Fixed it for you.

I am going to address this comment. If these swimmers are fast on a kickboard, then their form is going to be good. It's how the chest drops and the mid-lower-section of the body tucks back toward the surface. You can't be fast on a kickboard without doing this "upward dog" in the water. At the very top end, eg final 8 in a 100-200 national swim meet, you'll generally find taller and more slender.

---

Training Tweets: https://twitter.com/Jagersport_com
FM Sports: http://fluidmotionsports.com

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.

My goal at this point is to try to get as close as possible to my all-time PBs. Maybe someday i'll actually get a Top 10 Masters AG time and get one of those nifty patches for my sweatshirt. :)

---

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

If you just outlast your competition and slow down less, maybe you can hit one of those top 10 times. Patience, persistence and attention to health will allow you to get into that top 10....and maybe even improve!

If this is the case, then I definitely won three times! I do have one DNF, and at least one other under review.

Honest question, Dev. I seem to recall you said you used to swim IM race swims in low60 or even just sub60 in your younger years.

If you are a better swimmer now with all your swim focus and more training hours, do you think you could beat your younger self? Or do you think there are reasons such as age and your injury that prevent this from happening?

Dev - Your response should be quoted at the beginning of each year's "guppy" program for the inspiration of triathlon swimmers. It is so great that you have become a real swimmer; anyone who swims the 200 fly, 200 IM, and 400 IM in a Masters meet is a real swimmer in my eyes. :)

---

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

yes I had several IM's in the 60-62 range in my 40's and and one at sub 59, and many half IM's in the 29.xx to 31.xx range depending on course and where they put the timing mats. I THINK I would be a fair amount faster in wetsuit swims right now as the wetsuit would take away the disc related mini spasm that I experience with no wetsuit. I THINK I should be able to consistently beat those swim times now with all the swimming I have done. But unless I go swim openwater in a race, we don't know. I may swim the 3.8K swim at IM Tremblant on a relay team so we can find out. if I recall correctly my best time there was 30.xx in the half IM and 65 in the full IM. I never had a decent swim there in the full IM. I don't think that my relay swim time would be more than minute faster if I had to do the full race so once we see my relay time, add 1 minute to that, and we can compare against former race times.

But seriously, if I was doing triathlon I would have not done all this swimming. I'd have just done a ton of biking. If I get back to doing triathlon, my program in terms of hours would be 40-50% swim, 35-45% bike, 15% run, but if I do increase the run, it will come at expense of bike time, not swim time. Now that I know how to swim and get crazy hard workouts with my legs, I would lose zero leg conditioning with tons of swimming. Most triathletes would lose leg conditioning with too much swimming because they don't use their legs like swimmers do. I'd be slower on the run, but if I get back to full running, I'd be best to just stay on low mileage and just run slower in racing and suffer on 5 days per year vs weekly higher run volume.

Hey I was just thinking about your posting about bein a life long swimmer and to some degree athletes in other sports and people in high school giving swimmers no respect. Right now, my skier friends, biking friends, running friends, they really have no clue how hard some of these swim workouts are. The only ones who really "get it" are other swimmers. The other day I did this workout that opened with an 800IM, then 2x400IM, 2x200IM and ended with 1x200 fly (trying to do that 1x per week just because), other than a few swimmers who think its also a bit crazy and likely not the best way to prepare for the IM and fly events, my non swimmer friends just see a main set of 2000m long.

There is glory in being a fast runner in high school no matter how skinny you are, especially if you are on the sprinter 4x100 squad.

The only way non swimmers are getting remotely impressed by any swim workout is if you did something like 5000m or 10000m in a session, then they go, "I barely bike that far or cover that distance in my golf cart and you swam it?"

Sooooo, I think swimmers are stuck getting no respect because not many people do the sport and they cannot relate to how hard it is. Their experience is YMCA safety swimming which would be like comparing learn to walk for babies with competitive running.

My 2 cents.

