Check out Sun devils masters. they also have a tri group, M W TH Sat and John is good with technique work for those with problems.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

One of the best swim threads I ever read.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

Thank you!! Going there via google right now!

I swim with Sundevil Masters, although I usually go at noon, haven't been in 2 weeks though, concentrating right now on the bike.

PM if you have any questions.

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You want a cure for swimming, put in more time this winter in the water than you do on the bike. Minimum 6-7 hours per/week. (at 2:00 per 100, thats about 14,000 yards) Guaranteed at the end of the winter you don't swim 1:50's.

If you did 4-5 workouts of 1:30min. Get in over 3000 yards per practice. Do 800 warmup. 500 drills. And 1700 or more, of aerobic swimming. There is no way you will swim 1:50's at the end of that winter.

I know that's a lot of time, 4-5 workouts per week, but remember, you aren't riding as much!

Zipp,

i think i'm about to switch over to your camp (no swim training) and quit wasting all the time in the pool. Ain't getting no faster & can't get much slower, so why go thru all the frustration ? life's too short to spend that much of it staring at a line on the bottom of a pool anyway.

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what means this word 'change'? .....
Rappstar

Trust me - go with Keundig's advice - I've seen him swim!!

Heres a few bits of stat to bodytype info i have noticed along my track\xc\swimming in high school and college.

Fastest miler about 6 ft 3 long torso long arms muscular but not bulky perfect stroke form body roll with kicking mostly off the wall. goes 44 in 100. 16 min in mile

fastest freshman about 5 ft 9 a little bulkier not as long arms to body size ratio. 500 time 4:35

a runner from high school, about 6 ft thin but long arms and legs, went a 1:02 in the 100 free but ran a 4:10 mile.


So as you can see these stats mean that it is simply freakin hard to determine if a swimmer can become descent based on body type alone. But interesting non the less.

5:00 400s without kicking.

Go to hell

:-)

Every top swimmer is born into the sport. They have certain innate qualities which make it easier for them to succeed. When I coached high school I used to comb the hallways for body types which I felt would make fast swimmers. I did not care whether the person could not swim a stroke. They learned and learned fast. I once had a non-swimmer as a freshman who in his junior year went 21.64 for 50 years and set a NYC record.

The key ingredient is ankle flexibility. Every top swimmer has it an may not even realize it because he/she never had to work on it. Jim Montgomery, first swimmer to break 50 sec. for 100M called and asked me how to deal with triathletes who came to his swim program without a swimming background. He did not have a clue because his only coaching experience was with swimmers who HAD the physical attribute of ankle flexibility.

Runners and bikers come to triathlon and buy into the garbage about not kicking because they do not know how. There is no immediate success and it takes an investment in time and work to gain ankle flexibility. Triathletes who come from a swimming background do not have to work much on their kicks because they have it. They say that they do not kick but look at their feet.

Swimming works from the bottom up. Your kick is the platform which generates forces into your hips which gets your shoulders moving and eventually your arms.

Every world champion swimmers spends massive amounts of time kicking.

Pay your dues and reap the benefits. Even a feeble kick is better than no kick.

As a point of reference, for the last 21 years I have conducted swimming clinics for adults who have no swimming background. It is what I do for a living. It is not a part time job. I have a 100% success rate. Every single person gets faster, can swim further and becomes more efficient. I have worked with about 4,000. people of all sizes, ages and shapes. The first lesson is learn how the kick works and how to do it.

DougStern

doug,

i usually agree with what you have to say about swimming, but i don't agree with this post. being a 5'9" guy who has gone in the 4:30s 500, w/ plenty of friends about the same, i dont' think that body type is key to swimming. while you might be onto something w/ ankle flexibility, it may be that just flexing the ankle gets teh foot out of the way, reducing drag significantly. if ankles aren't flexible, it is like two hand paddles you have to drag behind the body. kicking uses a greater amount of oxygen per meter than using arms to stroke, and really shouldn't be used as much, in my opinion.

bill

Isn't that why you do a two-beat for distance, open water? A two-beat is the best of both worlds in that you still have the platform but not the oxygen debt. Until I got that down, it was either go anaerobic or drag the back half.

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Mr. Uncaptured External Costs

Fossil carbon is planetary poison.

I've been trying to improve my stroke by visualizing what 'good form' should look like, especially pulling with the arms.

There's info like this on the web, is this proper technique or is technique customized to each swimmer?

http://swimming.about.com/...models%2Fmodels.html

If anyone knows availability of better photos/diagrams I'd be glad to hear it.

tc, that site looks really confusing to me. i have a hard time following those photos, but didn't spend a lot of time looking. does anyone know if there are available video threads? that would be much more helpful. swimming isn't a static sport, so shots are really not all that helpful i don't think.

One of my fastest swimmers ever was only 5'8". All things being equal, a tall swimmer will swim faster than a shorter one because of the enhanced flow line. The fellow who went 21.64 was only 5"10".

Most Slow Twitchers think that a six beat kick has to be done hard and exhausts you. It is more for rhythm in distance.

Ankle flexibility allows you to point your toes and allows water to flow past without any disturbance. Try kicking with your toes pointed the other way. Notice how much drag you produce. A narrow fast kick is the way to go. It sets up your stroke and takes some of the stress off your shoulders.

DougStern

These photos look like pictures of sprinters. Notice the large amplitude of the kick. The recovery arm is arcing in a very wide circle it is a very ballistic (throwing ) movement. Distance swimmers recover with their arms much closer to their bodies to avoid compensating reactions.

DougStern

Do you have great ankle and toe flexibility, hyperextended knees, long torso compared to your legs, relatively long arms for you height, really good shoulder flexibility? These are some of the attributes of very fast swimmers.

I am sure you have many of them.

DougStern

No, no, no, no, and no. Oh, dear. What are some of the attributes of merely fast swimmers? Nearly fast swimmers? Throw me a bone, here.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Where does shoulder flexibility come in?

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Ken - I'm the opposite of you, and I swim like a rock. I'm a yes and yes, I don't know, yes, and yes.

What the hell is hyperextended knees? And how can that possibly be a good thing?

I guess I've got all the tools, and no toolbox ;-)

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float , hammer , and jog

An overriding desire to improve and learn your craft.

Only one person can take first place, everyone can be an improving athlete.

My older brother had all the physical attributes. He did not loose a swimming race in five years. At 13 he was six feet tall. At 17 when he lost an event he quit.

I never won and often took last when I was growing up. Now at 62, others have stopped. I keep going and by attrition I seem pretty fast.

DougStern

Shoulder flexibility affects how you recover your arms. The higher you can get your elbows while keeping your fingers close to the water the straighter you will swim. A swinging arm recovery causes your hands to enter the water across your face thereby causing you hips to go lateral.

DougStern

[reply]

What the hell is hyperextended knees? And how can that possibly be a good thing?

[/reply]

hyperextended knees means that you can bend your knees a bit the wrong way. For instance, if I sit on the floor with my legs straight out in front of me, I can pick my left heel up around 3" off the floor, with my thigh & the back of my knee still flat. Right foot used to go even further.

If this has an advantage for swimming, that's news to me (but I take DS' word on it). I can assure you that it's _not_ an advantage overall. I used to be able to bend my right leg back even further. In august it went too far, now I've got a whole mess of rehab to get through.

That said, I do plan on taking advantage of the downtime to work on my ankle flexibility.

Breast stroke kick.

Shoulder flexibility also helps you get better extension out front before you start the catch. In butterfly, even more so because you don't have that sort of torso rotation.

cry...

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"The aspect of sport that you learn is that you have your good times and your bad times, but you share it with great people." - George Gregan