Actually, Dev has gone 1:20/100 yd for an IM swim. He was going 56-ish for IM swims back in his 30s and 56:20 is a 1:20/100 yd avg. I think he could prob still do this today at age 55-ish, mostly b/c he swims a lot more now than he did 20 yrs ago. He has become a "real swimmer" who swims all 4 strokes and even swims the 400 m IM in Masters meets. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Uncle Tim speaks the truth here. If it were otherwise, top swimmers would not train 25-30 hrs/wk but rather they'd just do a few easy swims to work on their "technique".

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Although I also do not have time to go swimming 5 times a week, I'm afraid I must agree with those who say you should. I always thought you have to work on your technique and that's it. But I do not think it works that way. If you swim more, you become fitter and than you can pay more attention to your technique. Without fitness, you will plateau. At least that's my experience as a very bad AOS Swimmer. Sessions like 40*50 or 60*50 which I do lately bring be further, at least that's my feeling.
All of those things I used to do (one arm swimming, only legs, 200m intervals) did not bring me any further. To be able to grab the water, push until your arm is stretched and try to keep your but up is not possible just like that, but only with a lot of swim fitness.

To be short:
AOS: no fitness ? => bad technique.

Edit: I read mostly in the 15 years I swim that you should first have a good technique, and then, afterwards, not before, bring in more miles, because it is hard to change a bad technique once acquired. I think that philosophy brought a lot of AOS Swimmers (including me) in a dead end.

I think consideration ought be made about doing some thing akin to 100/100, but for swimming. Maybe something shorter like 60/60? A 2 month swim focus block. Go by time-30 minute minimum.

The idea being if you get in the water every day for a minimum of 30 minutes, even slower swimmers like me at 2:00 per 100 yards would still be able to get approximately 10k yards of volume.

Intensity is not the goal. Volume is. Stroke mechanics, perhaps, should be an additional focus and maybe the swim mavens would weigh in on certain drills that could be focused on each week.

I wonder if there would be interest…

let's talk about two things. kicking first. i don't kick a lot. kick sets, i mean. monty kicks a lot. still. he's back at masters nationals, with so far a pair of 4th places, a 3rd and a pair of 2nd place finishes. so, kicking is done by very good swimmers, and for a reason. kicking is probably most important in fly and breast, then back, and least of all freestyle. while kicking gives you less propulsion in freestyle than in the other strokes, kicking helps keeps your feet on the surface. you don't need to kick a lot for that to happen. i've seen swimmers kick once, with 1 leg, during a stroke cycle, and that's enough.

this is because it's not the kick alone, or even the kick primarily, that keeps your feet on the surface. it's body position in general. a big reason your feet sink is that your head is too high. head high, feet low. head low, feet high. a lot of swimmers associate the inability to keep legs on the surface with morphology when it's really position, and it's the position of your body from the waist up that dooms your legs to their spot a foot below the surface.

here's a video where coach mandy recommends swimming downhill. here's a video where effortless swimming recommends NOT swimming downhill.

i don't actually think either contradicts the other. while i'm not sure i stipulate to mandy's premise here, that arm position during the extend phase determines the height of your legs in the water, this video does demonstrate that what you do from the chest up has a profound affect on whether your legs sink, or whether you can feel them breaking the surface of the water when you kick. and, to that point, if you've got sinking legs i would say you should strive to feel your legs breaking the surface while executing your normal kick.

as to the effortless swimming thesis, i agree, but i guess i would add this: i think adult onset swimmers have a particular problem, and it's a fear of not getting enough air, and it's not a cognitive fear, it's a brain stem fear, that's caused them to commit sins during the action of taking a breath, and those sins, those behaviors, those habits, are very, very, very hard to break. i suspect the subject in the effortless swimming video has had ingrained in him the need to keep his head low, and is overdoing it, because he can't quit himself from raising his head too high during the breath he takes.

the sinking legs caused by a head too high during breathing; the arm crossover during the catch; the splaying legs; all of this is caused by one single problem: a bad execution of the act of taking a breath. to this day, i breathe "better" on my unnatural side, because i don't have the vestige of bad habits that remain from learning to swim badly or incompletely.

sorry for the too-long post, but the point of this post is: my view is that your legs sink mostly because of your technique, not your morphology, and you fix this by: 1) kick sets; 2) fixing body position problems that occur from the waist up, namely keeping your head appropriately low in the water; 3) the act of breathing is where a lot of people raise their heads, and that sinks their legs, so, specifically when you breath, try to consciously keep your forehead down and into the water.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Great, helpful post. Thanks Dan!

