This idea that Olympic swimmers practically live in the pool, that they could almost swim from here to China if you added up the distance they've covered in workouts? It's not always true.

Natalie Coughlin has a different approach.

It would be an exaggeration to say Coughlin, who has qualified for the 2008 Beijjing Games in four events, is a swimmer who doesn't like getting in the pool.

It would, however, be accurate to say the 25-year-old from Vallejo is not really interested in being in the water just for the sake of being in the water. Instead, in contrast with some of the traditional wisdom of her sport — as well as her earlier experience in it — she's placed a much greater emphasis on the work she does away from 50-meter-long bodies of water.

"A lot of times, people ask me, Well, how many yards or meters do you do a day?' " notes Coughlin, a winner of five medals (two gold, two silver, one bronze) at the Athens Olympics. "Well, I have no idea.

"I don't pay attention to that, and I don't think in the larger scale of things that that's even a relevant question, because I do the 100-meter and maybe the 200-meter races.

"And you can have a 3,000-meter workout that kicks your butt, and you can have a 9,000-meter easy workout. So when you just ask straight-up how many yards you do, it just kind of loses its relevance. It goes against, I think, the old-school ideas, but I think more and more people are incorporating different types of dry-land (training) into their swimming routines."

For Coughlin, that means running, weightlifting and Pilates.

"I run with my dog every day," she says, "There's a trail right by the house, just under three miles, that's a lot of fun for both me and my dog. And I lift weights more than I have before the last Olympics which not only builds strength but builds athleticism. It makes me a better athlete."

She moved in this direction, she says, through her own experimentation, which really began prior to the 2004 Olympics when she started working with her Pilates instructor, Tom McCook, who has worked with a number of other Olympians — including the ageless wonder of this year's swim team, Dara Torres.

"His big thing is bumping up the quality of every workout so you can cut back on the quantity," Coughlin explains. "And he really focuses on a balanced lifestyle, and having a life outside the pool. And so after 2004, I started playing around with that — doing more Pilates, doing more running. I did dance classes. And my times started to improve, so I just kept going in that direction, and I've been having personal bests left and right."

It certainly paid dividends at the recent Olympic swim trials in Omaha, Neb. Coughlin set a world record in the 100 backstroke, becoming the first woman to break the 59-second barrier (she won in 58.97 seconds). She was second to young star Katie Hoff in the 200 individual medley — an event she'd stayed away from since the 2000 trials — and second to Torres in the 100 freestyle. Those results earned her three individual spots on the swim roster for Beijing, as well as spot on the 4x100 freestyle relay.

Not surprisingly, then, she sees nothing but positives in this approach.

"It's made me more athletic," she says. "And on top of that, it's fun, and it keeps me in really good shape. I feel like my body's really lean and strong, and kind of cutting out some of the time in the pool makes me that much better every time I get in the water. Every practice is a more high-quality practice."

Being in shape is part of Coughlin's life, and she realized just how important it is to her when a broken foot sidelined her after the 2004 Olympics. She'd actually competed all through the 2004 season without knowing she had stress fractures in both feet, but three weeks after the games, she was taking a running dive into the pool.

"Which I do every morning," she says, "and my third metatarsal (in the left foot) just snapped."

And so, although she'd always planned on taking a post-Olympic break from swimming at least until December, that layoff became involuntary — and maddening.

"It was about November or so," she recalls, "that I panicked and decided I was in really bad shape. So I went to the gym and swam for about an hour and biked for like an hour and lifted weights."

If that sounds like an excessive, and perhaps obsessive, workout after a long layoff, well, Coughlin is not going to disagree.

"I woke up the next morning and both my arms were bent at like a 90-degree angle I strained both my hips really bad and I couldn't straighten my arms for a week."

It may have been the last time Coughlin's cross-training routine didn't work for her.