I believe that there's a considerable handicap when you compare "Child Onset Swimmers" and "Adult Onset Swimmers", and that's because of technique, not any "engine" we might speak of. Although there's a genetic potential to "engine" development, there's no way in hell someone who stopped swimming and never came back to the pool will truly be capable of holding their paces against someone who trained extensively and well as an AOS. They might hold the pace for a few laps because of their great technique, but they eventually lag back since they'll be missing their "engines", and there's science to back me up on that. On the other hand, their early experiences will help them build their engines up again fairly quickly, and they know that as long as you swim, you'll have to do drills to keep the technique in check. That gives them a very good edge.

Also, I think that these things would be clear if we compared child onset swimmers to "child" onset runners, instead of child onset cyclists.
If you think that running is like walking, but faster, you're in for a big surprise and a lot of injuries. And it doesn't matter if you frolicked around a lot as a child, you were not drilling a good running technique, you were just playing.
I see quite a reaction from triathletes when a former child swimmer joins the crowd. It's funny that it doesn't happen to runners. When a former "child" runner joins the field, he levels it mostly because of how clean his technique is. It might seem to the external observer that the guy "has a big engine", but in most cases he/she is relying on his/her running efficiency and proprioception (yes, running drills also train it). I think it's harder to see "child onset runners" the same way as COS because, with the latter, you might see a 120 kg bull jump in the pool and kick everyone else's asses for a few hundred metres/yards, while the weight-bearing aspect of running makes this kind of thing highly unlikely.

Just to be clear, I'm a "child onset runner" and didn't realise the advantage it gave me until I started training for tris again after 12 years away from the sport. I can't bike or swim for sh*t, but I'm amazed at how fast I'm getting back to the fitness I had when I was a young runner. Only through the power of the internets I came to understand that many people struggle to run faster than 5 min/km (8:03 min/mi), while I was running at this pace fairly comfortably after 2 months of training. But since it's really hard to run faster than 4:00 min/km pace without having good technique, I assume that the gains I have from running as a "child" will be watered down as I get closer to FOP times. I don't think I have any special powers or am a genetic wonder, I chalk it up to having drilled proper technique when I was a teenager.

So yes, I think there is an advantage in starting early in your life at a sport, but you certainly can catch up as an adult. Hence, no "adult onset" anything. Let the diseases have this expression.

Excellent post. I'm in the same boat coming from a swim background (I was at the meet in your signature line, and we raced several times), including hitting a wall in college -- as well as being told I wouldn't be on any championship teams which was a huge de-motivator. I still love swimming, but at times I have to make myself forget how fast I was, and accept that I will never be able to hold fast paces like I used to, mostly because I only swim up to 2 hrs a week compared to 25 hrs in college (maybe in the next couple of years I'll try to see what I'm capable of at ~6hrs per week of swimming). I don't really see a performance bump if I go from 2 to 3 swim sessions per week. But like Tri-Banter said, almost nobody in age-group triathlon ever puts in that amount of effort (25hrs+ /week) like a college swimmer.

Running, on the other hand, while I am still not anywhere close to what I could run when I was 18, I can see improvements when I put in consistent work, and putting in that work is much easier to do. Most of running is at an easy pace; most of swim training is at a hard pace. Running is also easier to start (usually a treadmill or trail nearby, not always a pool) and presents more variation in scenery.

For the second part of your post, yes, technique follows from talent but also coaching. My 'natural' stroke as a 10-year old was galloping and hitch-y, even if I was still a decent swimmer. I only really started winning regional events when a coach forced me to feel like I was swimming windmill-style all the time, which evened out my stroke and allowed me to get faster. Good coaches will also have kids doing fun stuff that still improves feel for the water (like sculling races, water polo instead of swim practice, etc).

Also related: being able to take advantage of talent and coaching also usually requires a lot of time and money. Swimming isn't full of rags to riches stories, it's more common to find success in the Katie Ledeckys (whose family is filthy rich) and the Michael Andrews (if you've seen some of his training vids they have a pool on their home/compound grounds which is also on a lake) who can seek out and pay the best coaches and/or travel to meets every month.

---

-----

OTOH, Phelps's Dad is a state trooper and his Mom is a school teacher, so not a whole lot of money there; understand there are a lot of very well-off swimmers but there are some swimmers who come from modest backgrounds. A minority to be sure but maybe 20% or so, depending on how we define "modest".

---

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

Depending upon where they live that could be 175k a year between the two

To me that leaves a lot of money for coaching.