USA2018 wrote:
Thanks for all the help everyone. Flip turns are easy and I have been doing them on my fast sets but not on warm ups. Working on my breathing doing hypoxic sets to increase lung capacity. Every breath during a race or tt makes me lose time so if i can keep my head down I will be closer to sub 5. right? Also fishes, how important are the other strokes for distance swimmers. I assume doing some 200 and 400im sets could only help or am I better off sticking with free. ThanksIf your breathing slows you down which mine did for years maybe consider looking at your breath timing. Breathing mechanics can destroy any stroke there are so many intricate aspects to it. Over rotating, pressing down with the lead arm and holding....so much stuff can go wrong when rolling to breathe. The only time breathing slows me down is if I restrict myself to how many breaths I take, so breathing more allows me to do a LOT more work and consequently go faster. I'm not even sure I could do a 500 at a pace more than cool down effort if I restricted myself to something like a 1:3. For longer stuff when I'm going balls out I do 2:3 into every wall with 1:2 the rest of the time or else I feel like I'm breathing through a straw.
That said your times are astonishing to me. A 5:30 with open turns and a push has got to be in the top 1% of AG triathletes congrats on that!