mercuryvapor wrote:
I'm sure everyone can go back and forth on how much strength is involved in swimming. I'm curious to know how much power one of these young kids that swims 1:15/100yds. I have a hard time believing that some 10-11 year old kid can out pull me on a VASA. I also may be totally wrong. I'm only pulling 30-50W now on a set of 500m.
If the kid is truly swimming 1:15/100yds, it's going to be a lot of watts, like 90+, I'll bet.
While I haven't gotten a kid onto a Vasa, as posted before, I've seen girl 12yr old swimmers in a competitive local club do pull sets with paddles much larger than their hands at sub 1:20 pace, while banded and using a pull buoy. Their turnover is very impressive - it's very clear from seeing that, that these fast swimmers have a lot of power. (I cannot pull that fast with the exact same paddles, even all out!)
A big male slow swimmer might be able to outmuscle them on a Vasa for 10 strokes, but for the 50-100 strokes of a typical short set, forget about it. It's power, not strength.
Some swimmers though def get a lot of propulsion from their kick, and will need less arm power - I swam next to a girl competitive swimmer today at the Y who had a stroke rate nearly half of mine, but kept equal pace with me. Then I saw how fast she was with kick sets - yowzas! Her breaststroke with a board, head out of water, was like 1:40 pace! (Those little girls I saw were banded + buoy, so no kick contribution.)