I'm not a fan of the phrase "downhill swimming" as I find its often not explained very well, however this video was excellent especially as he demonstrates the differences in arm position.

TLDR: A bulk buy/discount on the Vasa Erg would be the biggest game changer I can think of.


While I am in the process of swim improvement, I am an AOS and had another thread about my experiences awhile ago when my progress had stalled. COVID gave us a unique set of circumstances and took me out of the water for a year that I otherwise wouldn't have had. Some observations:

1. Vasa is a great tool for the novice swimmer. Because you are in a terrestrial environment, you can work much, much harder than you can in the water without fear of drowning. It helps with consistency, conditioning and swim specific strength. Is it as good as swimming? It is different. I say that because getting back in the pool after a year, I am much, much stronger than I was. I rarely tire, though I do most of my swimming monitoring my stroke count on shorter reps at this time. I can work much harder now than I could a year ago and I attribute that to the Vasa. There was no way I could have busted out 65 minute ironman length swims in the water, but I could do it on a Vasa. I still hit my Vasa 1x/week now that I'm back in the pool. The feel is to me very similar to a pull set(I do them without a buoy but try not to rotate and just pull as hard as I can to maintain spl). Real swimmers can work hard like this in the water, I never could before. This ability to increase my workload is the biggest difference for me post COVID by far. If we are pieces of marble to be sculpted into swimmers, I am now a much higher quality piece of marble if that makes any sense.

2. It is hard for many folks to know what to work on. I am grateful for all of the smart people that have helped me and feel lucky that I've been able to isolate some metrics to watch. So far in the last two months I have continued to improve by focusing on those. But so many people are caught up in things that I don't think will have a huge impact on their times. Too many factors creates confusion and subsequently paralysis by analysis. As ericmulk told me some time ago and I'm paraphrasing: "Just watch the pace clock". If you do not have clear and concise objectives for your workouts and benchmarks you are working towards, you are making this harder unnecessarily. Set a goal, reach it. Set another and on and on. If you stop progressing, you have to seek more information and alter your course accordingly.

3. There is no substitute for consistency. I don't know if you need 5x/week. I haven't had that in the water, but 1x/week on the Vasa and 3x in the water seems to be working for me.

4. Hit the weights. No substitute for pullups, rows, bench, planks, deads and squats. I feel like improving the strength in my lats and core are the biggest factor, but by targeting heavy lower body lifts, you really have to engage your core. A nice byproduct is stronger and more durable legs for bike and run.

JOOC, how many yd/m are you swimming in your typical workout??? Are you kicking au naturel, kicking w/fins, pulling, pulling w/ paddles, etc??? Are you swimming strokes other than freestyle??? In any case, I feel honored to be mentioned in your post on improving. Cheers, Eric.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I got a Zone3 float that is also a dry bag. Can put keys, phone, shoes, bottle etc in it and drag it behind you. The float also means you are easily spotted in the water. Probably slows you down a bit but I figure that’s extra training:)

Hi Eric. I only swim freestyle. My standard workout usually is around 2000y:

40 x 25y

15 minutes continuous kick with snorkel, fins and dragsox on(I should add that I have not missed daily ankle stretching in more than a month)

20 x 25y trying to hold the same numbers I did on the 40 x25y set. This is also where I do my version of pull sets sometimes. No paddles, no buoy, just focusing on trying to hit my spl numbers with a pure focus on body position and improving my catch. I try not to rotate but to stay flat in the water.

