Backstroke and 500 free help

I found I could swim a 29 second 50 back stroke. Now, to some of you people here that are very advanced, you probably think that sucks You kidding? That's awesome for someone just starting out! My opinion is what you really need is some one-on-one coaching. I'm sure watching youtube videos is OK, but you really need someone watching you and giving constant feedback on your technique. That's the number one thing you can do to get better.

Hey Purple you want to improve your 500 fr & backstroke probably the 50 & 100, especially your bk start & dolphin kick which we call streamline dolphin kick or SDK you asked What sort of workouts should I be doing to improve at this point? 500 FR: you need to TRAIN work on speed, speed endurance, aerobic capacity, pacing, & racing you may need to improve your freestyle technique, but nobody can help you on that unless they see you swim above and underwater and look for mistakes to correct The 500 is about what pace can you hold for 10 50's 6:30 is holding 39's per 50 or 19.5 per 25 which isn't that fast to improve your pace you MUST TRAIN, More is better. How many times a week do you train? How far do you go per practice? What paces can you hold? The basic idea on workouts is be frequent, challenging and mix it up, do various kinds of sets to improve each system. Tip 72 Sets Education Tip 73 More Sets Education Create positive training habits like always do your best, always 6 beat kick on freestyle, & perfect streamlines on every pushoff there's bunches more you can get work out ideas from the following several blogs: Middle Distance: Chris Stevenson & Patrick Sprint / Bk / SDK Leslie Livingston Mine Current & my old blog Mar 2005 - Sep 2008 I pick seasonal projects and change my focus events. Some seasons I've focused on 50's & speed, sometimes middle distance. READ Swim FASTER FASTER SFF & apply ideas from it Tip 1 SWIM FAST IN PRACTICE Tips 265 Train harder, smarter, faster, further, more often with a positive attitude, coached by a great coach, with fast fun positive hard working team mates, in a convenient facility with adequate lane space & at convenient times while having tons of fun. Anything you do and measure improves. There's also ASK Ande I wrote some useful advice for the 500 in this thread Backstroke STARTS: do 5 a day SDK: work to improve your SDK SDK advice for a 5 year old and Help my SDK is Horrible Train backstroke for speed. ~ ~ ~ I suggest you train at least 6 times a week, preferably 9 or 10 Train everyday if you can do doubles mon, wed & fri swim 90 min to 2 hrs per practice it doesn't sound like you have any meets coming up so build up to mid season training. Swim FAST in practice Have FUN Ande

(as in, I didn't figure out until half way through the season that you need to hold your breath in sprints) You should never hold your breath ( :afraid: )! (Forumites; please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't it be let out slowly to avoid passing out?) Purple, best wishes to you! Most of all, have fun! :cheerleader:

Kirk is right about the value of getting feedback on your technique. Number one priority for sure. Doing 100s on a 1:20 is not training for the 100 back, that is training for the 200. For the 100, you need to train to hold onto your 50 speed even when your muscles start to scream at you. One possibility is to do some broken 100s, with pretty much rest between efforts. Try doing them with 10 sec at the 50, and also try with 5 sec at both 50 and 75. Do flip turns (ie, foot touch) until the finish, to train yourself to flip even when tired. Fast 75s (straight) are also good. These should be intense efforts with at least 1-2 min rest between them. Don't do them two days in a row. Work on your kick. Whether or not you decide to use dolphin kicks a lot, backstroke is a leg-intensive stroke. Once your legs go, you're toast.

(Forumites; please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't it be let out slowly to avoid passing out?) I doubt letting your breath out slowly does anything to help you avoid passing out unless it causes you to breathe earlier than you would if you were merely holding your breath. The only thing that will cause you to pass out is lack of oxygen to the brain and obviously this will happen eventually if you don't inhale. I suggest you train at least 6 times a week, preferably 9 or 10 Train everyday if you can do doubles mon, wed & fri swim 90 min to 2 hrs per practice Sorry, I just don't think this is good advice for a beginning swimmer. The first step is getting one's technique down. After you've done that THEN start thinking about training hard. Otherwise you're just ingraining poor technique into your muscle memory.

Sorry, I just don't think this is good advice for a beginning swimmer. The first step is getting one's technique down. After you've done that THEN start thinking about training hard. Otherwise you're just ingraining poor technique into your muscle memory. +1 I don't even get in that kind of swimming, and I compete in distance races, and have swum competitively since I was 7 years old. Shoot, even 3-4 days a week at 45 minutes to an hour is good enough to get a base amount of yardage in for most swimming distances. I only get in 5-6 1 hour long practices a week during the season. 6:30 is holding 39's per 50 or 19.5 per 25 which isn't that fast 85-90% of the masters swimmers I swim with (in the LMSC) would love to be able to go that fast. Yes, for the elites, it's not that fast, but for the average swimmer, a 6:30 is quite difficult.

