I appreciate the distinction made by these researchers. It's reasonable that there is a difference in oxygen uptake between the swim benches and pulling or swimming.

But that wasn't the point that was to be discussed in the first paragraph above, which was less about the ability to transfer oxygen and more about neural patterning as well as anaerobic power development which might eventually manifest in aerobic fitness. The problem with swimming in terms of developing more power is in the evaluation and isolation of the muscle movements that cause propulsion. Although granted that better use of the muscles (in terms of "holding" more water for a longer or more frequent stroke) would cause a higher oxygen uptake, so would movements that had less to do with what would improve the upper body's ability to propel a swimmer. All of us agree that performance time alone doesn't isn't a sufficiently controlled measurement because a swimmer can learn to rotate better to reduce drag even if the swimmer weren't improving the propulsive power of the upper body.

This is the benefit of isolating the arms in close to the movement pattern on a swim bench. Improvements of power are isolated and real. This then increases the potential of the swimmer to perform better. We'd have to grant that the increased potential might not manifest and that there might even be less than what we would hope in terms of the ability of the swimmer to transfer this power to the whole stroke. This has been shown in studies that have found correlations that are even negative between bench press and sprint freestyle. Of course the idea of an isolkinetic swim bench is that the movements are at the speed of exercise with close to the ideal movement patterns.

Experience has told us there is a great deal of transfer however, at least on the isokinetic swim bench invented by Doc Councilman and Glen Henson. Janet Evans owned one from six years old and used it religiously at her home. Mark Spitz was among the first of Doc's swimmers to use it. Both Bob Bowman, Michael Phelp's coach, and University of Texas coach Eddie Reese told me just this month that they use the same isokinetic swim bench Doc invented in the 70's. It's because of the experience of hundreds of coaches and thousands of athletes and myself as a coach that I took an interest and improved the bench to help make it digital for more accuracy and to extend the arms to make it customizable for each swimmer and each stroke, which no other bench had ever done. I got Glen Henson to make these improvements at 81 years old because Glen had experienced the benefits of the Bench and the Leaper first hand with some many professional and world class athletes and those who train them.

What we'd like researchers to do now is test our bench to decide whether we are indeed improving the muscular power of the armstroke (and whip kick) not only in terms of the bench readouts, but in terms of the speed and power in swim events.

The important difference in isokinetics is that the movement is done at a speed in line with what will be needed by the athlete which the athlete challenges himself to get higher power and work readings at each session. The great thing is that any "slipping" of the stroke is caught in the readout, which is not the case in swimming.

There is no doubt the conclusion the researchers cited came to is true: the bench must be a supplement -- full swimming is essential to optimal success. But the bench also, we believe, gives us feedback at every movement -- which swimming does not do.

As an aside, just by observation, very poor swimmers seem to have a very high oxygen debt indeed and yet would test very poorly on the swim bench because they wouldn't be able to reach or sustain much power. Swimmers who can reach and sustain great strokes have greater power throughout their stroke length. This is the goal of the swim bench -- to isolate skills from true strength and power development. We think they do it very well and more research is needed.

Steve Friederang

Tropical Penguin

The new Tropical Penguin Swim Bench now rotates. We bring this up because studies done with a swimmer on a flat non-rotating bench simply isn't as accurate and that has been stated by many researchers. That said, the maximum V02 will probably never be the same as in water if the swimmer isn't fully using his or her core. We get more power and summation of forces in our patented rotation, but we fully admit there is far more oxygen consumed when the legs are involved. This is one main reason we made our bench instantly adaptable by releasing the isokinetics to the floor or wall for squats, what we call home run swings where the swimmer grabs a handle and swings from the toes to the fingertips in both directions, pull downs, flutter kick, dolphin and whip kick, and hundreds of other joint by joint, motion by motion, and summation exercises. We include high, low, and medium wall brackets, padded squat bars, specialized toe straps, vests, etc. to enhance the best possible bench. We also include video for your phone showing over 600 exercises arranged by stroke and movement.

We also released a new faster easier aluminum vane system at the College Swimming Coaches Association of America Convention in Chicago last month. This allows a far greater amount of aerobic use as well as contra-lateral joint by joint balancing. We have received six orders from Division I top ten teams in the last few weeks. Ours is most certainly the only four-stroke swim bench with adjustment as wide as five feet wide front low and high brackets for kicking, triceps pushes, arm curls etc.

We just perfected and will release in thirty days a device for physical therapists that uses wireless transmission of our isokinetics to sophisticated software for performance evaluation (we started as a swim software company and have two doctors of physics on staff). We are doing printouts that have been accepted by insurance companies undercutting our nearest competitor by $4,000 (ours) to $43,000 (theirs). We are weeks from a retrofit that will allow our new swim benches and all our isokinetics on wall and floor stations to be tested all the time, not just in a lab for Max V02, specific power, etc. We have been brought in by researchers at CalTech University in Pasadena to provide our swim benches for their medical research. It can't feel like water if it doesn't rotate unless you are a paddler and leaving the shoulders square is just asking for shoulder problems as any first year swim coach or swimmer knows. And the force phase of butterfly and breaststroke has to be from wide to narrow or it's simply a different straight back motion and will show up in lab tests and performance as such. So we do believe our bench is by far the winner.

Both the VASA and the Tropical Penguin benches are far superior to the ones tested in Japan. Yet I would have to agree that a full workout requires a circuit of exercises that measure power at full speed though a full range of motion. From our Leaper (used by every pro basketball team and many swim teams for starts and turns) to our physical training devices, from our hundreds of exercises and four decades of practical experience, we'd be happy to challenge the results of the study in Japan or anywhere else.

One last thing -- and this is surprising. In the water, a small over rotation of the wrist joint or opening of the fingers or a late catch and drop of the elbow as compared to the hand can dramatically change the force the athlete puts on the water. We have advanced bendable guides and mirrors and instantly accommodating computer readouts on each arm and leg that instantly tells you if you are "slipping" or dropping the elbow. For this reason, we believe we can easily prove that our land exercises actually are often MORE specific in training power and muscular endurance than swimming in the water. We trained a swimmer at Cal Baptist this season who backed off in yardage coming into school with a 59 in the 100 breaststroke and hitting a 53.0 this season (which would have been 13th in Div 1). He won NAIA by four body lengths. He is certain that swimming less and doing more isokinetics (he performed whip kick on our patented wide pulleys on our swim bench and did Leaper full speed squats, leg extensions and curls, plantar and dorsi flexion on our patented toe straps safely and many other isokinetic exercises in a circuit, reducing his yardage by over a third). His coach wants twenty of our swim benches and has settled for a few benches and an array of our entry level $295 isokinetic stations for his 60 athletes.

Full speed with accommodating resistance at the correct angles adapting in every centimeter of the stroke needs to be tested in these laboratories again. This system is simply unbeatable and we sell many other devices including four competing swim benches from three different countries, so we aren't as prejudiced as we sound. Whether you have a VASA or our bench or both, these studies are in error which you'll find out when you race swimmers trained on these modern systems or you train on them yourself. From Popov to Phelps and Evans, from Texas to Berkeley and North Baltimore, form 1970's to 2009 the number of swimmers gaining an advantage from swim benches is conclusive evidence that everyone should use them for accountable, motivating specialized improvement of swimming performance.