Got to talk with a local competitive 13 year old today. Her recent 200m free PR is 2:09:59, and she is 13 (yes, I’m super impressed). I think her 100 free is just a shade over a minute flat, but she expects to lower that in two weeks, to under a minute.
This girl used to come to local sprint tris a few years ago and just participate along with her mom, but now she doesn’t even bother because she’s all in with swimming (she’d crush anyone in the water now, anyways! Lol).
A few cool tidbits from my chat:
She averages 36-40,000m a week!
She trains all strokes, even though the free is her best/fav
She is in the pool minimum 6x a week and does 2 strength sessions a week.
in a 4500-6000m session she said she probably only does about 500m of just kick (I thought it’d be more)
Anyways, I’ve never personally known someone swimming at this type of level, so I love tracking her progress and thought I’d share a bit for some, who may also be interested.
That’s pretty standard I think. My daughter is 14 - 53.99 100y free, 1:58 200y free, nice little freestyler. They are in the water 6 days a week with an optional 7th sometimes - 8-9 swims a week - they are between 3500 - 8000+ yard workouts (obviously time dependent). Probably 11-13 hours in the pool. They have dryland/strength 4x a week - about 45 minutes or so per session. Tomorrow is a pilates instructor/circus guild member teaching about core strength and the connection.
The work ethic that a swimmer has over other athletes is just - next level. At the highest level in any sport, they put in a ton of time. But for the average kid who just shows up day after day after day - that’s incredibly impressive to me. I love watching these kids train.
Anyways - that would be why we, as adults, kind of stink at swimming! Age, volume, time…the list goes on!
Yeah, pretty crazy. I am pretty jealous of kids who get this kind of opportunity! Lol. I was surprised to learn that she also trains all 4 strokes. I thought maybe the club would be split up into “specialties” for training, but they aren’t. They are grouped by speed. She said that swimmers don’t really specialize/focus on one stroke until university.
Yeah, there’s a ton of work on each stroke. They tend to do some choice stuff too - but honestly the breaststrokers are swimming so flipping fast that they are able to make the intervals in at least the slowest lane.
Just swimming things like…5x(2x100 IM on 1:30 with 200 free on 2:30 - yards before you really freak out lol) is just crazy impressive…and just another set haha.
What I find interesting is the idea that we give triathletes the advice that if you want to run better you have to run more. Like 6x per week. Sometimes 2-a-days. With high volumes. Ditto on cyclists and add in intensity. They eat it up and practice it as gospel.
Tell these exact same people who struggle with swimming due to their ‘adult onset swimmer’ disease to get to the water 6x a week? Nope. They refuse to go to the pool that many times or do that many yards. It’s anathema.
What I find interesting is the idea that we give triathletes the advice that if you want to run better you have to run more. Like 6x per week. Sometimes 2-a-days. With high volumes. Ditto on cyclists and add in intensity. They eat it up and practice it as gospel.
Tell these exact same people who struggle with swimming due to their ‘adult onset swimmer’ disease to get to the water 6x a week? Nope. They refuse to go to the pool that many times or do that many yards. It’s anathema.
It’s impossible to get that many swims in a week though, until the swim becomes a bigger percentage of the race it’s not worth putting the time in.
What I find interesting is the idea that we give triathletes the advice that if you want to run better you have to run more. Like 6x per week. Sometimes 2-a-days. With high volumes. Ditto on cyclists and add in intensity. They eat it up and practice it as gospel.
Tell these exact same people who struggle with swimming due to their ‘adult onset swimmer’ disease to get to the water 6x a week? Nope. They refuse to go to the pool that many times or do that many yards. It’s anathema.
It’s impossible to get that many swims in a week though, until the swim becomes a bigger percentage of the race it’s not worth putting the time in.
That’s a great counter… And I have had that thought too. When you think that a lifer swimmer who’s given up hours in the pool can “only” do a 48-50’ IM swim and get 4-6 minutes over a guy like Sanders, then it certainly gives a different perspective.
As an AOS, I’ve always been pretty happy with my sub hr IM swim (59xx, iirc), when for most of my tri life I’ve likely only averaged 3 swims a week. 4 is alot, and I usually only hit that frequency in an IM build.
On the other hand, I then always wonder… What if!? (I swam more as a kid lol).
What I find interesting is the idea that we give triathletes the advice that if you want to run better you have to run more. Like 6x per week. Sometimes 2-a-days. With high volumes. Ditto on cyclists and add in intensity. They eat it up and practice it as gospel.
Tell these exact same people who struggle with swimming due to their ‘adult onset swimmer’ disease to get to the water 6x a week? Nope. They refuse to go to the pool that many times or do that many yards. It’s anathema.
