More Slow Twitch Fast Twitch

Larry's post on the higher percentage of fast vs slow twitch muscles in the upper body got me
thinking about another issue this may influence. For me it seems that in swimming, gains in speed
come and stay much easier than they do in running or cycling. The counter is endurance seems to come
and stay much easier in cycling and running.
I.E. Initially it take a person quite some time to gain the endurance to run a slow 10mi run.
However once they have gained and maintaned that distance for a while they can take a rather
lengthy break and come back to running and in a fairly short period of time can be back to
running 10mi. However, with me at least, the same doesn't appear to be true with speed in
running. After a break it seems that speed is lost fairly quickly and takes a bit more to gain
back than the endurance. However in the pool everything seems to be the opposite. After a
lenghty break I can get in the pool and do shorter repeats at only slightly slower speeds than
before the break, however it takes more time to build back up to the distances I held before
and hold speed at those distances say 400 or 800+ distances.

Anyone else like this ir is it just me?

~Matt

 

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 19:35:13 GMT, <MJuric> wrote:

> For me it seems that in swimming, gains in speed come and stay much easier than they do in
> running or cycling. The counter is endurance seems to come and stay much easier in cycling
> and running.
> I.E. Initially it take a person quite some time to gain the endurance to run a slow 10mi run.
> However once they have gained and maintaned that distance for a while they can take a rather
> lengthy break and come back to running and in a fairly short period of time can be back to
> running 10mi. However, with me at least, the same doesn't appear to be true with speed in
> running. After a break it seems that speed is lost fairly quickly and takes a bit more to
> gain back than the endurance. However in the pool everything seems to be the opposite. After
> a lenghty break I can get in the pool and do shorter repeats at only slightly slower speeds
> than before the break, however it takes more time to build back up to the distances I held
> before and hold speed at those distances say 400 or 800+ distances.
>
> Anyone else like this ir is it just me?

Works that way for me, too. Also, if I am in good running shape, it's a lot easier to re-gain the
swimming shape, but not the other way around.