How much do inborn physiological traits contribute to swim speed?

Triathlon Forum
1

This post is mostly just cut and pasted from a comment I made on the current Lionel swim thread. I did get one or two folks who replied to it, but I was hoping to get some more thoughts, hopefully from the fish and especially coaches who have worked with swimmers of all abilities over the years. I have posted and commented on here numerous times over the years about my struggles with swimming, but never about this aspect of it. I’ve had this discussion with people before and they think I am just making excuses for how slow a swimmer I am. But I don’t think that’s the case. I have come to believe that what you are born with plays a MUCH bigger role than people think.
.
A bit of quick background - I’m 59 and did not swim growing up; I took it up at 21 when I started doing triathlons. I did AG Nationals 4x between the ages of 51 and 55, and just my bike/run times combined would have placed me with three 2nds and a 3rd in my age group. But I finished well back of there due to my pathetic swimming. Even after some major gains in my early 50’s, I still give up probably 4-4.5 minutes in an Oly swim to the top guys in my age group. And I don’t mean the top swimmers - those guys put even more on me - I mean the top triathletes - the guys who are my speed or mostly even slower than me on land. And not for lack of trying. Over the years I have worked my ass off and tried most everything there is including working with various coaches to try and improve without much luck.

I’ll take running as an example. I’ve always been a decent runner, but nowhere near elite. But for most of my life, just my natural running gait when I go out for an easy recovery run is about 7:20-7:30/mile. If I don’t run a single step for a year, I’ll still go out and run that pace for my first easy run back with little effort without trying, as that is just my natural easy gait. There are people who have run their whole lives and have never run 7:30 pace for an all out 5K. Is that because I’ve worked harder or am in better shape or have better form? Of course not. It’s just whatever combination of physiological traits (slow twitch vs. fast twitch muscle fibers, VO2 Max, etc) I have that go into how fast we are able to run.

I understand swimming is far more about form than running or cycling. But I still think there is a HUGE aspect of this even in swimming. When I swam with Masters for a few years, I would sometimes watch the real swimmers over in the fast lane. There were guys who would get in for their warmup, and just swim as leisurely as possible, big slow strokes, they’d even be flipping over on their back every so often just to play around or whatever, taking 10-12 strokes per length and with absolutely no effort whatsover they are doing this at 1:10-1:15 per 100 pace. Meanwhile I’ve been training my ass off for years and all tapered and off the block with 100% effort flailing away for everything I’m worth I was doing the 100 free in 1:14 in the couple of meets I did!

How the hell do you explain that? Yes, they grew up swimming and I didn’t, but still, I’ve been working at it for over 30 years, and these guys basically just dive in and float down the pool faster than I can go all out. And I know from working with plenty of coaches and being analyzed over the years my stroke isn’t all that bad. Certainly a lot of room for improvement and I’m always working on it, but I have at least a respectable stroke and there are guys with worse strokes than mine who can do the 100 in well under a minute.

So I believe there is a much bigger aspect of that than people realize when they seem to think anyone with a decent engine can be a decently fast swimmer if they work on it.

2

Started swimming at 28. For me it was when I understood how to generate speed with my body, and not just my arms, that I was able to break 30sec for the 50. There`s obviously a lot of fitness in swimming, but doing 1.15/100m for 50m does not require any fitness. I am an AOS and could do it right now, without having been in the water for a year.

And now the (even slower than me) swim experts who dont wanna put in the hours, both in the pool and outside of the pool, will chime in with their “its all about talent, bla bla bla, otherwise I would have learned. It takes tons of talent”

Trust me. It doesnt.

For me it took A LOT of thinking to understand how to catch slowly enough - and in particular to not apply power in the early phase of the catch, how to get the timing between kick and entry right and how to rotate correctly. I am terrible when it comes to coordination; doesnt matter if we talk MMA, soccer, golf, tennis, ice skating or swimming. Nothing comes naturally to me. But at the end of the day it is like solving any other problem you face in life. If you want it enough,

YOU JUST DO IT

3

Interesting

You say put in the hours

How many hours per week and how many years would you say?

4

Interesting

You say put in the hours

How many hours per week and how many years would you say?

