Discussion: Deep water running

I've been meaning to ask: do you get your heart rate up when you're doing this exercise? When I swim (front crawl) I have trouble getting my heart rate even above 100. I attribute this largely to the mammalian dive reflex, and maybe some due the relative smallness of the upper body musculature and associated smaller oxygen draw. Anyway, I wonder if keeping your face above water and using your legs allows you to get up to a reasonable running training heart rate.

There is a larger issue here. Swimming heart rate tables are "compensated" for swimming relative to other aerobic sports, as in, 95 bpm swimming equates to 110 bpm running. I wonder if that's for real. It may make swimmers feel good, but I have a hard time believing they are getting the same benefit as the higher heart rate exercise that runners are getting for the same objective level of effort. On the other hand, maybe the mammalian dive reflex accounts for everything. I'd like to know.

Was that an "objective" when you meant "subjective"? I'm confident in my typical DWR workout I spend most of the time at heart rates in a range significantly overlapping with what I'd reach in a long to very long run on land but I don't actually collect the data required to prove it. I have, rarely, done DWR interval workouts in the pool and it certainly felt like I was redlining.

If memory serves, the best swimmers post higher MaxVO2 numbers than the best runners. Both beaten by the best Nordic skiers who get to fight gravity and use virtually all their muscle mass productively in competition. Not making me want to poo poo the physiological benefits of swimming.

Mammalian diving reflex was news to me. Interesting. I'm guessing it implies something about how cold water deep enough to drown in was likely to be over the course of mammalian evolution.

10-15 bpm lower for the same perceived exertion is what I have experienced also. Besides the reflex, I remember reading somewhere that the water pressure on your legs during DWR reduces the number of beats required to move the same amount of blood.

Jon, you should try taking a heart rate measurement some time. The first time I did it, I thought I was working pretty hard, and was astonished to find my HR in the 80s.

I think I meant "objective," if you're using the compensated charts. I guess that's the issue -- is the lower HR target for swimmers something to make the objective reality fit the subjective experience (in which case it's just a feel-good thing) or is it physiologically based? You'd think this would be easy enough to study with groups of athletes but I haven't seen anything other than the "highest VO2 max" kind of thing you referred to. By the way, this guy says runners beat swimmers, but everyone knows that skiers are the best in that department.