Dara Torres, Demystified

By Amanda Schaffer

At age 41, Olympian Dara Torres swims faster than she did 20 years ago. Her middle-age miracle recognition also comes with the suspicion that she is involved with drugs. She may not have failed a drug test and has volunteered for extra testing, but that can't prove definitively that she is clean because of the limitations of the tests.

Torres herself has talked of two "secrets" to her success. First, she takes amino acid supplements developed by German swimmer Mark Warnecke. Second, Torres says she relies on a training technique called "resistance stretching." The stretching and the supplements probably help her performance, but neither is likely to work in the ways—or to the extent—claimed.

Torres touted Warnecke's product- amino acid supplements- saying that it helped her gain muscle and helped with a speedy recovery. On his Website, Warnecke does not list all the ingredients and their proportions. Among other amino acids mentioned, he does name arginine, which helps increase blood circulation, which "significantly reduces regeneration time" of muscles.

A journal of sports nutrition points out that during resistance exercise—when muscles contract against external pressure—a small net breakdown in muscle takes place. Quick replenishment with amino acids can boost protein synthesis, helping to increase muscle repair and growth. The essential amino acids, which the body can't synthesize on its own, appear to play a major role in stimulating this process.

But most of the amino acids mentioned by Warnecke are not in the essential group. It's not clear why taking his supplements would improve muscle repair or boost muscle mass and strength. Meanwhile, consuming protein may be just as effective as taking amino acids, and combining either amino acids or protein with carbs is probably even better for boosting muscle protein synthesis. All in all, amino acid supplements sound at best like a pretty minor factor in Torres' success.

The basic idea to her second secret, resistance stretching is to contract a muscle while lengthening or stretching it. Two trainers "mash" or massage her body with their feet, then begin a series of resistance stretches that look like "a cross between a yoga class, a massage, and a Cirque du Soleil performance," as written in the New York Times Magazine. Over the course of two weeks, in 1999, it transformed Torres "from being an alternate on the relay team to the fastest swimmer in America."

In combination with other training, Torres' approach is likely to have some benefits. Mainly, stretching muscles against resistance may boost their strength through a greater range of motion. That is, it may allow people to generate more force with a muscle that's in a lengthened position. Some evidence also suggests that stretching muscles against resistance may help prevent injuries or facilitate recovery from them.

But there are trade-offs. Making a muscle stronger when it's in a lengthened position may mean making it weaker when it's in a shortened one. In addition, it's not necessarily good for swimmers to increase their range of motion too much, especially in their shoulders. The bottom line is that resistance stretching may improve a swimmer's performance. But as Torres' trainer concedes, there are currently no controlled studies that demonstrate this, and it's hard to see how this technique could really be her record-breaking bullet.

The mystery is not why Torres might try resistance stretching. It's why she promotes it to reporters and advertises it in a video, despite not getting paid to appear in it. Perhaps Torres simply wanted to share about a technique she believes is helping her. But the more she talks about her acclaimed secrets to success, the more one wonders about the secrets she may be hiding.

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