Discussion: Deep water

Does the depth really make a difference...

The characteristic definition of DWR is that you are totally submerged; you cannot touch the ground. This disambiguates it from running along the base of the pool. As far as I can tell, 'aquajogging' is a superset of both.

Hey, no falling apart before the Billygoat allowed! Hoping the achilles resolves itself before then...

I've always wondered whether it was really more useful to do this quasi-running activity in the pool rather than to just spend the same amount of time swimming. Superficially, it doesn't seem as if there is a whole lot more similarity to a normal running motion, and it clearly is a whole lot slower. Why not practice an activity which might have some actual use in other spheres of your life, and which is pretty enjoyable in its own right?

That is sage advice! Hear, hear!

A similiar situation is veggie burgers. If you are inclined to have one for ethical, health, or dietary reasons, why not have your food content through a more liberated modality? Why buy into the carnivore patriarchy and food archetypes? Set yourself free.

I don't buy the burger analogy. There's no animal* that comes naturally in burger form. It's simply a food shape that was devised by people (I suppose the Earl of Sandwich gets some credit) for convenience, and I see no difference in mangling a bovine into that shape as compared with mangling some soybeans or whatever into the same kind of patty. If you had mentioned something like vegetable matter shaped into an approximation of poultry drumsticks, then I would see your point.

*(OK, feel free to point out all of the burger-shaped animals now, but bear in mind that the hamburger still isn't patterned after any of them.)

Burger is defined as a meat based thing. See, for example: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hamburger

This is the etymology. If you use it, you are buying into the meat-centric ideology. Even if you don't use it, you are still adhering to the strictures of the meat-eaters and conforming to their forms.

Who cares about the etymology? And how does thefreedictionary get to be the authority on how domething is "defined"? Meat doesn't get a monopoly on the form factor simply because the name that stuck first applied to a meat version.

Well, its not just thefredictionary, it is all the other dictionaries, too. Those help us to appreciate common contemporary usage; etymology helps us to understand the derivation and history. They both point to a concept befouled with meat. I'm just the messenger. Don't shoot me.

I'm not harping just on the form factor. It is the form factor and the name in concert, which suggests an intentional effort to co-opt and extend a concept which may not deserve it. It is a concept suffused with the souls of countless dead animals.

This time j-man has gone seriously astray, much as I hate to say it. It does not happen often. In fact, this could be the first time ever he has ever been caught wrong--to be humbled in such a manner as by the hamburger!

The veggie burger is on equal footing with its meatier cousin, providing a delightful opportunity to consume mustard and ketchup in sublime proportions, perhaps with a slice of pickle and perhaps not.

Of course, none of us expect j-man to be the ultimate guiding authority and arbiter in all matters of cuisine. For all we know, he may even have gone so far as to have succumbed to the occasional pop tart at some earlier point in his life. I would not think lesser of him; many were tempted, and most did not hesitate to eat from the tree of Kellogg. To hell with the TBHQ for freshness, we live but once and then die!

This hamburger episode will serve as a useful reminder that j-man is also but mortal, a man among men, and, in that respect, not to be confused with the Balter.

Yes, I've had my share of chocolate pop tarts. They are fine indeed.

Maple version has got to be my fave... =)

And though I may seem to be defending the veggie burger (which is suffused with the souls of countless dead plants), I will say that the few I've had were not very appetizing. I prefer the meat kind (although the bacon swiss burger from the cafeteria at work yesterday was pretty disappointing). I have to wonder if the concept being proposed here would also work in reverse, implying that there's something wrong with what I should have gotten instead: chicken salad.

The best feature of pop-tarts, on the other hand, is their long shelf-life. I keep some in the cabinet for emergencies. (Usually unfrosted blueberry or strawberry.)

As much as I am enjoying the conversation about meat and non-meat patties, I am not enjoying the mention of pop-tarts, which are disgusting. So let's go back to the DWR... isn't DWR really excellent training for an injured runner? I may be remembering incorrectly, but I seem to recall some very good runners and orienteers who came out of injury close to their pre-injury form because they did a lot of DWR when they couldn't run on the ground. Swimming doesn't have the same benefit of specificity.

DWR is not only excellent but almost essential training for injured runners for injury recovery. In a group, DWR can be fun and DWR intervals are tough. Avoid muscle atrophy following injury and do DWR. I always enjoyed the introduction line to fellow DWR'ers with "So what you in here for?"
(Sorta sounds like prison)

Swimming on the other hand may be a more enjoyable and perhaps equally suitable form of injury
Prevention training.

@JJ--

Of course, I prefer the meat version as well. It is Dasha who has the chlorphyll of countless dead plants on her hands.