I forgot to answer this. I train 5 times a week as of now. Saturday is weight room day. And sunday is my day off. For backstroke, I'll swim about 3000-4000 per practice. For the 500, it's more like 5000-6000. As for what paces I can hold, I believe I've already covered it.I'm with Kirk and James in terms of how much to work out and that your emphasis now should be on getting your technique better and ingraining that into your muscle memory. I think a total training volume on a weekly basis in the ~20K yards range is fine; you're still young and have plenty of time to increase the volume over time. Another way for you to get technique pointers would be to have someone videotape you racing and then post it here. I imagine you'll get a lot of pointers. Do you have access to a USA Swimming or US Masters Swimming club you can train with or are you training solo? If you can find a coach/club where you can train consistently, that should help you on a lot of levels -- technique, variety, speed, seeing other swimmers 'live' and learning from them, seeing the 'art of the possible' (e.g., you might think you'll never go under 1:00 in the 100 backstroke, but if you see a training partner do it and you know you're close to that training partner in workout, it should boost your confidence), etc. Switch to sprinting.Purple, follow Jazz's thread on lifting (Swim Faster Stronger - U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums), but stick with the 500 and backstroke focus for now. There will be much more satisfaction in dropping multiple seconds in your 500 than in dropping multiple tenths in your 50s. Plus, if you're already doing 5K to 6K workouts, clearly you don't have the swimming ADD that affects sprinters who start to get confused once the lap count goes above 4 ;) :bolt:

I don't even get in that kind of swimming, and I compete in distance races, and have swum competitively since I was 7 years old. Shoot, even 3-4 days a week at 45 minutes to an hour is good enough to get a base amount of yardage in for most swimming distances. I read that Steve West is training about three days per week, one hour per practice, and he qualified for Olympic Trials in the 200 *** at age 39! I'm not saying this is all the training anyone needs, but it does prove that it's not all about pure time in the pool or yardage!

Switch to sprinting.

You kidding? That's awesome for someone just starting out! My opinion is what you really need is some one-on-one coaching. I'm sure watching youtube videos is OK, but you really need someone watching you and giving constant feedback on your technique. That's the number one thing you can do to get better. I forgot to mention this in the thread, but I'm actually taking a technique class right now from a coach who sometimes coaches down at Harvard. In other words, he knows his stuff. It's not really hard physically, it's more of a strain mentally. I've been learning loads about technique from him. So I got that covered so far. Hey Purple you want to improve your 500 fr & backstroke probably the 50 & 100, especially your bk start & dolphin kick which we call streamline dolphin kick or SDK you asked What sort of workouts should I be doing to improve at this point? 500 FR: you need to TRAIN work on speed, speed endurance, aerobic capacity, pacing, & racing you may need to improve your freestyle technique, but nobody can help you on that unless they see you swim above and underwater and look for mistakes to correct The 500 is about what pace can you hold for 10 50's 6:30 is holding 39's per 50 or 19.5 per 25 which isn't that fast to improve your pace you MUST TRAIN, More is better. How many times a week do you train? How far do you go per practice? What paces can you hold? The basic idea on workouts is be frequent, challenging and mix it up, do various kinds of sets to improve each system. Tip 72 Sets Education Tip 73 More Sets Education Create positive training habits like always do your best, always 6 beat kick on freestyle, & perfect streamlines on every pushoff there's bunches more you can get work out ideas from the following several blogs: Middle Distance: Chris Stevenson & Patrick Sprint / Bk / SDK Leslie Livingston Mine Current & my old blog Mar 2005 - Sep 2008 I pick seasonal projects and change my focus events. Some seasons I've focused on 50's & speed, sometimes middle distance. READ Swim FASTER FASTER SFF & apply ideas from it Tip 1 SWIM FAST IN PRACTICE Tips 265 Train harder, smarter, faster, further, more often with a positive attitude, coached by a great coach, with fast fun positive hard working team mates, in a convenient facility with adequate lane space & at convenient times while having tons of fun. Anything you do and measure improves. There's also ASK Ande I wrote some useful advice for the 500 in this thread Backstroke STARTS: do 5 a day SDK: work to improve your SDK SDK advice for a 5 year old and Help my SDK is Horrible Train backstroke for speed. ~ ~ ~ I suggest you train at least 6 times a week, preferably 9 or 10 Train everyday if you can do doubles mon, wed & fri swim 90 min to 2 hrs per practice it doesn't sound like you have any meets coming up so build up to mid season training. Swim FAST in practice Have FUN Ande Thanks a million man. I'm gonna be up all night reading all these blogs. And believe me, I will read all of them. You should never hold your breath ( :afraid: )! (Forumites; please correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't it be let out slowly to avoid passing out?) Purple, best wishes to you! Most of all, have fun! :cheerleader: I'm talking about doing a sprint 50 freestyle. I've been told that you're not supposed to breathe much if you're doing a sprint in a meet because it slows you down. But obviously, during practice if I'm swimming sprints, I'm going to breathe more than I would in a meet. Kirk is right about the value of getting feedback on your technique. Number one priority for sure. Doing 100s on a 1:20 is not training for the 100 back, that is training for the 200. For the 100, you need to train to hold onto your 50 speed even when your muscles start to scream at you. One possibility is to do some broken 100s, with pretty much rest between efforts. Try doing them with 10 sec at the 50, and also try with 5 sec at both 50 and 75. Do flip turns (ie, foot touch) until the finish, to train yourself to flip even when tired. Fast 75s (straight) are also good. These should be intense efforts with at least 1-2 min rest between them. Don't do them two days in a row. Work on your kick. Whether or not you decide to use dolphin kicks a lot, backstroke is a leg-intensive stroke. Once your legs go, you're toast. I like the broken 100s idea. Just swimming interval 100s wasn't really working for me. Also, I've been working on my kick. My flutter is very good, but as said previously, I'm still working on my dolphin and SDK. I guess that's something that won't change over night. I just need to keep practicing with those.