skill. I know plenty of people who are better kickers than I, but I do pretty well. When I have new tech students and I follow them on a dive, they will often do 3 kicks for every one I do. That has to be tiring. This will sound crazy, but a key reason they have to do more kicks is that they are doing more kicks. Unlike the flutter kick, in which every movement propels you forward, the frog kick has a power stroke and a recovery stroke, and the recovery stroke interferes with forward movement. Beginning frog kickers begin the recovery stroke immediately after the power stroke, and that puts the brakes on their forward motion. Slowing down to feel the glide of the power stroke cuts down on the number of kicks you need and improves efficiency.

 

[johndiver999]

Frog kicks use muscles and motions not used routinely unless you swim breaststroke fairly often. Practicing in the pool will help your efficiency a lot and get rid of a lot of wasted motion. Think of people able to do handstands or walk a slack line or ride a unicycle (or a bicycle with no hands).

I agree, Our bodies are lazy.

If you want to be better at an activity then practice that exact activity.

Swimming with a frog kick a couple times a week in the pool is not going to cause hypertrophy of your groin muscles... as much as some people might pursue that goal.

Weight training and aerobic training are also going to improve your general fitness and ability to dive.

 

[TMHeimer]

Frog kicks use muscles and motions not used routinely unless you swim breaststroke fairly often. Practicing in the pool will help your efficiency a lot and get rid of a lot of wasted motion. Think of people able to do handstands or walk a slack line or ride a unicycle (or a bicycle with no hands).

Yes. Doing a few frog kicks gives the other leg muscles a chance to rest as well. Especially if cramps may be coming.

 

[Angelo Farina]

When young I was certified as a finned swimming instructor. I did it just for a few years, then I gave up when I started working as a professional diving instructor in resorts.
I remember all those concepts about the various types of training and their effects on muscles and on the cardiopulmonary system.
What was posted here is fundamentally correct.
However, training youngsters who did practice competitions of finned swimming (which include underwater speed speciality, where the athlet is breathing from a very small hand-held scuba system), I also remember that training was just less than half of my job.
I did spend more time on two other, inter-related topics:
1) kicking technique
2) optimising (or building) the fins (or, more often, the monofin).
Frog kicking is by far the least efficient and more fatiguing kicking style, unsuited both for maximum speed and maximum endurance.
The most efficient kicking style is the dolphin kick, which is the only possible with a monofin, but is also very efficient using a pair of long, flexible fins (as those used by free divers).
Standard flutter kicking (with minimal flexing of knees) comes next.
Then there are some special styles developed for particular conditions, such as the horizontal scissor kick, which is slow but very relaxing, and is recommended for recovering from cramps.
Frog kicking has just a very limited range of usefulness, and only works with short rigid fins, which are already much less efficient than the long carbon-fiber fins used by finned-swimming athlets and free divers.
At the time most fiber fins did make use of personalized, hand-made blades. You had to buy an 1m×1m panel of fiberglass or carbon fiber, cut it in the proper shape, and peel away a number of fiber layers while going towards the fin end.
It was a long tedious work, and it was almost impossible to get it right at the first attempt, because every athlet had different legs.
The length and stiffness must match the geometry and muscular capabality of the athlet.
As the training starts reinforcing his muscles, the optimal fins become longer and more stiff.
Also the kicking style must be adapted progressively...
Coming back to the OP: why do you need to use the inefficient (and inelegant) frog kicking all the time? I use it only when moving close to a muddy sea bottom, or inside caves where there is risk of poor visibility if kicking down.
I am not doing this kind of diving since more than 20 years..
If you do not have these requirements (which, as said, also pose significant constraints on the type of fins) you could evaluate the possibility to employ a different kick style, while using long flexible fins.
As said this require proper muscular training, working on the kicking technique and finding the optimal fins for your legs.
I remember that in 3-4 months of training I was capable of extending the endurance limit of my students by three times (max distance before exaustion) and reducing the time required for a 1000m swim by 30-40%.
So I see big space of improvement, but only working on all the three points. Working only on muscular and cardio training, but insisting on employing inefficient fins with an inefficient kicking style, is not going to give you such large improvements...

