michael Hatch wrote:
Reading through your note, I have to disagree, with some of it.
There's no doubt that some 10 year olds are not joe average, but I'm not talking about the 10 year old 1:10 swimmers. Because they would give a pro trouble, let alone an AG competitor. Reality again is that a 1:40 swimmer is way above average in Triathlon. Go ahead and pick any result on the IM pages and see where a 1:40 swimmer ends up. That's a 25 minute 1500m swimmer, 32 min half and 1:04 whole. There are finishers in the Pro ranks that don't beat that. A 2:00 min 100m swimmer would go 38 minutes in a HIM, 1:16 in a full IM, againwell above the average. So when someone tells me they can't swim 2:00 minutes per 100 and they are spending hours in the pool, my response is they are either wasting their time or they are including the time they spend in the shower and changing room, talking about their technique.
I have watched enough swim practices to know that the people who don't improve never change their stroke, never improve their technique, day in, day out, week in, week out, and so on. They do the same thing, the same way, forever. It's comfortable. And we know what that is the definition of. I have watched Triathlon swim coaches, all ex-competitive swimmers, often Olympic calibre, just not bother, with the slower lanes, because the swimmers won't change, refuse to change. I have also seen adult learners go from 2:30+ minutes to under 1:30 in the space of a single winter swim program. Moving up lanes from slowest to fastest. Funny thing, they asked question of everyone, and not once do they say, I can't or I won't.
As far as I am concerned if you are below the 50% range in the finish times, saying you can't improve your technique to swim faster is just giving up. I have never seen anyone with good technique, in the slow lane, unless they are in the slow lane of a good Master Swim Club. As for it being debunked on ST......š¤£.
By the way, that's what I say about my running, when I really know it's because I don't train for that properly......but this year I will (sure!) š
the problem is a majority of people will need a good swim coach to instruct them on how EXACTLY to improve their technique otherwise they're left to youtube and ST with a bunch of random people with often opposing views on how to improve one's swim (hammer vs technique, work on your kick vs don't work on your kick, open water vs pool etc.) There is no where near this level of confusion for cycling and running. So it's completely understandable IMO for age groupers to get frustrated and just get in the pool and swim.