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.
I'd like to access your wisdom...how do you swim the 50?YMMV, but this is how I do it:
You definitely want to be last off the blocks. All that effort, straining, quad-burning, etc. from trying to splurge and burst off the blocks will really come back to haunt you those harrowing last 2.3 yards of the race.
By all means, you've got to breathe every stroke. After all, Lezak caught that French dude in the 100 breathing every stroke; if it's good enough for him for a 100, it's got to be good enough for us Masters in a 50.
Whatever you do, make sure to flub your turn. You can do this in any number of ways that I usually do:
Flip too far away
Flip too close
Slip on your push off so you hit the lovely wall wave of water that Rowdy talks incessantly about in any Olympic race shorter than 400 meters
Or, go for the triple-header and do all of the above
Glide into the finish on the premise that you don't want to finish with a short, half stroke.
It takes practice to master these things; I have swum the 50 free more than any other event in my Masters career and I'm finally into a groove where I do the above on just about every 50 free I ever race. You've got some deep, mindful, 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours of focused practice ahead of you ... but you can do it!
I'd like to access your wisdom...how do you swim the 50?YMMV, but this is how I do it:
You definitely want to be last off the blocks. All that effort, straining, quad-burning, etc. from trying to splurge and burst off the blocks will really come back to haunt you those harrowing last 2.3 yards of the race.
By all means, you've got to breathe every stroke. After all, Lezak caught that French dude in the 100 breathing every stroke; if it's good enough for him for a 100, it's got to be good enough for us Masters in a 50.
Whatever you do, make sure to flub your turn. You can do this in any number of ways that I usually do:
Flip too far away
Flip too close
Slip on your push off so you hit the lovely wall wave of water that Rowdy talks incessantly about in any Olympic race shorter than 400 meters
Or, go for the triple-header and do all of the above
Glide into the finish on the premise that you don't want to finish with a short, half stroke.
It takes practice to master these things; I have swum the 50 free more than any other event in my Masters career and I'm finally into a groove where I do the above on just about every 50 free I ever race. You've got some deep, mindful, 10,000 Malcolm Gladwell hours of focused practice ahead of you ... but you can do it!