Well as I said I’ve been swimming for 38 years now. It’s varied over the years. But since I started doing Nationals I’ve really rededicated myself to trying to be a better swimmer, so for the last 7 years or so other than a couple injuries that put me out of commission it’s been close to what I’m doing now - 5 days/week year round at about 3000-3200 (scy) per workout…

But I have always been analytical and worked at it - read all of the swim threads on here over the years, read books, videos, studied a lot on the swim sites on line - SwimSmooth, Gary Hlls’ Race club site, etc. The point is although I’m not saying I can’t still improve, it’s not like I just swim with no direction putting my head down and pulling for all I’m worth. I’ve done the work both in and out of the pool. And I know very well most of the AOS swimmers who are far faster than I don’t train any more than I do.

5

There are probably 3 things that differentiate a good adult swimmer (I e. D1 college swimmer) from someone like Lionel.

  1. Years of high volume as a youth with focus on a) form, b) speed, c) swim fitness (In that order of importance).
    Most adult onset swimmers focus first on fitness- that can gets you from 1:20 to 0:57 in an Ironman swim.

  2. A holistic view of swimming- where it is understood that ones ability to swim a fast distance swimmer is the product of fitness AND speed.
    To illustrate…
    I swam the 500, 1000, 1650 yds in college.
    I did sets of 25s, 50s,100s, 200s, butterfly and IM
    Not just traditional distance swimming.

  3. Physiology might have some importance- most swimmers have long arms and big lungs.
    My belief is that these attributes develop through training at a young age… That swimmers are not necessarily born different.

6

Interesting

You say put in the hours

How many hours per week and how many years would you say?

In the water? 3-4/week seemed to be my sweet spot for me. But outside of the water I was thinking about it way too much. Stopped in front of mirrors to watch the recovery phase, had swimmer friends explain different concepts and how they think while they do different drills, watched both good and bad swimmers and tried to understand what set them apart. I think the biggest realization was when a 1500m guy told me his belly was SO sore after a session (at this point I didnt use my belly at all).

And 3-4/week in the water means (to me) dryland warm up where you get down on your belly and think about how you raise your legs, so that you`re able to do it in the water, you get your core ready (to me the lower back was really important - and the hips/ass area). If I were to coach myself again I would do it this way:

  1. Learn to keep your head, ass and ankles on the surface. Don`t focus on anything else untill you have checked this box.
  2. Learn how to roll through the water.
  3. Learn how to catch.

Then to all the other things like breathing properly etc. In my experience it wasnt possible to breath properly the way I swam in the beginning. It is now, even though I suck at it.

7

Do you have any video of your stroke? And did you have a lot of shoulder mobility when you started out? And when you said the the swimmer said their “belly” was sore - do you mean from holding proper position in the pool?

8

Started swimming at 28. For me it was when I understood how to generate speed with my body, and not just my arms, that I was able to break 30sec for the 50. There`s obviously a lot of fitness in swimming, but doing 1.15/100m for 50m does not require any fitness. I am an AOS and could do it right now, without having been in the water for a year.

And now the (even slower than me) swim experts who dont wanna put in the hours, both in the pool and outside of the pool, will chime in with their “its all about talent, bla bla bla, otherwise I would have learned. It takes tons of talent”

Trust me. It doesnt.

For me it took A LOT of thinking to understand how to catch slowly enough - and in particular to not apply power in the early phase of the catch, how to get the timing between kick and entry right and how to rotate correctly. I am terrible when it comes to coordination; doesnt matter if we talk MMA, soccer, golf, tennis, ice skating or swimming. Nothing comes naturally to me. But at the end of the day it is like solving any other problem you face in life. If you want it enough,

YOU JUST DO IT

And this is EPITOME what someone with far-better than ‘normal person’ ability would post.

"YOU JUST DO IT. "

or, in other words -

“1:15/100m is slow for me that if you can’t do it, you’re pretty much doing everything wrong in swimming. Because you can’t POSSIBLY actually training for real in swimming, but still swim that slowly. After all, I can do it with zero fitness, and no swim training for over a year.”

Sure, if you’re a lucky gifted genetic one, it’s very easy to say such stuff because that’s your reality. But if we swapped out your natural ability with actual normal-range ability (which is way slower than 1:15/100m after a year out of the pool), it would be a different story.

It’s literally talent, talent, talent in your case, with a modicum of hard work in there. But it’s definitely not the other way around, where you worked hard, hard hard, swam like 80k/wk etc and then you can do what you do. You might not be talented in the motions of any ball sport, but you clearly get it in the water.

