I swim 3 days a week — How much and when should I run, and lift dumbbells?

Question

I recently took up on swimming in the mornings, monday, wednesday and friday

Occasionally, I also run. I can easily do 6K or 10K (and rarely sometimes 15k)

I want to exercise more often, specifically do things I can do on my own without going to a gym.

When should I schedule my runs? How much should I run? And when should I try dumbbells exercises? — So that I can also recover and don't interfering with my swimming.

note: My main goal at the moment is to loose weight. I have a very sedentary work. Obviously I've been control what I eat as well. And it has been working!

Answer 1

If your main goal is too lose weight then just staying in a caloric deficit of 250-500 calories should be what you aim for. So find out how many calories you need to maintain your current weight here and then just subtract 250-500 from it. This will help you lose weight.

For your runs, it depends on what your goals are. Do you want to increase your stamina?, become faster?, etc. But what I would recommend is making a routine and tracking your progress. So I cant really say how often you should do it without more information, but getting enough rest is always important

As for building muscle, if you haven't worked out before, you will be able to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. So doing exercise with the dumbbells and other body weight movements would be beneficial. Also remember to get enough protein if you plan to build muscle.

Answer 2

If your goal is to just lose weight, you definitely want to make sure you add jogging/running into your routine. If it's a matter of losing fat or improving your body composition, then that's less important.

If you look at mid- to long- distance runners, their body type is very very lean and wiry. Swimmers, because they are using their upper bodies so much, even if they are very lean, they tend to carry a lot of muscle in the back, chest and shoulders. That muscle = weight. When I used to swim competitively in my high school years, I'd actually gain weight through most of the season from that added muscle (even though I was getting in better shape and losing fat), and then a lot would drop off in the end of the season taper.

As far as weight training goes, you probably want to do more high-rep sets to build some strength, but strength over a prolonged period of time. Being able to push a lot more weight for just a few reps does not translate well in to activities like swimming and non-sprinting running, which are do not require instant, single-explosion effort (except the start, but then you still have the entire race).

Better to work with a lighter weight for 30 seconds (should get 25 reps in that cycle, if you can do it easily, increase the weight. If you're getting to the end and struggling with those last few reps, you've got it about right).

I would run on "off" days when I'm not swimming. Weights, I'd split exercises into torso (chest, shoulders, back) on one day, limbs (arms legs) on the other, and alternate, getting in four or five days a week. Core work - every day.

I prefer weights before swimming, because if I'm fatigued from doing weights, I can still swim, just not as fast a pace on my repetitions, but I still get the overall distance covered. If I'm fatigued from swimming, that means failing to move the weights, and losing that exercise benefit.