Are you swimming with a team now? If not, what teams are in your area, and can you make it to their practices? You could see if you can hook up with a kids' age group team if there's a good one. Yeah, it may involve checking the ego at the door and ending up in a lane with the 11 year olds, but in the long run, you learn how to push yourself, and how to hold your stroke together in high intensity/ high stress situations.

I agree. Find a team or a masters program and don't worry about the distance right now. Sounds like your are doing a ton of yardage and (I'd reckon) not enough stroke and speedwork.

My guess is that if you up the intensity and spend time doing pulling and stroke drill sets with a good coach, you could probably get away with about 10k/week of training and get faster.

One more thing, are you breaking your workout up into smaller sets, like 10 x 200 meters with 15 seconds rest? Or are you just logging the kms?

---

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~





No sidewindin bushwackin, hornswaglin, cracker croaker is gonna rouin me bishen cutter!

How much do the Pros Train Hmmm:

Cameron Brown on a training camp in Australia (yes he is a New Zealander but its to wintry here to train) had the following totals for his last week of training:

Swam 21km, Rode 880km, ran 100km. That's 13ml, 550ml, and 63ml for those metrically challenged.

I would say that short dist pro, out of race season woud be doing 30km (minimum) in the pool, 3-500km on the bike and 100+km running. (yes weekly totals)

To Improve your swimming I'd suggest joining a swim squad (not a tri or masters but a swim squad with the 11 yr olds or younger, swimming 5 times a week, and watching your times drop. FYI The local kids that I swim with (age 10 -11) are knocking out 4-7km sessions 5+ times a week.

I'd also suggest buying a good shampoo for your hair, because with all that chlorine your gonna need it :)

Steve Nicholls

You need to do speed work. As the others have suggested, join up with a swim team and explain to the coach what you're looking for.

To hit 5:00 for 400, you need to be very comfortable doing 35s for 50m, repeatedly. If you could manage 10 * 50m on 45s, holding an average pace of 35s, you'll have no problem doing it.

1. You have until May next year, so there's no rush. Start out doing one speed session a week, then after 6 weeks or so, step up to two per week. The other 2 sessions should be long (4k ish).

2. Do not sacrifice technique for speed. There's no need to be totally anal about technique, in that when you're sprinting your technique will naturally be worse than when you're cruising, but you DO want to minimise the difference. So, concentrate on feeling the pressure on your palm as you pull through the water, and accelerate the hand past your hips. You will notice that as your arms tire, your stroke naturally shortens. You have to fight this, and actively concentrate on maintaining stroke length.

3. Count the number of strokes (one arm pull) you take on each and every length you swim. Try to keep it as constant as possible. When swimming easy, try to minimise the number of strokes you take. On faster sets, try to finish the set swimming the same number of strokes per length as when you started the set.

4. Start playing swimming golf. Swim 50m counting your strokes, and note your time. Add the number of strokes to the time to give your score. Now try to minimise this number either by a) taking fewer strokes, or b) swimming faster for the same number of strokes.

Swim On,

Thanks for the replies.

My problem was that I was on a very good triathlon squad, and our coach had us swimming 3 times a week, anywhere from 2k up to 8k. When we were building endurance we were swimming 21+k. The problem was I didn't feel I was improving at all during this time. During that year I went from 6:30 for a 400, to 6:10 at best. Not a very big improvement for a whole year :\

Then my parents moved, and I had to find a new team. The way I train now they put a lot more emphasis on running and biking, but a lot less on swimming (which is why my run and bike times improved, but my swimming is stuck). They only swim twice a week, around 3-4k per practice. It's also why I have to swim alone two more times, which is extremely boring.

I did improve a little since I moved, so maybe extreme high yardage in the pool isn't for me (which is weird, because I need a lot mileage to improve my run).

So do you think joining a swim team and swimming 6k per practice 4 times a week really gonna improve me?

sorry for the long post

1) No idea

2) I think 4-4.5 K's is plenty long for a swim work-out. I think frequency is more important - I'd definitely go with 4x over 2x.

3) Frequency.

4) Whats the question?

I think you're focusing too much on the wrong question. Your answer most likely lies in what type of work-out you are doing instead of a yardage question. I'll echo the other posters: Join a fast swim team - swim faster - work on your stroke - work on your stroke - work on your stroke - if you want a faster 400 time I think fast intervals become a lot more important than say if you're training for a mile+ swim for a triathlon....

If you are stuck in a plateau - change things around - try to do things differently and maybe you'll break out....if you are doing LSD long yardage stuff - change to LT based work-outs - or add a ton of stroke work - mix it up.

My 2 cents......

The swim-only swim team is going to help. Most triathletes are terrible swimmers. They are training in the pool to survive the swim with a low heart rate, not to attack the swim. Sorry, but it's the truth. (digs up the US Swimming motivational charts)

http://www.usa-swimming.org/Top_16/quad2004.pdf

http://www.usa-swimming.org/Top_16/top16bas.pdf

For 15-16, boys, the A time standard for long course 400M is 4:53. For 17-18 boys, it's 4:48. A times, you're considered to be a competent swimmer, but nothing exceptional by fish standards. If you want to get to your respective state meet, you generally need to get or beat AA times. For 15-16 400M LC, that's 4:41. For 17-18, that's 4:36.

These guys are the people you need to be training with.

If you want to go under 5:00, train with the people who are specifically training to go under 5:00. Which in most cases unless you've got one of those scarily fast ex-D1 masters groups in town is going to be with the fishes under a coach operating under the "that which does not drown you will make you faster" axioms. A good coach can back a lot of the good kind of pain into a 3-4K workout if they know what they're doing.

I was going to post and add my 2 cents to this thread until I looked at those charts that Jill put up. 85% of 12 year old boys are doing 1500 meters in 19:04? God, that's depressing. I just turned in a 25:22 and wasn't kicking myself too hard about it. Until now. Thanks Jill. ;-)

So anyway, now that I've proven that I have no credibility to add anything, I'll add two things:

1)Weights might help you improve where sheer volume has not. Standing lat pulls, military presses, bicep curls, tricep extentions, bench presses, and sit-ups with a twist will help build the raw muscle you need to go faster. Lighter weights, lots of reps. Or you could try stretch cords.

2)Don't know how good your technique is, but often when you're stuck you can get to a breakthrough by focusing on technique instead of volume for a little while. You need a coach who is paying attention to you individually for this, so it can get expensive if you need a lot of help. But in one or two sessions you'll get some VERY good feedback that may help you get past your plateau.

Good luck!
Lee

Opposite read- 15% of 12 year old boys are faster than 19:04. And there's a lot of selection bias that goes on in the percentile rankings, which are based on all times reported for a given stroke/distance over a given time period at all meets. Everyone swims things like the 100M free, 50M free and 100M back. Only the fast/tough kids swim the 800M/1500m free or the 200M fly. So for a good generalist, it's way easier to end up with a top 50% ranking in the 100 than it is in the 1500.

Jill

Really interesting figures and useful for comparison purposes/tracking improvements.

Are there similiar figures for running/cycling anywhere?

Thanks

Freestyle, I find I swim my best when training 4 or 5 times a week of 2 to 3km (all time permits me) rather than 2 monster sessions. I've yet to see any coach/book etc say that high frequency is not the way forward due to feel of the water etc and you can fit better quality into each session.

Paul