It All Adds Up: Why Gym Work Should Count in Your Weekly Swim Load

One of the most common blind spots I see in swim coaching is the failure to include strength and conditioning sessions in the total training load. For example, swimmers will say that they do 9 workouts a week, but don’t count the 3 workouts they do in the gym in the overall total.

Coaches will carefully track every meter in the pool, logging aerobic, threshold, and race pace efforts with precision. But then, when swimmers head to the gym, it’s as if those sessions exist in a vacuum, completely disconnected from the rest of the week’s work.

That’s a mistake, and it’s one that can cost you consistency, progression, and ultimately results.

Here’s why:

1. Strength Training Generates Fatigue Just Like Swimming

When you lift, jump, or sprint on land, you create neuromuscular fatigue. Even if the metabolic cost feels different from swimming, your nervous system, connective tissue, and hormonal environment all register that workload. A heavy lower body session can leave your legs flat for kick sets the next morning. A demanding pull focused workout can fatigue your shoulders more than a hard IM set.

This fatigue doesn’t disappear just because it happened in a weight room instead of a pool. If you ignore it, you’re guessing, and in elite sport, guessing is rarely rewarded.

2. Adaptation Depends on Total Stress, Not Just Pool Volume

Training adaptations happen when you apply stress and then recover. If you only monitor swim volume and intensity, you risk exceeding your athletes’ ability to absorb work. Over time, that shows up as overuse injuries, chronic soreness, mood disturbances, and stagnation.

Think of it like budgeting: if you only track spending in one account but forget the credit card, you’ll end up overdrawn. It’s the same principle here, all work costs something, and all of it needs to be counted.

3. The Body Doesn’t Care About Labels

From a physiological standpoint, your body doesn’t separate “swim training” from “strength training.” It experiences workload as cumulative stress on the muscles, connective tissue, and nervous system.

Research into combined strength and endurance programs shows that when total workload passes a certain threshold, recovery is impaired, strength gains plateau, and technical quality in the pool suffers. This is especially true when you pair high intensity lifting with high intensity swimming without a plan to balance them.

That doesn’t mean you avoid lifting. It means you plan it intelligently, just like you’d plan a threshold set or a speed block.

4. Assign a Load Score to Everything

One of the simplest ways to account for dryland is to assign an approximate “load score” to each session. For example:

Heavy strength session: ~2–3k of moderate-intensity swimming

• Explosive plyometric session: ~1.5–2k of high-intensity efforts

• Circuit session: ~3–4k of aerobic work

• Recovery-focused mobility session: ~500–1,000m of easy swim

These are rough benchmarks, but they help you see that a week with three lifts isn’t the same as a week without them. You don’t need to overcomplicate it. The point is simply to acknowledge the cost. Once you do, you can adjust swim volume or intensity on days when gym work is especially taxing.

5. Timing and Sequencing Matter

Another reason to track gym work alongside swim training is timing. If you’re planning a key sprint session, you have to consider how heavy lifts the day before will impact power output. If you’re tapering for a meet, you should reduce gym stress in the same way you reduce swim stress.

Sequencing properly lets you get the best of both worlds: the strength and power you need out of the gym, and the precision and technical sharpness you need in the water.

6. Smarter Integration = Fewer Surprises

When you start treating strength and conditioning as part of the weekly training volume, you get fewer unexpected bad practices. You can taper more precisely. You can time your highest quality sets around the gym work. And your athletes will feel the difference in consistent energy and better performance.

Over time, this kind of integration also helps swimmers understand the purpose of each element of training. They stop seeing gym work as something separate or optional and start seeing it as part of a complete preparation plan.

Learning in Real Time: Two Examples

This year, when James Magnussen began preparing for his Enhanced Games sprint project, we saw firsthand how failing to account for recovery can derail progress. Early in the cycle, we were stacking maximum power gym sessions on top of high intensity pool work without adjusting the overall load. We weren’t taking the appropriate neurological recovery and often tried to push through fatigue on weekends instead of stepping back.

At first, we could hold the line, but eventually, it caught up with us. Power output in the gym plateaued, and stroke mechanics began to slip under fatigue. This wasn’t a question of commitment, James is as dedicated as they come, it was about respecting the total stress the body was carrying. Once we recognized the pattern, we had to pull back and rebuild, which cost valuable training time. James totals were 6 swim and 6 gym for a total of 12 workouts with one day of recovery

With Kristian Gkolomeev, we took a different approach. He was targeting a 50 freestyle world record attempt, and we made a point of listening to feedback from his body and the data week to week. If we felt the accumulated stress creeping up, we dialed back either the volume or intensity early, rather than pushing through and hoping it would resolve itself. We also committed to taking weekends completely off from heavy lifting or high intensity swim work to let the nervous system recover fully. Krisitians totals were 5 swim and 3 gym for a total of 8 workouts per week, including 2 full days of recovery.

The contrast was clear: with Kristian, we stayed more consistent across the entire training block, avoided nagging fatigue, and maintained higher quality in the sprint sessions.

These examples illustrate a simple principle, if you don’t track and adjust for the cumulative cost of both gym and pool, even the most talented athletes can fall into an overreaching cycle. Conversely, when you integrate all elements of workload and respect recovery, you give yourself a much better chance at steady progress and breakthrough performances.

So when you’re counting up your weekly workout totals, make sure the swim and the gym are equally scored. That’s how you build a complete, resilient athlete ready to perform when it matters most.

Fuel the Fast.
Brett Hawke

#SprintRevolution