Large people

[Verth]

Something on the Mtro the other day ...

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Barry Fowers, who weighs 190kg (30st), was told it was too risky if he carried on his job.

Insurance analysts feared the 51-year-old, who assembled industrial power source equipment, could fall and crush fellow workers.

Mr Fowers accepted voluntary redundancy but is furious that despite his poor health – he had a heart attack when he was 30 – he is still classified as fit to work.

‘I had to climb onto platforms about a metre from the ground to get to the equipment and install parts,’ said Mr Fowers, who worked at Crestchic in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire.

‘The insurance people came in and did an assessment after I had a little incident. I tripped and fell over and I was off work for a few weeks.

‘They said my weight was a danger to myself and to others in case I fell off a platform while I was working.’

Mr Fowers, was initially granted incapacity benefit and has a doctor’s sick note, but does not qualify for Employment and Support Allowance worth around £75 a week. Instead, he receives Jobseeker’s Allowance, which has been reduced to £21.65 a week.

‘I’m having to accept that I may never work again,’ he said, ‘but I’ve paid tax and National Insurance for 34 years and I think the country should do something in return’.

His wife Shirley wife Shirley works as a part-time carer and their income is jointly assessed.

‘Some days, his IBS can be so severe he can’t make it upstairs and I have to stand my husband in the shower and wash him down,’ she said.

‘I can’t afford to keep him. I may as well pack my husband’s bags and chuck him on the street,’ she added.

Some great comments back on this in the paper a few days later basically suggesting he lose weight so he can work, that his wife cut costs by getting him to go on a diet and east less, he find a job he can do instead of moaning it's 'his right' to be paid for not working

[MJ.23]

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Glad I never got swimming lessons from you then - Whilst I agree that in breaststroke a lot more comes from teh legs than most people realsie/think/actually do, in front crawl that is definately not the case. Incidentally that's why triathletes don't do breastroke they save their legs for the bike & run! Though I did my first triathlon doing breastroke (I used to be a failry good breastroker when I were young and raced for my local swimming club) and managed to beat a lot of people lol But was not in good shape for the rest of the event as a result

On front crawl you use your arms A LOT and the longer the distance you're swimming the less you use your legs - Just look at 1500m swimmers they hardly kick at all compared to 50m sprinters! Also just consider how fast you can swim using arms only (A leg float swim for instance which actually intrioduces quite a bit of drag) - It's is significantly faster than a swim where you hold a float with your arms (A flat float so not nearly as much drag as a leg float) and kick with your legs - The legs only swim is incredibly ineffeicient and will have you gasping in no time.

If you have half decent technique you can swim almost as fast using a minimal leg kick as you can with the leg kick - But you can't swim anywhere near as fast using legs only.

I'm not saying you shouldn't use your legs - you should and many people don't use them enough, but they are not the main engine in front crawl.

What slows most people down IME is (and I'm a prime culprit) is that they have too much body movement which creates drag and inefficiency. Just look at that Popov video - he goes through the water with hardly any lateral body moveement or roll - His body is straight and just glides through the water - I in comparison rock and roll and I'm reasonably competent! Most people have huge amounts of lateral body movement / rock and roll and so waste loads of energy. Anyway that's just an observation.

IMO if you really want to get some serious swimming improvement I'd recommend going to a swimming club - or if you're interetsed in triathlons find a local triatlon club and go swim train with them (providing they have someone who can coach) - Even more serious get one of teh coaches at the swimming/tri club to give you 1-2-1 tuition - But it'll cost ya

I tend to disagree with this. If you are gasping using your legs then you arent kicking right! Every child i see who comes in will always start off using their arms only and letting their legs sink. They can barely stay afloat doing this. Your legs are more important than the arms as they keep the momentum going. Once stopped you lose a lot of speed. Of course you need both parts to build maximum speed but stressing the legs before arms is used by all good swimming instructors. I teach some dyslexic children/teens/adults who find it difficult to swim as they cant multi task the arms and legs. To get them to swim you overuse leg work as the arm movement is always more natural. For an olympic swimmer they can get by with using just arms as they have great upper body strength and have an excellent technique. For everyone else to build up the rotational arm movement using their scapulas takes a lot of time so legs are so vital. Look at the starting block push off. They can get a good 50m just using a few leg kicks. Then the arms kick in.

