The only one you mentioned that isn’t predominantly fitness related is “inefficient sighting” which usually isn’t the problem it’s typically related to an imbalance in the pull (left side v right). But everything else has a significant component related to the fitness of the athlete.
I hope this helps.
And even when you get a good early vertical forearm (EVF) pull, you have to develop the fitness to turn those arms over pretty fast, as in 80-90 strokes/min. A few really strong swimmers can do well at 60-70 spm but generally when you watch the really good swimmers going fast, they’re turning over like a freight train. You might develop the ability to do that for a single 50, but then extending it to a 1500M or 1650 SCY is going to take lots and lots of work.
How does breathing properly have to do with your ability to pull hard and efficiently? Teaching beginners to breath properly to keep the head low has almost nothing to do with fitness, and even at higher levels, I can’t see how it does.Whereas teaching a beginner EVF? Fuggeabout it. EVen if they study, research it, do all the drills to day’s end, it’s not happening because they don’t have the fitness to support it.
This is all a bit debateable but when your fitness is higher you can do basic things like a fast turn, overandover, and breathing well, without taking out too much effort.
I am a r side breather. While swimming at a good effort - Taking a breath, not having all goggles out of the water, just getting under the arm pit, and breathing in a way that you can still maintain good tension and profile with my left arm in front does require a fair bit of effort tbh. If I am looking down at the bottom of the pool and then over stretch to my breath I feel my body get out of a good position.
What typical rating do you use when you are doing a steady effort? From watching top swimmers that swim below a 67-68 rating, watch how much they manage to glide on each stroke. Need to watch it slow to notice but videos of the big gliding swimmers like Sun Yang and Mack Horton, they actually have a lot of ability to maintain tension in the muscles in gliding not just pulling water. Yes there is a relationship between how far they glide and how much water they pull, but the glide part is really important too.
You dont need fitness to be able to glide per se, but when youre at 160 bpm you need fitness to do it over and over
In other words - take those top swimmers. They could glide further on the same force produced by a beginner swimmer because of their body awareness than the distance a beginner can glide.
For most of us who swim with a rating of 50 - 65 improviing this aspect of tje stroke is really interesting to play around with.
And then when the top swimmers are going fast, they are both travelling a long way on each stroke and gliding a long way before the catch, then at higher rates they go fast.
Other swimmers to watch in this regard, Park Tae Whan & Ferry Wertman
I think every debate here should be settled with how fast their child swam when they were 12.
As they used to say over at the track, football, soccer, volleyball, basketball teams, swimming is really for rich kids who are not coordinated enough to do real sport 
All the real athletes kids were sprinting sub 6 second 50’s at age 12 and can either kick or catch balls !!! (pink optional…kind of…if we are getting this down to 12 year old abilities, but we knew before high school who the top athletes were and all the coaches from the top tier sports were already scouting these kids and they were not at the pool). The swimmers were like this outside group that no one paid attention…then the swim outcast group gets total revenge in adult onset tri !!!
Many very accomplished swimmers say they stuck with it because they couldnt do any other sports, perhaps had glasses / depth perception issues or got bullied for their failures in land based sports or being picked last when teams were self selected on the play grounds. Youre right on this
Interesting that Slowtwitch is having this debate and Effortless swimming just released this:
I stuck with it because there were no fat girls in swimming and I didn’t get covered in mud requiring (as all English schools appeared to have) cold showers.
Swimming for adults is like math for Adults. If you’re good at either as a kid no one cares. Eventually no one can do any of those ball sports and sprint sports and they go and flounder in the pool and the kids who spent the time doing laps like the kids who did the math get the final laugh !!! You can’t just be natural at swimming but you can be natural instantly at sprinting. Getting good at swimming is like getting good at math. Its not instant. Takes a lot of hard work, and it is a learned process. Aptitude helps, but adhering to process will weed out the less focused.
Kids like Donovan Bailey (100m gold medalist), Andre de Grasse (200m gold medalist), literally backed into sprinting playing basketball (and being too small to be any use in those sports). Swimming is 100% learned. You only find out who is good after tens of millions of meters. Sprinting and ball catching you can see in one practice with a group of kids who has hope and who has no hope.