Not that simple. For 90% of people, you run more, you’ll get quicker. If you run heaps, you can get really quick, not so with swimming. If your technique is pretty average you can swim 30km a week, you’re not going to see the improvements you would see with running. And that;s what happens with a lot of BOP & MOP swimmers, they want to improve their swimming, they join a squad, swim 4 times a week, flogging themselves and go from 39mins to 37mins for a 70.3 swim. Often swims courses are off by up to 200m, so they can even get a slower time, especially if conditions are crappy. So I understand why the motivation can slip. Most average triathletes seem to give up after a year or 2 with their swimming and are happy to swim twice a week to just get by. I think someone really needs to set aside a good 6 months or so and dedicate it to swimming, cut down on the running/riding, focus almost solely on swimming, get their technique sorted and go from there. Once they have the semblance of a good solid technique, they’ll have that for life.
To be fair it’s a world of difference between an average adult onset swimmer aiming to swim 40k per week and these kids .
the kids swim with a squad. Wayyyy more fun and doable. Make those kids do it all solo, without a coach and fuggetaboutit. But that’s what.moat adult triathletes face.
the kids are hella talented. Yes they bust tail but there is no way any kid would commit to that unless they had real gifts. You don’t come in last at YMCA club and then shoot to swim 12 he’s per week. The typical ag triathlete is that YMCA kid, or likely even worse in terms of talent for swimming!
obviously, adults have jobs and responsibilities that make it hard to commit those hours.
Two more words: natural talent. Not everyone who comes into Masters gets down to swimming 100s on the 1:30, coming in 1:15-ish. A fair % will get to this level, and a few faster, but the majority will end up stuck at something like doing 1:45s lvg on 2:00. And these very rough estimates are for people under 50.
Yeah, pretty crazy. I am pretty jealous of kids who get this kind of opportunity! Lol. I was surprised to learn that she also trains all 4 strokes. I thought maybe the club would be split up into “specialties” for training, but they aren’t. They are grouped by speed. She said that swimmers don’t really specialize/focus on one stroke until university.
Depends on the team, but most of those kids will be pretty specialized by 14. The Sectionals and Zones times are pretty crazy fast at that age, especially for girls. There won’t be many kids who can qualify in more than 2 stokes and a couple different distances.
The one thing that my daughter learned from club swimming was time management. Those kids are traveling a lot, missing school, and swimming close to 25 hours a week in high school. When they get to college they have a big advantage over the typical college freshman.
I was just making the point that we can all train like a 13 year old, not that we can all swim like one.
Scott
Our kids’ TSUN club trains 4x per week and with that, gets great results. I jump in an open lane on Sundays and the biggest issue for me is kicking. My pelvis/lower back doesn’t like the volume the kids do. Nor are my legs cycling at the same RPM. My dolphin isn’t good either.
On pull sets I can keep pace no problem. My fly is half-decent too.
Kids just don’t arrive at the sport all strapped up & dysfunctional from other sports or too much sitting. They just seem light in the water vs having dense muscle tissue that is useless for swimming.
But given an honest effort and gobs of PT, you can certainly be close to an average or so-so club kid…
I was just making the point that we can all train like a 13 year old, not that we can all swim like one.
Scott
Not really.
My son’s team does 6 days a week with 2 days of doubles and a few dry land practice.
I travel 2 to 4 days a week most weeks. That’s 2 to 4 days I can’t get to a pool. I’ve looked into them and its lot logistically possible. I’m sure others have the same issue.
Pools can be hard to come by and hours are not always useful to adults with jobs.
But - just about every hotel has a treadmill or stationary bike, so you can get in a run/ride almost every-day,
About 3 years into doing triathlons I was lucky enough to get in with a local university team and hang on for dear life.
I would swim 5 days a week for 2hrs with them at about 6500-7000m depending on the sets. The rest of the team was in 6 days a week with everyone doubling at least once (sprint group) up to 3 (olympic trials hopefulls). I would say everyone on the team was training about 17-20+ hours, and if they were doing less swimming because of their event they would have more time in the weight room.
Everyone would warm up together then we would split into distance, mid-distance, and power. The distance group would be 90% freestyle as they would often race 200, 400, 800/1500 fr and the mid-distance and power groups would do more stroke as they would be expected to swim ~3-4 individual events to score points but some couldn’t “race” further than 100m
Some practices we would kick over 2k. The coach loved to do 20x100k or 5x400k and those always killed me. Pure swimmers can kick just so fast.
I did their christmas swim camp and we alternated 2x2hr practices and 3 hour practices for two weeks with new years day as the only day off. My skin was flaking off and I had no arms by the end of that. I like to look back at that just as a reminder now and then.
Swimmers are tough and committed but I would say all youth sports as high levels are just as committed