Then theres butterfly. If you can master this stroke this is the second fastest stroke after front crawl. This is extremely leg heavy and takes years and years to get a fluid technique. Needs good posterior chain flexibility and strength. Arms are important but once again legs are learnt first. Its the same with all strokes. Legs are always taught first. They are the part of the swimming stroke that never drop speed.

Remember im not teaching olympic swimmers but kids and middle aged overweight people! They arent physically developed like olympic swimmers and i have yet to teach a person who is.

I wish i had carried on the swimming now (competitively) I moved to a new club and the coach didnt like me as i beat his "prized swimmer" in a freestyle, who he kept boasting about to everyone. That guy was a *******. He was always out to get me, making a huge deal out of rediculous things. Im might go back again and kick everybodys ass lol.

You will find some good coaches and some bad ones. Just like PT's! Ive always been a self learner and so learnt all the stuff on my own.

Back on topic a tax on burger king, mcdonalds etc.. would be brilliant!

[super_mattyT]

@ Verth - cheers.........

so as a triathlete, do you have any tips on which bike to look at.

I'm not looking highly competative and dont want to spend thousands; about £800 would be good...........?

[roadz]

Made redundant? He should be fired because he's no longer able to do the job required of him... I love it how the thought of losing weight never even enters his head. Fat bast...

[Was_once_fat_dave]

I was a competitve swimmer as a kid (8-12yo), the main thing I can remember getting drummed into us was legs too. We used to spend hours with a wooly jumper on while using a kickboard. This is what I put my leg strength down too as since then my legs have allways been comparativly bigger than my upper body (my squat pb is almost double my bench for example).

You can swim much quciker with just legs than you can with just arms IMO, however when you swim flat out with your legs I find you do expend a lot more energy and get fatigued quicker, however you can still keep up a decent speed with just arms. For this reason distance swimmers will use a lot less legs as they need to pace themselves, for front crawl to be legal the arms need to be going anyway, plus it's nearly impossible to breath properly when just kicking. Again compare a squat to bench, a heavy squat session will allways leave you more fatigued than a heavy bench session.

[Fiji]

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That is true, my son is 6 and has had swimming lessons for the last year, the first 7 months he went to the local pool and had lessons of the people there, none of them seemed to have a clue, by the time we took him away from there he'd only just finally learned to swim 10m crawl, but that was still a sturggle.

Since then I've signed him up for lessons with the local swimming club (competitve swimming club) and after the first block of 10 weekly lessons he can now swim a full 25m length both front and back crawl including breathing correctly.


Back OT, I personally would have no problem if a 'fat' tax was introduced on junk food, I think it's time it was!

Who decides what's 'junk' food though. Almost certainly someone who won't know what they're doing. Bye bye affordable eggs, meat, butter, etc.

[Was_once_fat_dave]

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Who decides what's 'junk' food though. Almost certainly someone who won't know what they're doing. Bye bye affordable eggs, meat, butter, etc.

very true!! more than anything with sat fats in probably!

[Verth]

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@ Verth - cheers.........

so as a triathlete, do you have any tips on which bike to look at.

I'm not looking highly competative and dont want to spend thousands; about £800 would be good...........?

Unfortunatley I've been out the lop for a few years now so am not up to speed with latest bikes Have a look around local bike shops find out what you can about ones in your price range and take it from there. I would recommend clipless pedals & proper bike shoes - You gain an awful lot from them.

[Verth]

@ MJ & Dave re swimming & legs.

I do appreciate that when getting people started you need to emphasise legs becasue as we all said most people just don't use them enough - All I was really trying to get across was that at a higher level (and as you say you ain't teaching olympic swimmers) the legs are far from everything - Almost all my coaches drummed in hand and arms techniques for efficient front crawl - Sure we did leg work but I gues as triathletes we were never wanting to fatigue our legs too much in the swim phase so there may be a slightly different emphasis there than would be done for a pure swimmer.

Re Butterfly - Awesome stroke - It feels so nice when you get it right - But I was never good at it tbh - Swim coaches at the club for some reason had this sadistic notion that 12 lengths butterfly would be a good warm up and that's what I recall most about butterfly lol

@MJ - Shame on you for beating his prized swimmer - Unfortunately I know from experience too that there's too much of this type of crap in swimming - Shame really.

@ Dave - I'm not sure what to say re you being able to swim faster with just legs becasue that just plain isn't my experience - We're all different I guess but that just seems weird to me.

Anyway this swimming stuff is off topic and potentially another whole debate alltogether