i am currently swimming with 2 masters swim teams so i can swim 5 days a week. im only swimming freestyle. practices vary from 5500 yards to 6000 meters depending on which team i swim with. one is scy and one is scm. I started to swim in my junior year of high school and swam 2 days a week for 4 years. I had problems with my shoulders cuz of to much laxity in my joints when i started so i couldnt swim other strokes or swim the volume required in college. Over the 4 years I have improved my freestyle stroke and strengthened my shoulders so I have recently started swimming 5 days a week and I am not feeling any pain. I have the opportunity to swim with my college team but im hesitant because i will not be able to keep up with the other strokes. I consider myself an elite amateur with my fastest 1500 time just over 20’.
Where will I see the biggest improvement? with some fast college swimmers or with the 2 masters teams?
And will beginning to swim fly and breast help my freestyle? i cant swim back cuz of my shoulder issues.
Swimming with faster swimmers will make you faster, though I wonder if you’d actually be allowed to swim with a college program?
And yes, doing Butterfly and breaststroke will help your freestyle.
Maybe your shoulder issues are because your stroke is a tad off.
Talk to college coach and explain your issues. Prolly no reason why you could not just do free or modified stroke (or drill) for other strokes. A 20 min 1500 is not elite by swimmer standards. In fact, far from it. If you really want to improve your swim you need to up your game.
Swimming with faster swimmers will make you faster, though I wonder if you’d actually be allowed to swim with a college program?
And yes, doing Butterfly and breaststroke will help your freestyle.
x2, especially since you’d basically be a hindrance when the team is doing anything other than freestyle.
John
1500m in olympic tri.
X3 on if the team wants you. Depends on the college and how competitive the team is. If you are at Stanford, probably not. To see how you stack up against the competition see the link below and check the age group motivational times. I wouldn’t call myself an elite swimmer unless I at least had AA times.
http://usaswimming.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabId=1488&Alias=rainbow&Lang=en
AA? I wouldn’t call myself an elite swimmer unless I had faster than AAAA.
to the original poster- run with faster people and you will run faster, bike with faster people and you will bike faster, swim with faster people and if you don’t quit you will eventually swim faster. My college coach let a couple of people swim with the team every so often. They rarely lasted long. Go see what you are made of… or don’t. it’s up to you.
I guess your are right. I think things have changes since I was an age group swimmer.
THAT is NOT motivational at all… Under 10 yrs old is sub 1 minute per 100 scy.
I am Zach’s wounded sense of ego…
And will beginning to swim fly and breast help my freestyle? i cant swim back cuz of my shoulder issues.
Hrm. If you can’t swim back, I’m not sure I would suggest fly either.
John
I thought the same thing, but when I was recovering from clavicle surgery, fly taxes different muscles than back. I find back much harder than fly (my lungs beg to differ though).
THAT is NOT motivational at all… Under 10 yrs old is sub 1 minute per 100 scy.
I am Zach’s wounded sense of ego…
That 10 yo is not hauling 200lbs of beef steer through the water. Huge difference.
FWIW I got my butt handed to me by a 9 yo once: http://forum.slowtwitch.com/cgi-bin/gforum.cgi?post=3192601#3192601
I was an AA level swimmer. That worked out to a couple of qualifying times for high school state meet (though the only time I got a second swim was on a relay) and making some individual consolation finals at my D3 conference meet in college. So I consider myself above average, but nowhere elite. The friends I had who could make a D1 team, even a mid-major one as a walk-on, they really were an entirely higher level than I was.
I’d give the college team an honest try. If you can stick with it for a while, that kind of team experience can be a wonderful thing.
20’ for 1500m open water would put you in the realm of elite amateur in triathlon for sure–I think others were assuming you were talking about 1500 LCM or something. Sounds like you’ve got a solid masters group. If that’s working for you then I would say stick with that–switching things up can be a recipe for injury, especially if you have a history of injury in the past and might have to make some significant modifications in order to swim for the college team.
Weigh the risk vs. reward–what are your goals? what are you willing to risk to achieve your goals? Take some time to think about what you want to do and why, and the method of achieving your goals should become a little more clear.