The good part about talent if you have it - you don’t just ‘lose’ it, nor does it have to disappear with age. If you’re a talent as a kid, you still have that talent and thus high-ceiling as an adult, and older. Even if old age and injuries, etc., may start masking it, it’s still there, waiting to bust out. Plenty of ex-d1 runners gained a ton of weight when they had a kid, started their job, took 10+ yrs getting totally fat and out of shape so they couldn’t even run a 10k, but then made a comeback, and in 1-3 years of the comeback, start crushing their AG in the run again.

9

I just spent an hour typing out a really nice response and accidentally refreshed the page. So I’m going to respond with a shorter response and maybe re-write my essay separately :slight_smile:

The long and short of it is that I don’t believe most adult learners ever reach their physiological limit in swimming. Those that do (a la Magnus Ditlev) put in the *right *work and execute.

To me, the right work entails:

  • working long term with a coach who can work both technique and fitness and training with a group.
  • exploring coordination (see: Stionx’s response) and proprioception in the water. “Everyone knows” swimming is a full body exercise, who can actually make it one, though?
  • developing efficiency in the water through non-standard movements. I’m not saying you get faster by playing sharks and minnows, but you’re not going to get slower… because you learn how to move your body through the water. Those guys and gals over in the fast lanes, playing around? Literally that’s what they’re doing - playing.

Coaching adults without a swimming background (because you don’t have a disease of AOS, I hate that term!) is fascinating to me because you can see immediately who has a sense of their body and who doesn’t. Good athletes are always going to be a step above other folks - that’s where your physiological limit comes in - but coachability and good proprioception are important.

I have several athletes in mind as I write this, with two I’d say were quick successes in very different phases of their athletic career. The first is an individual who had never raced anything in their life - not even a 5k - and decided to do a triathlon. What they had going for them was that they were a dancer. Within a month they were pretty easily doing 25s in 25 seconds (their endurance just wasn’t there). They took feedback and learned how to move their body in the new medium that was the water. The second is an individual who raced bikes professionally and was a standout runner. They invested in tri coaching (not with me) to bring their multisport level up and swam every single day. We would chat about their swimming, and they took feedback and applied it just like the dancer. They would swim with masters and race to keep up not just on fast sets, but stroke count sets. They learned efficiency by doing it and saw pretty quick success.

I’ve seen plenty of folks who do exactly what you describe. Read every book, work with ‘all the coaches’ (but without a long term plan), swim every day - but without an understanding of what they’re trying to achieve. Yes, their goal is to get faster, but they fundamentally don’t understand how to get faster. If you’re trying to train yourself to be a better swimmer, then you have to be a swim coach. Not in a credentialed way - you have to understand what you’re teaching yourself. And you don’t know what you don’t know. And frankly, most people who try to teach themselves to get better can’t succeed regardless of physiological limitations because you don’t understand how swimming works in the first place.

10

There are probably 3 things that differentiate a good adult swimmer (I e. D1 college swimmer) from someone like Lionel.

  1. Years of high volume as a youth with focus on a) form, b) speed, c) swim fitness (In that order of importance).
    Most adult onset swimmers focus first on fitness- that can gets you from 1:20 to 0:57 in an Ironman swim.

  2. A holistic view of swimming- where it is understood that ones ability to swim a fast distance swimmer is the product of fitness AND speed.
    To illustrate…
    I swam the 500, 1000, 1650 yds in college.
    I did sets of 25s, 50s,100s, 200s, butterfly and IM
    Not just traditional distance swimming.

  3. Physiology might have some importance- most swimmers have long arms and big lungs.
    My belief is that these attributes develop through training at a young age… That swimmers are not necessarily born different.

I’ll simplify it even more.

The D1 swimmers just has far better swim-specific genetics (talent) than Lionel does. That’s it.

They could train a fraction of what LS does, and equal or beat him. Heck, there’s poster on this very thread that sounds like they can do it as an AOS swimmer no less.

We’re speculating here, but I’d almost guarantee that if you rewound Lionel to a kid, got him into swimming early, he still wouldn’t be a top tier swimmer. It’s true that starting as a kid does help things stick, but it’s still not as important of having the fundamental talent in the first place. And that talent doesn’t go away - which is why some adult AGers (who post here, in fact), can swim as fast as D1 swimmers without crazy training (but they are a tiny minority.)

