Doesn’t look too fragile to me… (photos by Holly Charles)
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Yep, but compared to a male not really. And yet she would smash most of them. Balance of endurance and strength… where does it lie in swimming? Genuine question by someone who has spent years getting owned by 10 year old girls in the pool 
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To be more clear, I never would have considered say doing all my sets with a PB as I thought it was more a crutch and I should keep pounding out lots of yardage and intensity to get better. Also I was never a big paddle user again because I thought it just made me artificially faster. And I do get better with more volume, without question. What I hadn’t considered since the advent of these bouncy shorts was using them all the time and doing a lot more paddle work. It’s just a stone I had left unturned and it peaked my interest.
She wouldn’t. At last year’s 70.3 Worlds, she swam 25:05, which was by far the fastest women’s swim split, 45 seconds faster than the first chase group. But if you look at the men’s results, almost 70 men had a faster swim split than her. Yes, I know, the women’s and the men’s race were on two separate days, so not 100 per cent comparable. But you see the same pattern in other races. At T100 Qatar, for example, only one out of all male pros had a slower swim split than Lucy Charles-Barclay.
I know far too little of the science behind swimming well to speak with any expertise on the matter, but to me that seems to confirm that strength, an area where men do have an inherent biological advantage, does indeed matter.
2 different days 2 totally different swim conditions.
for instance Hayden Wilde when he swam solo at a WTCS race got chicked by 7 or so females in Karlovy Vary at a lake swim ie you also have to take group dynamics into account, as well.
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all you have to do is look at her 1500 LCM (16:46) time to know she is faster than all but a handful of the men.
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Should the 22nd rule should be:
Your talent level for swimming will determine your success to a far greater degree than your talent level for cycling or running.
I mean this is true: If LCB were to go 5 years without working out, gain 30 pounds, develope high blood pressure (sorry LUCY) and be unable to run a half mile without walking she would STILL be able to swim a IM in the 65 minute range.
One of my buddies finaled at Olympic trials in the 400 IM, swims once or twice per year, is a little overweight, is 47 years old and did 12 x 100’s on 1:15 (*yards) the last time I swam with him. With a 300 warm up. WTF.
There is a basic talent for swimming that rarely gets discussed: how your body naturally sits in the water. This determines your drag coeficient more than anything else. Arms splayed, feet pointed badly, head position to low or high, whatever you come up with matters less than your body posture in the water. I’ve heard it described as swimming downhill vs uphill but whatever it is, it doesn’t really go away if you don’t swim and it doesn’t really get a lot better if you swim alot.
If you find the answer to the endurance vs strength and strive to maximize these to the ebst of your ability, you might start beating the 10 year old girls. But not the 11 year olds.
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100%, and I would add we all have some intrinsic biomechanical limitations. Some of us are just built to be great in the water, others are not.
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Yes a talent variable, but it only matters if you maxed out that talent in your younger days. If Lucy had never swam and was a runner kid who became an AOS, she would be no where near her speed now. I have always said that once you achieve a certain neuromuscular speed in any of the sports, it becomes hardwired into your body’s memory. I think that a lot of people confuse this with talent and not all the hard work and years that it took to get to those top speeds.
Yes talent was needed to get to the very top, but it was a hard work ethic needed to fully realize it, and that is what we all marvel at in folks like your buddy who just pops in and rips it…
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I really don’t know if your intrinsic biomechanics can be “trained” or fixed.
That’s what I am saying, you are sort of stuck.
Just like everyone. We all get stuck somewhere, either by our biomechanics, talent level, fitness, health, or work ethic. It is not for everyone to become a D1 swimmer, and certainly not for AOS triathletes to even think that is possible. But I think many do think they have some ability to be a great swimmer, only time and hard work will get them there. Folks really need to accept that their ceilings are quite low compared to pros and what we watch on TV swimming, and do their best to hit that mark, and be happy if they do. Then it is just a long age group slog to hold that ceiling as long as you can, and then fade as little as possible over the years and decades.