And there is also the portobello "burger", so one who chooses can go beyond chlorophyll and murder fungus as well.

Fungus doesn't really deserve to live, does it?

An interesting side question here is how the shape and/or contents of any burger affects the dynamics of deep water running...

PS. If I remember correctly, re. what Cristina mentions above about DWR and it´s usefulness for injured runners, Annichen Kringstad did most of her training in the spring of 1985 with a stress fracture and consequently could only run in water. The result? Her third consecutive individual Gold medal at WOC in Australia...

Concerning the half of this thread relating to DWR: by the specificity argument, I think DWR is more beneficial for running than swimming. That's not totally obvious, but the cost of DWR isn't high - my enjoyment from it is comparable to swimming. One other disadvantage from swimming is that my eyes start to hurt from the chlorine.

There seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence that DWR is useful; in addition to those mentioned, Thierry and Kempster both trained with DWR during their injury-mandated off-periods before WOC and JWOC this year.

Thanks for all the encouragement and concern! I think my achilles (left is named "Achilles," right is named "Odysseus") is well on its way to recovery. I anticipate more DWR in my future, though.

Arguments from etymology are totally bogus. Sweat forms beads, but we don't connect sweat to prayers, even though that's what bead originally meant. A lord is not a "loaf-keeper" anymore. Punch doesn't have to have five ingredients. Et cetera.

On the other minor topic, I've found that kicking while swimming screws with my knee pretty quickly, but pool running has helped a lot.

But, a hamburger involves meat, etymology or not. If not historical usage, and not prevailing usage, how else do we possibly determine what a word means? Do we each make that determination on our own? I've never gotten much beyond Kripke, but I guess the causal/decriptivist debate remains unresolved.

I'm not a linguist or etymologist. Just a guy trying to understand English and why veggie eaters sell themselves short.

I'll throw in the towel, although I might like a rematch at some point. The conjoint "Veggie" "Burger" simply strikes me as oxymoron.

I guess there are a few others out there who are misguided like me...

My objection to your argument transcends language. You seem to be advising, "Don't eat vegetables in disk form, because people eat meat in that artificial shape. Pick another shape." And I don't understand why. It doesn't matter to me what label you put on it.

You realize I'm not really serious about this argument, right?

That said, I have to keep going.

Hamburgers themselves are generally a second rate food. They rate highly on the utility scale for those who like to eat with their hands, but do people really get jazzed about the sandwich form factor? Next, the meat that goes into hamburgers typically is second rate, adulterated, with various fillings. There are other meats of this sort. Scrapple, as any Pennsylvanian can attest, is a noxious concoction. Sausage-like in its dubious provenance, but if you can get past that...?

I assert the form factor of the burger conceals a multitude of deficiencies--the same for veggies as it does for meat. Insipid, uninspired, and quite often little more than a ruse to pass off dubious ingredients and haphazard presentation in the interest of ease of preparation and consumption. Meat eaters, vegetarians, you and I, can all do better.

Uh-oh! It sounds like someone needs to head out west for a visit to In-N-Out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBsPZV14I-k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLsNG4xdmHo

Thanks. Here is some more questionable meat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4MFxcFofkY

There are two reasons DWRs perform well in competition. First, you have to be highly motivated and diligent to spend all that time in a chlorinated pisspot, character traits which correlate well with good performance. Second, if you spent all that time in a pool, you'd damn well better win.

Ian, There is plenty of scientific studies on the physiological benefits of DWR. Just scholar google Deep Water Running and enjoy reading the studies. So much more than anecdotal evidence for sure.

Hammer - certainly agreed that the practice is well validated. Above, I was listing my reasons for doing DWR, which were based on the experiences of others in the community rather than peer-reviewed articles. Still, it's reassuring that the practice is established and not hokum.

Do we each make that determination on our own? Yes, basically. But communicative pressure constrains the range of our determinations.

Well, I'm trying to apply that pressure, but I guess my hot air is escaping from a rather porous container.

I guess my question was not whether DWR worked as a method of training when injured, but whether it had ever been determined to work better than just swimming. The only people who have commented on that aspect of things seem to be Claire, who finds it works better because of a knee problem (but swimming hasn't bothered my knee issues in the past, and they have been my most common reason for taking time off running), and Cristina who has cited better specificity of muscle use (but no particular scientific references), which I was wondering about. Has anyone ever done controlled studies? And while a flutter kick for crawl might not do as much for some of the leg range of motion, and a frog kick for breaststroke might aggravate some types of knee injury, I would think that the scissors kick of a sidestroke might well do a better range of motion and comparable vigor to what the DWR runners I have seen in our local pool appear to be achieving.