Can’t remember who posted the advice, but a few weeks ago someone put up an elegantly simple paragraph of swimming advice. Basically, “lead with your shoulders” if I was to paraphrase. Took this advice to heart and took almost 5 seconds of my 100 yrd time (I didn’t time myself for a 100 yrd sprint, this is average time savings on each 100 as part of 500 yrd swim).
Last year I typically swam about 9:20, for a good moderate effort doing a 500 yrd swim. Went to a swim clinic in the fall (only 1.5 hours long, put on by a local college swim team, included videotaping) which provided some basic instruction for the first time. Found out I was “crossing over” and that I was not getting my right elbow high out of the water (resulted in bad entry for right arm). Almost immediately upon understanding these problems I was able to start doing about 8:55 to 9:00 500 yrd swims. Two months later in an indoor triathlon, with a 15 minute timed swim, I was able to do 900 yrds (I probably would have done more if I could do flip turns).
With the “lead with your shoulders” tip, this week I did a 8:43 500 and then followed that up with an 8:24 as my warmup. I then did 10 x 100yrd on 1:45 (I think I am ready to do this on 1:40, based on not feeling too beat after this workout), which combined with the 2 500 yrd swims, was a huge breakthrough workout.
I know these are very mediocre times, but I feel amazed I was able to take nearly a minute of a 500 yrd time, in about 6 months of off-season training, that involved only one 2500 yrd swim session a week. Just getting a short coaching session and a little good advice did the trick for me, so I am sure it could do the same for others.