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I feel seen… 
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I think it’s one of the worst drills for adult onset swimmers. Studies have shown that kick timing/rythm is the biggest common differentiator between elite swimmers and beginners and one of the hardest to change. It’s not about a strong kick but it’s really hard to do the other things well, such as the pull, water position, breathing etc, if the timing isn’t there. Swimming with a band and shutting that part of the technique completely off can make progress slower than what it could be.
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I agree it’s important, just don’t know how you train it in adult swimmers? You said it’s one of the hardest to change… What studies are there?
I disagree that doing some drills with a band can somehow slow progress - how does it permanently harm them? They can still work their kick rhythm the rest of the session.
I cannot imagine a scenario where teaching an adult swimmer the importance of faster turnover and early catch doesn’t help them. Band (with or without PB) gives instant feedback if these two skills are lacking - you sink and go no where. As you improve them, you get faster with the band swimming.
The key commonalities across all good triathlon OW swimmers are stroke rate and early catch, not kick. There’s many examples of good swimmers who cannot kick to save themselves.
Check out the work of E. Maglischo. There are plenty of ways to train timing by isolating parts of the kick and arm stroke.
The band can harm progress by detraining certain movement patterns if they’re not fully ingrained. Kick timing is not something you can consiously think about and get right, it’s a movement pattern you have to practice to “rewire” neural pathways. Hence why kids who grow up swimming do it without thinking about it and adult onset swimmers don’t.
Again, it’s not so much about propulsion from the kick but aiding body position and flow during parts of the arm cycle. If you get the timing right you don’t need much of a kick for endurance swimming.
Compare an adult onset swimmer to an elite swimmer and one of the biggest differences is that they simply don’t have the same flow even though strength and other parameters might be somewhat similar. It’s extremely hard to have a good stroke rate and an efficient catch/pull at the same time without good timing and body position. It’s not difficult to have a high stroke rate but a lot of adult onset swimmers slip through a big part of their catch and don’t pull much water. In part because of the above.
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Kicking in swimming is a crutch reflex for balance.
Swimming with tb can help take that crutch away and learn proper shoulder support to prevent feet drop if done right. If properly taught.
200–300 m of tb swimming once a week will not weaken or break you kick rhythm it would enhance its timing to your front end being the leader. It will reposition your idea of where load and effort and timing should be vs not be.
Stop everybody stop saying or using the cue word “pull “ you can’t pull water . It’s impossible to pull water you can only support on water .
Even saying in your head pull the hand is a terrible cue of muscle sequence to swim . You support wt on your hand , but great swimmers support on their whole side and don’t think of their hands and move the rest of the body forward.
You swim forward with your body not back with your hand.
You run forward with your body you don’t pull your foot back and spin the earth.
If you don’t understand the main concepts you can’t progress as mistakes don’t change.
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If you watch Katie she has no kick effort and more of a tb around the ankles especially post breath after she drops the head back in both feet float like they are bungees and you can tell her calf’s are even fully relaxed as her muscle move in the water pressure flow.
LCB is very similar, if your body position can create no resistance you don’t need much forward effort to as most say “ pull” as it’s never impossible to pull your further then 1.0-.1.2 m on a stoke at a good pace for a normal sized human.
In open water , no wall Katie has a 94 stoke per min at 1.04 m per stoke . LCB open water is 81-86 . And her time show she gets about 0.96-1.04 .
This is we’re a guy like Sam long keeps trying to get a long stoke but the viscosity of the water is so high the delay in stoke rate he has kills him.
Not properly being coached to swim but to be fit .
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Better to watch her swim the photos don’t really show the dead leg stop together.
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Call it what you want but I hope you’re not suggesting that the old misconception of the hand anchoring and moving the body forward is true. The hand moves backwards at the same time as the body moves forward. This is very well established.
Re the pictures you posted all of them shows her in various stages of the kick cycle.. She has a pretty slow kick cycle but she obviously has great timing. But hard to have a discussion if you discount well established facts of swimming stroke mechanics and just go by what you feel makes sense.
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