Ideal body fat percentage for a swimmer

[rvillar79]

Hi

I was just wondering what is the ideal fat percentage range for a) an athlete swimmer and b) a fitness swimmer?

I weighed myself this morning and the scale showed me that I am 79kg in weight with a body fat percentage of 22.5% and I was wondering, if I reduce my fat% somewhat, would it help me swim any faster? On the other hand, because fat is less dense than water and should therefore help you float in the water, would it not be an advantage to have a relatively high fat percentage as it would mean that you need to spend less energy in keeping yourself afloat leaving you with more for propulsion? I suppose that it the real world there will be a trade-off between too much body fat and too little and was just wondering where the balance lies. BTW I swim for fitness and my 400m time is roughly 7:30mins

Cheers!

Raul

[Pete NZ]

Hey Raul,

I'm trying to slim down for Ironman so I have been doing a lot of reading about this. I would recommend you read 'Racing Weight' by Matt Fitzgerald, which has a really good section about the differences in body shape and composition between professional-standard cross country skiers, cyclists, rowers, runners, swimmers and triathletes. Fitzgerald reckons that elite level swimmers typically carry more fat than other endurance athletes, with elite males around 10-12% body fat and elite females around 19-21% body fat. By comparison, professional male triathletes carry 6-10%, male cyclists 6-11%. Pro females in both sports carry between 12-16%. Hope that helps.

[rvillar79]

Hi Pete

Thanks for your reply, I'll check out the book that you recommend. I kind of guessed that pro swimmers would have a relatively higher body fat% compared to land athletes, such as runners or cylclists, as the extra fat would actually increase your buoyancy in the water helping you to conserve energy to an extent. I've come across some proof of this in my local swimming pool where I've seen some bulky swimmers that swim pretty danm fast! This puzzled me a bit in the beginning but now I think I know why this is. I've also read somwhere in the forum about people putting on weight on purpose before long swims e.g. cross-channel swimming, although I believe this is more to do with keeping in your body heat as opposed to helping with buoyancy. I wonder how loosing some body fat will affect my swimming times. I plan to test this over the next few months if I manage to loose the weight that is as I enjoy eating way too much!

Cheers
Raul