On these 25s, I count 20 beeps on my TT. First pull out of my breakout(no dolphin kicking) is with my left arm at beep 3 and my objective is to make it in 18 spl. I started at 1.8s/stroke to make it in 18 strokes. In the last month, I've gotten it down to 1.14 and I'm continuing to improve. I drop the rest intervals progressively from :20 and once I am coming in at 17spl on :10 rest, I drop the stroke interval a couple of hundredths. I lowered it to .85 last week and I could still make it in 18 strokes. Unfortunately, no stamina to hold that for a full set at this time. So I am just going to continue plodding along with my 2bk until I stop progressing. Could be awhile, but I've got time(next Olympics aren't for three more years)

Interestingly, I have been working hard on improving my body position. I put on some buoyancy shorts the other day to see what it would do to my swim. Took me a minute as I actually had to reorient my balance as my head was too far underwater. That was funny, guess my hips aren't sinking anymore.

Thanks again to you and everyone else who has offered help to me. I appreciate it.

there is a TERRIFIC feature on katie ledecky's swim stroke in, of all places, WaPo. when i decided, back in 1989, that i'd had enough of my current swim speed, and that i needed to take it to a new level, beyond the increase in yards and so on i spent a lot of time watching really good swimmers, and trying to emulate them. this article is a really good analysis of her stroke. that initial video clip, the first one, is a good example of a 4-beat kick.

this is why i say that i'm not 100 percent down with mandy's reasoning behind hand position in her video, that i linked to in my loooong post above. if you look at katie's hand position, it's close to the surface of the water. but her head is down and, critically, her head stays down when she takes a breath. your hands can be high during the extend phase after the catch, but your head has to stay down. if the head comes up, the legs sink.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

(0.85 sec/stroke)*(18 strokes) = 15.3 sec which is quite good really, espec for a "developing swimmer" like yourself. Gradually, as your swim specific strength increases, you'll prob decrease your spl just naturally over time.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

The whole article is a Russel Marks presentation. He’s put out some great stuff with USA Swimming over the years.

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http://www.magnoliamasters.com
http://www.snappingtortuga.com
http://www.swimeasyspeed.com

I wish. 20 beeps x .85 = 17 seconds.

I hit 17 seconds a few times before Covid. The difference is that this most recent time was a controlled stroke rate, rotation and kick cadence so it should be repeatable. Before it was just chaos of kicking, pulling, skipping breaths and it was in no way sustainable for more than a length.

I have lots of work ahead of me if I want to be a strong swimmer. I'm guessing years, but it will take as long as it takes. I've got nothing but time.

Oh my goodness I think I've been swimming with my head too high my entire AOS life...

I'm not "slow" but I'm certainly not fast. Very MOP. Holding 1:30 in a pool all day isn't a big ask. I only max out around 1:14 if I'm killing myself in SCY (also embarrassingly don't flip turn). 1:02 to 1:05-ish wetsuit IM isn't tanking me. But it's so far behind my bike/run that it keeps me from winning a lot more races. Always always always playing catch-up... and I think the "low head, high feet" line just clicked something.

Then again, I have no idea because I have zero body awareness in the water, especially open water where pool gains never seem to translate. I really need to take advantage of the "post your swim" thread soon, as much as I don't wanna see myself splashing around.

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Too old to go pro but doing it anyway
http://instagram.com/tgarvey4

Slowman, thank you very much for that response, I think it somehow resonates with me as I ponder your points. Pool access up here in the great white North has been sparse at best, opening up again so that will beneficial come September when the kids are back in school.
Being at a cottage this week I have made a point of doing some OWS, so not the best environment to practice technique but it is what it is. I had planned all week on doing a ‘longer’ swim today, so I did basically a 1km out and 1km back with a short break. The one thing I was really aware of was the feet sinking when sighting. Now I have to admit I have noticed that before, but never really aware of it until I read your post, so thank you for that. I think that kind of wraps my head around head position a little better in looking at keeping the forehead down when swimming. I also noticed that there were times today when I was trying to swim down hill and I could feel my feet breaking the surface, now after losing concentration I would realize I had reverted back, but I had recognized that in the moment. So thank you for the couple points I was able to recognize today!
I have some serious work to do in the fall, but I think this thread will assist in keeping those feet up.

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Ask me how much I love my Kiwami LD Aero Trisuit