We’re a bit off topic, but not entirely…those 12 year old kids learn how to apply the forces the right way. Some are apapt better to it but that’s like any sport that is learned (ex Tennis or Golf).
I think that’s why the casual fan has zero clue about the degree of difficulty and skill in swim racing. They just get excited with a competition but have no idea what the swimmer is doing and how difficult it is. A casual fan can watch ball sports and appreciate the degree of difficulty.
ST’ers immediately say, “I don’t have time for all that” and dismiss the video after 3 minutes.
Best ever swim advice I read on ST was if your suit gets dry youre doing it wrong. Should try to wear out suits like you wear out shoes
I highly disagree with this. All the young kids in the competitive swim club in my pool were good from the get-go. Like less than a year after starting actual swim training despite a history of just ‘playing’ in the pool, they could easily beat the average MOP triathlete swimmer at any distance. They didn’t have the typical learning curve that us ‘normal’ people have, and for sure, it wasn’t just an age thing either, as they were easily the fastest ones in their swim classes (hence moved up to competitive group). I’ve told the story multiple times about that kid in my first swim lessons ever in 2nd grade, and when 12 of us were learning to blow bubbles in the pool, after like 2 lessons and NO extra training, that one kid was swimming the full lap, and by the end of the lessons when I could barely get my head in the water, he was doing nearly the entire thing underwater. The swim coaches jumped on that kid and his mom after class ended, no surprise to me, wasn’t hard even for me as a 2nd grader to be like ‘dang, that kid has TALENT!’
Honestly, I think he likes to troll good discussions like this with absurd comments for attention. Learned this the hard way trying to explain in basic heat transfer principles when he made some extremely ridiculous remarks about indoor training cooling effects.
I used the ignore feature and it certainly screens out this kind of noise.
The genetic component of “talent” is a very interesting and underappreciated aspect of athletic success. I just received my results from Ancestry.com and was surprised at the vast array of genetic “traits” that they identified along with several thousand fairly closely related relatives from around the world. Swim success related traits included ability to hold breath, competitiveness, likeliness to get stronger easily, hand eye coordination, speed of muscle fatigue, ability to perform choreography, physical flexibility, persistence, physical strength, tendency to experience a runner’s high plus a few others. David Epstein’s " The Sports Gene" is a fun quick read for anyone interested in the the genetic component of sports.
One can argue about what constitutes “good,” but you are wrong. Not a good swimmer, but better than > 95% of triathletes. My N=1: started swim training at age 26, and in my first 50scy in a race four months later did a 26.5. Three months later I was under 1:00 for a 100scy. Only once in my life IIRC I did more than 20,000yds in a week. I got down to 23.1 and 51.7 before I reached a million yards, most likely. I’m sure I’m not alone.
When I said, “from the get go” , I meant like instantly…like first practice. Other sports its literally a few days and you can see who is good. Swim is not like that. For running it is first 20 strides and you can see which kids have zero chance and which have it. Land sports you can see this
You have to know what to look for, and I there are some kids who have a fear of the water that disguises their natural ability, but its the same thing with swimming.
Trust me, my 12 year old is the fastest in the forum by a lot.
That’s the point, “you have to know what to look for”. But for a lot of land based sports it is glaringly obvious to random people which kids have sufficient natural gifts and who does not.
But as you say, you have to know what to look for. Very few people on this forum would know what to look for for 10 year old kids to know if they can develop into elite XC skiers. I can literally take them to the running track and have them sprint 100m and run 800m and know if they have any hope on skis without seeing them on skis. But almost no parents will be able to know because skiing like swimming is a learned process and only those embedded in the sport will be able to tell. (like you can for swimming, but I can’t for swimming)
Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How.” is a fun quick read for anyone interested in the non-genetic component of talent and skill acquisition in sports, math, music, etc.
He talks about the neuroscience of myelin (it is not fixed at birth, it grows), and he has some interesting case studies that should make you question the genetic component of many talents, swimming included.
His thesis on the importance of “how you practice” strongly (and scientifically) supports what I have seen people like @SnappingT say here on ST; “what you are primarily training is the brain and nervous system”.