Much better for the kids to have the good technique down earlier, actually be able to properly 6 beat kick and then layer it with everything else over time. At that earlier time, they can still get out swam by other earlier bloomers and some higher rating swimmers. But by the time the development evens out they will invariably be quicker and have a higher degree of accomplishment in the skill of swimming.
One thing my coach always said was slow down, do smooth swimming, dont rush or splash like an idiot. But I was an iditio (still am) and now wish he either explained it in a way I could understand where he was coming from or I just listened. The kid who always did perfect technique laps, wasnt that good when we were kids and was small and no muscle, well he ended up the quickest of that group. 23 for a LCM 50. The coach would say, see him, practice like that. And I would think, he is slow!!! bloody swimming
I don’t think it is possible to have a “6 beat kick” and “bad technique.”
And the real point of my comment was far more personal. Every parent who has a kid competing at a high level early on wants to know the same thing: Will this last?!? No one really knows of course, but I’d argue that the best indicator for future success is how much of their speed is coming from their kick and their walls.
As others have pointed out the fast 12 yr olds are strong for their size. You were prob stronger for your size as a “scrawny junior athlete” than you are now. No one is saying you need to bench press 400 lbs to be a fast swimmer. And I totally agree that swimming is an aerobic sport, BUT YOU ARE PULLING WITH YOUR ARMS SO THEY NEED SOME DEGREE OF POWER/STRENGTH. Once again, why do all semi-decent swimmers have the V-shaped torso??? B/c they’ve spent hours and hours of pulling hard. Sure kicking matters but on the whole swimming is mainly an upper-body-dominated sport. Breaststroke is the only exception as it has been shown to be kick-dominated.
The 5’4" D1 female swimmer will indeed be faster and stronger than the 12 yo girl. The D1 swimmer, will be stronger but also have a greater muscular endurace and likely refined technique. But my point is that most AG have enough upper body strength to swim at a decent speed (say sub 60 min IM), the vast majority simply lack the muscular endurance and/or technique to do it. Going back to the OP, he mentioned Sam L and Lionel S, those two are big muscular dudes so I really don’t see how increased upper body strength would help them.
You are correct. I see lots of these kids too. The kids have a great coach who is teaching them how to do things right. Kiddo also goes to a few D1 swim camps in the summer and has another coach that swam in college that meets with her when their schedules allow.
The swimstrong dryland program is making it’s way into younger athletes. My kiddo goes two time a week and uses her old gymnastics mats to do some things at home. Most of the better kids on the team are getting to drylands regularly.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned here is the actual vector or direction of force being applied to the water. The aforementioned 12 y/o girl applying 10lbs of force directly backwards is getting more instantaneous propulsion than someone applying 15 lbs at a 45deg angle.
Add on top that the kid probably is applying force in a more-backwards direction for a longer duration of the stroke. You could exemplify it as a net work equation, just multiply the straight backwards force by the stroke length. I wouldn’t be surprised if the kid’s are capable of higher net work (by that equation) than most adults, even though the adults are producing more total force (in the wrong direction).
Add on top of that again that any force in the water in any direction other than directly backwards needs to be overcome by another force in the opposite direction, lest you go off course or begin spinning.
It’s endurance specific to the muscles utilized in your sport of choice, separate from general cardio-system endurance.
A runner has muscular endurance specific to the legs in the running motion.
A swimmer has muscular endurance specific to the arms/back, less so for the legs in the running motion.
That swimmer might have awesome 1500 speed, but they won’t be able to transfer that endurance to running until they develop the muscular endurance specific to running to tap into it.
If all endurance was equal endurance, we triathletes should be able to just train one sport and then use that endurance to be equally good at all 3 sports. Alas, we have to develop sport-specific muscular endurance that’s good enough before we can transfer that endurance to the other sport.
Keep in mind “pulling” and “pushing” water the way to generate the most propulsive force and proven in a variety of propellers is not like we think about on land (direct vector force). Torsional “rotating” forces of all kinds that keep changing dynamically through the stroke cycle are all part of it, and one of the biggest surfaces that is both creating drag and force is the core itself. To get an idea of what can come out of the core through the legs, put both arms beside you and head down and start kicking and then start rotating in a circle and just breath when your mouth comes to air. Alternate spinning around both ways but you can feel force generate both from core rotation and finishing with the leg timing (you feel the full propeller effect of core). Its not nothing, but the core does a kind of reciprocating prop shaft thing in the water that creates forces that move us forward and really there is nothing there directly moving backwards (other than someone with huge ankle flex able to flick the water backwards in the final phase of kick)
Yeah I get what you’re saying about the dynamic changes and drag, but the only way the forward motion happens is with a net backwards force. The kick, for example, has nothing moving directly backwards, but the up/down motion of the legs cancel each other out and the remaining sum is a small backwards force. A lot of work going into it to get such little push. Same idea as a kid using a small force in the right direction being faster than an adult using a big force in the not-quite-right direction.
Right, I said distance and sprinting are different animals. The overall cardio system toll of that muscle mass hurts in distance. But the 50m guys are huge for a reason. And I think it comes down to what Eric is hammering on above, strength relative to size.
And the other factor is, reducing backwards or stagnant force of “drag” or maintaining the body in a way to increase effect of forward forces
Something impressive I saw yesterday. A 4:20 500 taking 9 strokes per lap. 2022 speedo junior winter west championship. Look it up and hope it brings you as much diversion from the banality of life as me , fourth place getter
Let me try to build on this image to explain where I am coming from. While we THINK we may be apply forces “backward” that is really not the case even the resultant force that moves us forward is the net backward force with side to side forces cancelling out (because if they did not, we would not move forward).
As you can see from that image of Ledecky, the kick my be up and down relative to her spine, but with her spine reciprocating, the effect fo the legs and arms is up and down forces that are rotating side to side (also cancelling each other out).
If you just stand in front of a mirror with your spine straight and mimic the swim motion, then yes you are pulling straight back with arms and you would be kicking up and down with legs. Once the spine starts reciprocating, all those forces are moving in a rotational plane. Its like you got a cartesian coordinate system and a cylindrical coordinates system in action while doing free (at some point in my life I would have gotten off on expressing the entire thing with bessel functions and written up a proper program in a simulator!!! I can’t remember most of that so I will just swim badly without knowing how exactly the fluids are moving around me!!!
We’re almost never applying any force backwards when doing free. It is all rotational and side to side (although it may be backward relative to spine, but its not backward relative to pool far wall in front)…the side to side forces cancel each other out and we move forward like a propeller moves water backwards and drives the boat forward
We also need to keep in mind that the distance guys are not exactly terrible at sprinting. In order to swim a fast 1650 SCY, you have to be able to swim faster for shorter distances. I’ve talked with a couple of sub-15 swimmers and they are all going 45-46 for a single 100 SCY, which is not just tooling around. Sure, the fastest 100 guys can go 40 or sub-40 but a 45/46 is nothing to sneer at. You have have topnotch swim-specific strength to swim 45.
It could be that Peaty is the exception to the rule but, acc to a detailed USA Swimming-sponsored study, breast is the only stroke that is kick-dominated. TBH, not being a breaststroker, I’ve never tried to find the study myself. And really for tri-geeks, breast is a bit irrelevant anyway. I just mentioned this as alleged evidence that freestyle is upper body-dominated.
Also, just for the record, Peaty doing pullups with 120 lbs is abso phenomenal!!! I could see myself benching 300 if I really worked at it but the pullups no way!!!