There’s a reason why federations of triathlon teams, and even top tri coaches, zero in quickly on swim-talent candidates.

And you’re definitely completely wrong about ‘training’ developing normal-shaped people into tall-shaped people with long arms and legs. That’s been completely debunked in science, completely. Just because you swim a lot doesn’t lead to longer limbs. It’s the selection bias here - the longer you stay in swimming, the more competitive you get, and the less likely that shorties like me think it’s worth participating anymore because we’re totally outclassed.

Lionel hasn’t spent years with a single coach, true, but he’s worked hard enough on his swimming with enough legit swim coaches that we know he’s taking swim improvement seriously. His limiter is not training volume. ANd I’ll bet even if he goes and spends 2 years with Gerry, he still won’t make front pack, even if he improves. At the top level, which he’s trying to achieve, genetics arguably matter the most, given that everyone is busting their tail and getting good coaching if they need it.

11

The good part about talent if you have it - you don’t just ‘lose’ it, nor does it have to disappear with age. If you’re a talent as a kid, you still have that talent and thus high-ceiling as an adult, and older. Even if old age and injuries, etc., may start masking it, it’s still there, waiting to bust out. Plenty of ex-d1 runners gained a ton of weight when they had a kid, started their job, took 10+ yrs getting totally fat and out of shape so they couldn’t even run a 10k, but then made a comeback, and in 1-3 years of the comeback, start crushing their AG in the run again.

I think what you’re describing is more than just talent. I think you mean talent with years of ingrained “muscle memory” (which is more than just muscle memory - I’m just using that term to encompass all the permanent gains from serious training in youth).

For me it’s rowing. I drive my fellow CrossFit bros bananas because guys 25 years younger and with 30 more pounds of muscle mass can’t touch me on the Concept 2 erg. And I never row anymore except during CrossFit workouts.

12

Do you have any video of your stroke? And did you have a lot of shoulder mobility when you started out? And when you said the the swimmer said their “belly” was sore - do you mean from holding proper position in the pool?

Yes I do. I actually have a video at 1.15/100m pace and one from like a year in (after you have seen that I think we should revist lightheir`s claim that I am talented). I dont know how to get them up here, but I will learn it tomorrow, or just post them on youtube and link them here.

Lightheir: you are the epitome of what is wrong with the world. And I really mean it. The only other explanation than me being talented with your world view would be to take a deep look in the mirror, and for most people that hurts. “If he can do it there must be something special with him, because I cant”. Sure, or there are some things you havent figured out yet.

13

The good part about talent if you have it - you don’t just ‘lose’ it, nor does it have to disappear with age. If you’re a talent as a kid, you still have that talent and thus high-ceiling as an adult, and older. Even if old age and injuries, etc., may start masking it, it’s still there, waiting to bust out. Plenty of ex-d1 runners gained a ton of weight when they had a kid, started their job, took 10+ yrs getting totally fat and out of shape so they couldn’t even run a 10k, but then made a comeback, and in 1-3 years of the comeback, start crushing their AG in the run again.

I think what you’re describing is more than just talent. I think you mean talent with years of ingrained “muscle memory” (which is more than just muscle memory - I’m just using that term to encompass all the permanent gains from serious training in youth).

For me it’s rowing. I drive my fellow CrossFit bros bananas because guys 25 years younger and with 30 more pounds of muscle mass can’t touch me on the Concept 2 erg. And I never row anymore except during CrossFit workouts.

No, I mean flat-out talent.

I know what you are describing quite well - ingrained muscle memory, developed overyears-decades, and which usually develops best when you start as young as humanly possible. I was a violinist since age 4, got good enough to go to Juilliard, compete nationally+, etc., so I’ve thought and experienced this stuff extensively.

You are def right with your muscle-memory effect for what you describe - I just don’t think it applies to LS as we’re discussing. If you were an ex-collegiate or similar rower, it’s almost certainly more talent in your case as well, even if there is some muscle memory involved.

I’ve played my violin like 3x (for my kid) since stopping in college, but even if I can no longer play super fast passages, you can tell that I was really good just from the few notes I play simply. Like a lot better than the serious amateur who might be able to play all those fast passages now because they practice a lot. The muscle memory I have is still there, but the talent that drives it is still the core.