 

[Esprise Me]

Hey woah! nobody’s advocating roiding out and becoming an IFBB Pro bodybuilder.

I know nobody's advocating it, but the OP said he was mostly just curious. I took that to mean he was interested in exploring hypotheticals to fully understand the issue, not just looking for advice.

 

[dewdropsonrosa]

Anecdata, ahoy:

I've been mostly out of the water since July, when I sprained my ankle. I started long-distance lap swimming in September and my typical workout is a 2 mi swim (72 laps, 3.2 km) in breaststroke, which has similar mechanics to the frog kick.

In six weeks' time, my waking resting heart rate has dropped from 78-80 bpm to 58-60 bpm. I just finished a 3.1 mi swim (112 laps, 5 km) yesterday.

I won't have a chance to test the theory because I'm done diving for the year, but I expect that my SAC has probably dropped from my out-of-shape rate of 0.8 cfm (22 L/min or so?) to something more in line with my practiced 0.45-0.55 cfm (14 L/min?).

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

There are two types of frog kicks.
There is the true frog kick where you draw your legs up to your sides as far as you can then turn your feet out and basically push against the water with the bottom of your fins. As you come to the completion of the stroke you draw you legs together and squeeze your fins together so the bottoms face each other and your legs end up straight back so your body is in a straight line for maximum slipstream and you glide forward. If you can find a video of an actual frog swimming copy the example and you’ll have it.
The DIR cave method of what they call frog kicking is not actual frog kicking. It is a sculling ankle movement type of thing involving mostly swinging the fins around while your legs are bent up at a 45 to 90 degree angle. There is very little leg movement with this kick since the idea is to propel oneself using a flipping technique of the fins while minimizing leg movement as not to produce a lot of turbulence behind you which can silt things up. However, the problem is it’s not very efficient because your legs are up and this interferes with your slipstream, the oncoming water hits the back of your legs and slows you down. You have the most efficiency when your body is straight and your arms are to your sides.
I don’t do this type of DIR finning much anymore because it doesn’t make sense in the environment that I dive in.

I do regular frog kicking and also porpoise kicking involving toe flips only. This is where your body is as straight as you can make it with your legs straight back and you pump or flip your fins like you’re doing calf raises.
This will give you a nice steady cruising speed with very little fuel burned for the amount of thrust produced. It works best with short wide fins like Jets. I also do a full porpoise type kick by putting both Jets together and using them in unison like a mono fin. Then there’s the good old flutter kick when maximum power needs to be employed.
Since there is nothing to silt up where I dive I don’t worry about non silting kicks.

 

[Scraps]

I'm hardly a fitness guru.....but my understanding is bigger muscles need more oxygen.

If improving SAC rate is your goal, I'm guessing cardio is more important than strength training and bulking up

I'm guessing a body builder has a better SAC rate than your 'average' adult male......but I'm also guessing that a scrawny 120lb guy that runs 2x a week has a better SAC rate than both of them

Bigger muscles can use more oxygen, but there's more than one variable here.

If you follow a moderate, sensible resistance program with additional cardio like Eric Sedletzky recommends, other things will happen that may more than offset the oxygen demands of larger muscles:

• You will lose body fat.
• Your stronger muscles won't require the same level of perceived effort to do similar work.
• Your improved cardio will lower your resting pulse and allow your heart rate to recover more quickly after exercise and during exercise after momentary spikes in level of effort.

And even if these benefits don't offset the added oxygen demands of big muscles, you're still better off because you're healthier. SAC isn't everything. You can plan your dives around a so-so SAC rate, but you can't plan your dives around progressive feebleness or the medical events caused by having weak muscles, too much body fat, and an inefficient cardiovascular system.

The people who purport to be worried about the negative effects of muscular hypertrophy are generally the people least at risk of manifesting the condition.

It's like Arnold's famous reply to people who tell him they don't lift because they don't want to look like him: "Don't worry. You never will."