JasoninHalifax wrote:
lightheir wrote:
I applaud your strong swim efforts Dev, and you deserve every second of gain you get. You're a great example of how hard work and dedication can lead to positive results over the long term.
But then you also have guys like klehner, who will beat you by a fair margin in short distance (and possibly long distance) swims despite having a year of swim training (albeit serious training) under his belt.
THAT is the difference between a dedicated but not-outlandish talent swimmer like yourself (and most of us on these forums), and the truly talented. Hard work counts, but can only get you so far compared to the gifted ones, like it or not.
If Dev were 25 years younger and didn't have a pretty significant injury to his nervous system, I bet he would have improved much more than he has. Ken was in his 20's when he was an AOS. That's substantially different than trying to pick it up in your 50's.
A lot of my limitations in swimming is that my left leg does weird stuff that I can't totally control on every stroke, almost like getting an uncontrollable calf cramp that actually ends up having a resultant moment of drag from the leg, messing with my core position and affecting my left arm pull, so this subtle cramp like involutary action works all the way up my body and has an impact on the entire "fuselage" and catch. If you take that out, I believe my improvements in freestyle and back stroke (both strokes involve torsion of the spine that sets off the mess) would be a lot more. In butterfly, there is a moment of drag that my left leg creates on the downstroke/finish, where my foot ends up pointing down (like an anchor) vs tot he back of the pool (it does a bit of the same in freestyle) and the timing on the upstroke is affected.
In any case, this "minor impairment" has all kinds of upstream affects forget about the fact that the left leg just does not apply as much force as the right leg....but all of that is just excuses, and if I use those, I'll actually never get past them so I try to incrementally take control back and it is getting better.
IF I had done the same 3000 km of swimming over 2.5 years even at age 25 vs now, I believe that Jason is correct and I would be right at the front pack of triathlon swimmers and not far behind slow pros. To put it in perspective, it I swam like a maniac when I was running sub 34 minute 10K's all that engine would be applied to swimming and that's a decent engine with which to acquire swim capability. But I was running and riding, so the swim just took back seat. Seriously speaking if I could wind back the clock, in my 20's if I could go back and replace 50% of my biking hours with swimming hours I would. We're talking a weekly routine of 5-6 hours of running, 10 hours on the bike and 2 hours of swimming. I should have been on 6 hours of swimming, 6 hours of biking and 6 hours of running
My swim routine during my triathlon years were like most of you....3x per week for 8 months per year, 20-40 min per session just to get wet and remember how to swim and then use the engine and wetsuit to stay in striking distance in my age group before the bike and run....the investment in swimming never seemed to have enough triathlon time payback.
I think if I did this swim program at 17 vs 25 vs 52, at 17, that would have been perfect. Instead, at 17 I really fell in love with biking and biked all over the world. I won't take that back, but from a skill perspective I learned nothing. But by 22 years old, I had already bike toured through 15 countries around the world with just my bike, tent and sleeping bag vs watching the black line at the bottom of the pool. In terms of life experience, I got a lot of upside, but meanwhile while I was riding up the likes of Galibier and all over the French riviera, riding and chasing women, the swimmer crew were watching the black line at the bottom of the pool.....so when they totally kick my ass at swimming, well, those guys really put in the work, while I chose more "rewarding" options. Now that I am swimmer, I respect their time and effort investment a lot more than when I did triathlon.
Some of the swimmers on this thread mentioned in high school never getting any credit for their sport prowess because high school kids don't understand what swim team kids do...we just viewed them as these crazy people getting up at 5 am to train for 2 hours and doing it again after school and falling asleep in class constantly. The rest of us played cooler school sports and with it came the social acceptance in the school world
My excuse for not being fast at swimming is not putting in the work at a young age be it at 17 or 25. In any case, whatever front of pack swim status ex swimmers have in triathlon, those guys and girls earned every second they come out of the water ahead of us on! I think if I did the work I would be one of "them" instead of one of "the rest of us".
Right now, I am pretty well neither ....in the swim world I am a multisport guy trying to do their events, in triathlon, I can't do two of three events. The only time I "pass" for a swimmer is at the local pool during public swim. Every so often, I do get swim team university people asking my what "team" I swim for mainly because they see me doing these crazy serious long and hard sets, so they think I must be one of those untalented guys who is just working extra like a dog outside practice to stay on the squad!
But really, I THINK most people give themselves the excuse that they can't swim like a swimmer. I was one until the only thing I could do was swim and I discovered quite clearly what the swimmers tell all of us...there is no magic....just swim. But the "just swim" statement is not 3x per week. It's more like 8-14x per week that they really are referring to. It's the same deal with the 100/100 in running. When non runners want to get faster of 3x runs per week and they show up heavy with the wrong body composition, I tell them to come back after they worked up to 10 runs per week and lost 30 lbs and those that do that and come back generally thank me that all it took was perseverence and repition. For runners, I tell them they have to train like a runner and develop the body composition of a runner to run like a runner....likewise for swimming we need to train like swimmers and let our bodies morph into bodies that can sustain the motions for swimming. You can't go to yoga class and make your body do yoga moves, but 2 years later after daily yoga, you can. We all can get reasonably far.
For most of us our potential is under optimized. I believe my swimming potential is still very much under optimized. I think by the time I turn 55 (2 more years from now), I can make quite decent improvements in all strokes and body composition required to swim like a swimmer.
If I think of the process I went through from age 30-40 to become a competitive masters level XC ski racer, in that skill sport it took me 10 years at which point "real skiers" would care that I was in the field and we'd mark each other in races and try to exploit the other guys' weakness and attack when the other was suffering.
My view is that all these skill sports that are mechanical just require a ton of repetition and you can get good. Other skill sports that require creativity like soccer, tennis, hockey, being a football QB or wide receiver or downhill ski races....those sports you cannot simply become good with repetition. There is some talent in terms of neural processing and artistry, that not everyone is wired to acquire.
In any case a very long respose to say Jason is right. To some degree I wish he was wrong and that my suckiness in swimming is some talent mythical level that I just don't have. But sadly he is right and I just need more work now....if I did it when younger, I'd need way less now. But it's never too late.