14

There are probably 3 things that differentiate a good adult swimmer (I e. D1 college swimmer) from someone like Lionel.

  1. Years of high volume as a youth with focus on a) form, b) speed, c) swim fitness (In that order of importance).
    Most adult onset swimmers focus first on fitness- that can gets you from 1:20 to 0:57 in an Ironman swim.

  2. A holistic view of swimming- where it is understood that ones ability to swim a fast distance swimmer is the product of fitness AND speed.
    To illustrate…
    I swam the 500, 1000, 1650 yds in college.
    I did sets of 25s, 50s,100s, 200s, butterfly and IM
    Not just traditional distance swimming.

  3. Physiology might have some importance- most swimmers have long arms and big lungs.
    My belief is that these attributes develop through training at a young age… That swimmers are not necessarily born different.

I’ll simplify it even more.

The D1 swimmers just has far better swim-specific genetics (talent) than Lionel does. That’s it.

They could train a fraction of what LS does, and equal or beat him. Heck, there’s poster on this very thread that sounds like they can do it as an AOS swimmer no less.

We’re speculating here, but I’d almost guarantee that if you rewound Lionel to a kid, got him into swimming early, he still wouldn’t be a top tier swimmer. It’s true that starting as a kid does help things stick, but it’s still not as important of having the fundamental talent in the first place. And that talent doesn’t go away - which is why some adult AGers (who post here, in fact), can swim as fast as D1 swimmers without crazy training (but they are a tiny minority.)

There’s a reason why federations of triathlon teams, and even top tri coaches, zero in quickly on swim-talent candidates.

And you’re definitely completely wrong about ‘training’ developing normal-shaped people into tall-shaped people with long arms and legs. That’s been completely debunked in science, completely. Just because you swim a lot doesn’t lead to longer limbs. It’s the selection bias here - the longer you stay in swimming, the more competitive you get, and the less likely that shorties like me think it’s worth participating anymore because we’re totally outclassed.

Lionel hasn’t spent years with a single coach, true, but he’s worked hard enough on his swimming with enough legit swim coaches that we know he’s taking swim improvement seriously. His limiter is not training volume. ANd I’ll bet even if he goes and spends 2 years with Gerry, he still won’t make front pack, even if he improves. At the top level, which he’s trying to achieve, genetics arguably matter the most, given that everyone is busting their tail and getting good coaching if they need it.
I’ve said it before, many times.
You are correct (in general).

The concept of talent really does exist. Those who have it usually don’t know how valuable it is. For success, hard work is a given. Most of us have a gift of something(s). Sometimes they aren’t in areas we’re interested in.

Being able to both mentally and physically put in the “work” IS valuable, but not enough.

Just watch 7 year olds do any sport. You’ll see a separation of talent if you look honestly.

A D1 athlete is/was surrounded by others with lots of talent, so perhaps the key difference could be extra work (or rest!). Those folks are so removed from normal that they simply can’t relate.

Many triathletes have a “if I only work harder” mentality - a tactic that will take one quite far, but, not necessarily to the very top. Unfortunately.

15

No, I mean flat-out talent.

Just thrown off by your referring to former D-1 runners being quick to come back. But I guess you mean that cohort of D-1 runners likely has superior talent to most other running cohorts. Of course a person with “D-1 talent” who never ran would take considerably longer. But point taken that all-else-equal the “D-1 talent” person will overtake “average/lesser” talent people quite quickly in that progression.

16

Do you have any video of your stroke? And did you have a lot of shoulder mobility when you started out? And when you said the the swimmer said their “belly” was sore - do you mean from holding proper position in the pool?

Yes I do. I actually have a video at 1.15/100m pace and one from like a year in (after you have seen that I think we should revist lightheir`s claim that I am talented). I dont know how to get them up here, but I will learn it tomorrow, or just post them on youtube and link them here.

Lightheir: you are the epitome of what is wrong with the world. And I really mean it. The only other explanation than me being talented with your world view would be to take a deep look in the mirror, and for most people that hurts. “If he can do it there must be something special with him, because I cant”. Sure, or there are some things you havent figured out yet.

You’re wrong on all fronts. As much as I don’t like to call people out on it.

