alex_korr wrote:
After many years of sucking at swimming, I finally got tired of this shit and joined a local masters swim team. It confirmed a few things:
1. I need to get pushed by the other swimmers when working out.
2. I am squarely a MOPer swimmer (can do 10x100 leaving on 1:35 but barely).
3. Swimming is hard when you start in your late 30s. 3 times per week with these guys is as hard as 50 miles per week of running.
4. Should have done that years ago.
There you have it.
Glad you have had a good experience. We seem to be similar paced swimmers and I have been swimming masters for over two year across two different programs. I actually think it is has been a huge waste of time. Here are my reasons:
1) Coaches are used to teaching youth or some segment that cant absorb 5 pieces of stroke advice at once. With a golf background I know first hand you can only focus on maybe two things at once
2) Coaches seem to not focus on the technique improvements that are most important for ows triathletes. I had one say she really wanted me to focus on not being a lazy flip turner.. give me a break
3) Masters has different themes for the days, "im day, sprint day, med distance", etc. but it seemed to be quite random. If you happen to show up at IM day you are stuck doing fly drills for an hour.
4) Masters basically does the opposite of every single thing that Gerry Rodriguez preaches on Tower 26 for triathletes
5) Not enough good old fashion 5x300 on interval, way too much broken sets full of nonsense
I have reached the point that i swim in the lanes next to my masters group but do not participate in the workouts. I am aware I don't know everything, but I do know i need to do a healthy combination of short hard intervals, and longer sets that include mixing speeds, etc.
i also may be a bit bitter. In the last two years my volume and frequency has gone up over 50%, and my times and percentile ranking have regressed rather dramatically