Hello Swim friends! Back in 2007 Ande posted the below Swimming Tip to his blog. It concerns split differentials in the 50 yard freestyle. As you can see, among top swimmers, the first 25 yards is roughly .5 faster than the second 25. Remove the dive, and in many cases the second 25 is probably faster than the first among the elite swimmers
My 50 yard free is far more lop sided - usually the first 25 is roughly 1.5 seconds faster than the first. It never really occurred to me that I was doing something wrong. I'd like to access your wisdom...how do you swim the 50? Are the first 4-5 strokes sub-maximal, and then all out the rest of the way?
Thank you for your help, and thank you to Ande for his challenging posts!
Ande's Swimming Tips:
Swim Faster Faster
Tip 172 Split Differentials for the 50 Free Short Course
I've written about the importance of correct splitting in other swim faster faster tips, but let's drill down and take a close look at how to correctly split the short course 50 free.
Study the 50 free split differentials of each swimmer
You calculate split differentials by
subtracting a swimmers 2nd 25 time from his first 25 time
2nd 25 time - 1st 25 time = split differential
Here are the final results for the 50 free finals in the
2007 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming & Diving Championships
1 Joyce, Kara Lynn 21.71 10.63 11.08 diff = 0.45
2 Jackson, Lara 21.73 10.64 11.09 diff = 0.45
3 Nymeyer, Lacey 21.80 10.62 11.18 diff = 0.56
4 Silver, Emily 21.99 10.82 11.17 diff = 0.35
5 Bishop, Brooke 22.17 10.85 11.32 diff = 0.47
5 Aljand, Triin 22.17 10.90 11.27 diff = 0.47
7 Bradford, Jenny 22.23 10.60 11.63 diff = 1.03
8 Denby, Kara 22.41 10.79 11.62 diff = 0.83
Here are the final results for the 50 free finals in the
2007 NCAA Division I Men's Swimming & Diving Championships
Event 4 Men 50 Yard Freestyle
1 Cielo, Cesar 18.69 9.14 9.55 diff = 0.41
2 Targett, Matt 19.08 9.29 9.79 diff = 0.50
2 Wildman-Tobriner, Ben 19.08 9.39 9.69 diff = 0.30
2 Subirats, Albert 19.08 9.30 9.78 diff = 0.48
5 Goodrich, Scott 19.29 9.35 9.94 diff = 0.59
6 Weber-Gale, Garrett 19.33 9.49 9.84 diff = 0.35
7 Tsagkarakis, Apostol 19.48 9.32 10.16 diff = 0.84
8 Lundquist, Bryan 19.49 9.54 9.95 diff = 0.41
Ideal Split Differential
It looks like around 0.30 - 0.40 of is the ideal split differential for the short course 50 free.
Swimmers should target their 50 free splits in the a range of 0.25 - 0.60.
If a swimmer has a differential of 0.60 or more, she probably worked her first 25 a bit too hard or maybe had a bad turn or push off.
Sadly enough, even in a 50, you may not swim your fastest time by
going all out from the get go, you need to be swimming close to all out, hit a great turn, have an excellent streamline breakout
When Fred Bousquets went 18.74
His splits were 9.26 9.48
so his differential was only 0.22!
When Cesar Cielo went 18.69
his splits were 9.14 9.55
so his differential was 0.41.
One excellent swimmer told me that when he races the 50 free
the first 2 strokes in his breakout are at about 80% effort,
since he's already going fast from his dive.
One thing that helped me drop 2+ seconds in one year for the SCM 50fr was avoiding 50m of 50fr equivalent race pace several months out. I would take the proposed 50 pace (or faster) and break it up in 25s with more than enough rest to do about 10 ea. This helped me feel the pace enough to not think about it while racing
I would also do the same set on a tighter interval which resulted in a pace slightly closer to the 100 (but not quite as slow). This year I felt no need to pace, the swimming portion felt like autopilot ( one breath out and 2 in).
Another thing I worked on was the start. In 2012 I probably practiced over 150 from the block and another 200 from the side of pool when no blocks were available.
Now on the other hand, one thing I immediately need to work on is my reaction - it sucks: too much going on in my head like,
Should I breath now or in the air? :blah:
or more recently,
Was that the horn that just went off while I'm still on the block pondering this?:bitching::censor:
With all this said, my 50 free is now only several tenths slower than Chris's first 200 free split:applaud:
One thing that helped me drop 2+ seconds in one year for the SCM 50fr was avoiding 50m of 50fr equivalent race pace several months out. I would take the proposed 50 pace (or faster) and break it up in 25s with more than enough rest to do about 10 ea. This helped me feel the pace enough to not think about it while racing
I would also do the same set on a tighter interval which resulted in a pace slightly closer to the 100 (but not quite as slow). This year I felt no need to pace, the swimming portion felt like autopilot ( one breath out and 2 in).
Another thing I worked on was the start. In 2012 I probably practiced over 150 from the block and another 200 from the side of pool when no blocks were available.
Now on the other hand, one thing I immediately need to work on is my reaction - it sucks: too much going on in my head like,
Should I breath now or in the air? :blah:
or more recently,
Was that the horn that just went off while I'm still on the block pondering this?:bitching::censor:
With all this said, my 50 free is now only several tenths slower than Chris's first 200 free split:applaud:
