The two critical questions:

1. What would his results be if he had no collegiate swimming background, but took up similar swimming as an AOS-swimmer doing 5-6hr/wk (his current regimen) for 3-4 years. Would it be similar, or not even in the same ballpark as it is now as an ex-collegiate swimmer?

2. What would the results look like if we took a 'AOS-normie' (lacks the talent to swim collegiate) and had then do that similar swim regimen, even for several years building up. Would it even be within 2 zip codes of his results?

Or is the simpler explanation is that this is a guy who has strong natural gifts at swimming, which were good enough to compete at the collegiate level, and he's discovering that his genetic gifts are strong enough to get 90-95%+ of the results he previously had on half the work, and that the super hard collegiate regimen probably only got him 5% (possibly 5-10%) added gains?

I think of it not too dissimilar as taking a pool of D1 runners - almost all of them can run sub 18 5ks on <20mpw, barely training, and for sure a lot of them run sub 16:30 on <30mpw. Train them hard and they'll shave another minute or possible two off their crazy fast times, but the main speed (let's say sub 18) they had, had very little to do with training and everything to do with genetics. Give these guys at age 35 a 25mpw running regimen, and they're dropping sub 18s again no problemo unless they gained 20+ lbs.

a couple things. He has a lot of muscle and benches 295. His training is super specific for one event the sprint breaststroke. It looks like part of his improvement is better technique as the stroke has been refined and also they allow that dolphin kick off the walls now which wasn't allowed when he was in college.

My plan to get faster is to age up and hope everyone else quits. After not competing for over 30 years I'm too old to attempt to reach my college times but did drop about a second in the 100 free/fly the fall season from my previous spring times. Now I've gone into the weight room looking for some more gains.

Well, the point is that he's swimming FASTER than he did in college by doing it smarter. Lifetime PB's at the age of 38. What HIS results are, in absolute terms, aren't really that relevant to the discussion. What is relevant is his performance relative to his younger self, and showing that it's possible to get faster, on less volume, if you pay attention to important things in and out of the pool.

So, he's focusing on quality work in the pool, paying attention to technique (he's a breaststroker, so technique there is probably an order of magnitude more critical than freestyle), being smarter about how he uses weights, improving nutrition, improving how he recovers, etc etc...

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

OF course if you never really peaked in your youth, you can set PR's in your late 30"s. But this guy wouldn't even win his age group against this guy on my team, and probably be a very good race now at 45+!!! This is what happens when you do peak in your 30's, but continue to hang on hard once you become a master..

https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/...s-with-his-daughter/

oh yeah, no doubt he's at an advantage by being allowed to use the dolphin kick off the wall, better suits, and refinement of the stroke overall.

I'm 11 years older than he is, so there probably isn't much chance of actually getting my college times (plus the rules in fly haven't really changed since the time I swam, Berkoff was showing everyone how to do the underwaters so that was new, but we knew about it and were working on it in practice).

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

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True.

but then, that leads to the follow up question, how many of us actually peaked in our youth, or did we leave lots of low hanging fruit? Knowing what we know now, can we truly say that we actually achieved our peak potential?

I know I can't. I ate like crap, had terrible sleeping habits, drank more than I should have, and missed too many morning practices, and took too long of a break between the end of university swimming and summer training with the club. I did work my butt off when I was at practice though.

West is a legend...

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

the other side of it is how many of us never peaked in our youth because we simply aged out? Back in the day, there were very few opportunities to keep swimming after college, unless you were lucky enough to be near a masters program. Now there are so many more clubs than there were, and there are multiple examples of people swimming at a very high level well past the age of 22. Used to be that 22 was old.

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I messed up a lot of stuff in my youth.

I am pretty sure that I could have swum 2 or 3% faster than I did - if I hadn't..........

But I was a distance swimmer

I can see that improving my stroke, my turns, my strength etc- might give me some improvements.

But swimming "fast" in my events (at any age) is not going to be achieved without a huge investment of time.

I suppose I could try to swim a "fast" 100 yard breaststroke.
(I don't think I ever swam that event after the age of 12.)
I could PR!
But will probably still suck.

Interesting read.

I think a lot of folks, especially men who can continue to get stronger through their 30's, could be faster after their college swimming career with different approaches. Strength and conditioning programs have progressed a ton in the last 15-20 years. I know the strength program I was in during my college career wasn't very good, doing circuit-like training after a 2 hr swim isn't a great way to stimulate strength gains. This was 20 years ago. Now almost all top programs are focused on making their swimmers better athletes overall with heavy lifting.

I also think the event is a huge factor, as I doubt many could improve their 400IM times vs 100's or 50's where power is key.

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I think about this a lot: optimizing training for sprints versus distance swimming, and what a performance training program should actually look like as a forty-something.
Unfortunately, I stopped swimming around my sixteenth birthday, so I missed six years of potential big aerobic development. Still love the sport.

Yeah, the weight training program when I went to school (graduated in '93) could hardly be considered a program. We got a little bit of guidance from the swim coach (we didn't have a strength coach), given a circuit training handout, and pretty much left to our own devices after that. Things have come a long way since then.

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// the given structure can become clearer .. and with its ongoing operation faster than a shadow .. :-)

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___/\___/\___/\___ the s u r f b o a r d of the K u r p f a l z is the r o a d b i k e .. oSo >>

that's the trick - I switched to tri after injuries etc when it became clear I'd never get another run PR, continued to set tri PRs until 50.. with better bike, masters swim, etc..

didn't swim competitively in college, swam recreationally, 1500m PR then was 20:40 about, never did manage that sub-20. I'll not get anywhere near that again..
OTOH I have set 50yd PRs since turning 50. All you need is to keep changing sports, distances, strokes ;-)

If I am going to train and race- I want to feel like -
"I am good at it."

I suppose you could define good:
1) Relative to your age group and pedigree (ie ex-college swimmers)
2) Relative to yourself at previous points in your life
3) Relative to some standard (like age graded tables)

An aging sprinter might be able to do well in all three of these categories without serious volume.

But an aging distance swimmer is going to have to make some serious compromises.

The only event where I think I could be "good" without doing a lot of training would be the 100 LCM Fly.

My PR for the long course 100M Fly is 59 high. That is probably the fastest of all my "sprint" times.
I didn't get to swim this event in college (for obvious reasons).

I think I would be pretty happy with a sub 1:03.

Does anybody think I could swim 1:02 at age 50 with less than 8 hrs/wk of pool and weight training?

Yup.

My PB for the 100 fly is about the same as yours (57mid for SCM). at 46 I went 1:00 high for SCM on about 4-5 hours per week, this year at 50 I'm working to align all of my stars and get under the 1:00 barrier on 3-4 hours of pool time.

So lets do this thing!!

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I have no doubt this is true. I stopped rowing at my peak at age 22 knowing full well I still had LOTS of room for speed improvement to reach additional peaks had I continued.

That's a tempting idea.

On the other hand I think I might be able to go top 5 in my AG at Kona.

Oh course, that is gonna take ton of training and I don't seem to do well in the heat (which is ironic cause I live in Tucson).

If you guys come up with a weight training program to swim a fast 100fly please share it. I started doing weights last month after not stepping foot in the weight room for the entire 2019 year. I am trying to break a minute for my 100 fly scy. Actually my goal time is a 58. Right now I am doing a bunch of tricep stuff, lat pull downs, leg press and core work.