Take any random swimmer, give them Gerry Rodriguez every second of training, make them quit their job and everything to just SWIM, and ask how many of the 100 random adults you take will hit 1:15/100m in a year. In 2 years? Some will, but it’ll be less than 5%. Possibly less than that. If you can do it, you’re already an outlier.

You think I’m discounting my potential because wahhh, I have bad genetics, instead of training or working as hard as I could, I just complain and be jealous of everyone else. I’m not even gonna humblebrag anymore, I’m going to straight up brag and tell you - this is just part of my resume: Juilliard-level violinist, Intel Science competition top 50, Harvard graduate summa cum laude biochemistry (and yes, I got in early with no legacy assist or affirmative action), 2 advanced PhD level degrees, and even though I was never good at endurance sports (in my high school x-country team I wasn’t even a scoring member, and maxxed at 20:50 in a 5k), I’m now regularly 90+ USAT score at age nearing 50, so seem to have overcome a lot (but not all) of my endurance sports limitations.

In terms of swimming, I’ve also probably analyzed my self-swim videos more than you have (I’ve had two coaches review them with me), and likely have been swimming a lot longer than you (10 years+ now) and also probably have seen more coaches, so there’s that. But I still can’t swim a single 1:15, and for sure, I can’t swim 1:15 for distance. But I also have been tri around long enough to know that swimming 1:15 is pretty fast for most AGers so if you can do it in a year, you’ve got real genetic advantage there (can’t teach talent.)

17

Yes, natural ability plays a roll in being able to swim well. But to be competitive in swimming in triathlon you don’t have to be anywhere near upper limits of potential. The bar is much lower for being competitive.

Work hard. Stop making excuses. if you want to get better in the swim, make it your primary focus. Yes, technique is important. But so is fitness. You’ll only be able to swim the fastest most efficient technique for the length of time your fitness will allow. Fitness and technique are connected and you can’t separate the two out from one another.

I hope this helps,

Tim

18

A D1 athlete is/was surrounded by others with lots of talent, so perhaps the key difference could be extra work (or rest!). Those folks are so removed from normal that they simply can’t relate.

Many triathletes have a “if I only work harder” mentality - a tactic that will take one quite far, but, not necessarily to the very top. Unfortunately.

This is true in most elite-top competitive fields. You’re so deep in the competition, surrounded by AND getting beat on a daily basis in training/etc by similarly talented and super hardworking folks, that you think “How could I possibly be talented, when there are 8 guys on the squad who beat me day in day out, and they’re not even winning the world championship? I freaking suck, and have to work sooooo hard just to keep up!”

Yep, that’s exactly how I felt in Juilliard music the entire time I was there - felt like I had some craptastic genetics compared to the ‘real’ good ones.

Only when I was older and could see from a wider perspective how hard some ‘normal’ talented folks actually worked to get such middling results, did I go ‘woah - I guess I had talent, and likely a LOT of it.’ Was just hard to tell in the daily grind of competition during those days.

Thats why I keep bringing up coaching examples. If Gerry Rodriguez or whomever could coach every joe-schmo to 1:15/100m pace in a year like the poster above seems to claim, sure, I’d say talent isn’t a factor there. But he can’t. In fact, no coach can even come close to taking a truly random bunch of people and getting them to swim a 1:15. Heck, coaches can’t even get a bunch of super motivated triathletes who are clearly way fitter and more motivated than joe schmo average rando, and will pay thousands of dollars a year for top-notch masters swim access, to swim 1:15s across the board (not even close).

19

Isn’t the NCAA Div 1 1650 SCY A std like sub 15 min? Would be curious to know who here swims at that level on couple of swims per week?

Back in the 90s a couple of kids in my club made the Olympic standards, but they were swimming months/years of crazy high volume when they hit those times. Definitely not twice per week.

20

Isn’t the NCAA Div 1 1650 SCY A std like sub 15 min? Would be curious to know who here swims at that level on couple of swims per week?

Back in the 90s a couple of kids in my club made the Olympic standards, but they were swimming months/years of crazy high volume when they hit those times. Definitely not twice per week.

Not sure where you got that I said people could do that on twice per week, I def didn’t (intend) to say or imply that. If it’s an Olypic standard, it’s gonna be crazy nuts hard, even for the ubertalented, and completely impossible for everyone else.