How do you improve swimming times for a shorter swimmer?
Former Member
After a few meets this year, I feel pretty demotivated for swimming. I am a 5"7 swimmer who has huge disadvantages against taller swimmers, I did heavy off-season training and consider myself a decent to moderately fast swimmer. I go around a 57.63 100 Butterfly SCY, 53.21 100 Free and feel like i'm running into a brick wall in the past few meets. I have natural disadvantages such as small hands and size 8.5 feet but a rather large armspan around 6 foot. I wonder what I can do to improve as a shorter swimmer, and since states is around the corner and tapering is about to start. My goal is a 52-53 100 Butterfly as that will probably bring me to all-state or a 53.27 national cut would be nice. If you can add some suggestions it would be nice.
You are going to have a disadvantage on the surface because longer boats are faster on the surface.Fortunately in a 25 yd pool you don't have to be on the surface much.Get killer SDKs and use every inch of the 15M underwater.In Masters, Leslie Livingston is relatively short,has totally awesome SDKs and breaks world records.(Or you can change to breaststroke where swimmers like Kitajima show that short guys can rule.I'm 5'8"and a breaststroker so I'm a little biased.)
Thanks Allen.
I am, as Allen notes, relatively short for a swimmer at 5'4". When I first started masters, I must admit I envied the taller swimmers. (Many of my competitors are 5'10".) However, they have no advantage underwater so I did focus, quite obsessively, on underwater dolphin kicking for backstroke and fly. I'm now experimenting with using it more in my freestyle races. Now, I barely notice things like height.
There are some elite male HS swimmers who are small. One of them in my area, Andrew Seliskar is 5'8 or 5'9.
And though Patrick is a foot taller than me (and younger), he refuses to gridge me in the 50 back!
You are going to have a disadvantage on the surface because longer boats are faster on the surface.Fortunately in a 25 yd pool you don't have to be on the surface much.Get killer SDKs and use every inch of the 15M underwater.In Masters, Leslie Livingston is relatively short,has totally awesome SDKs and breaks world records.(Or you can change to breaststroke where swimmers like Kitajima show that short guys can rule.I'm 5'8"and a breaststroker so I'm a little biased.)
Thanks Allen.
I am, as Allen notes, relatively short for a swimmer at 5'4". When I first started masters, I must admit I envied the taller swimmers. (Many of my competitors are 5'10".) However, they have no advantage underwater so I did focus, quite obsessively, on underwater dolphin kicking for backstroke and fly. I'm now experimenting with using it more in my freestyle races. Now, I barely notice things like height.
There are some elite male HS swimmers who are small. One of them in my area, Andrew Seliskar is 5'8 or 5'9.
And though Patrick is a foot taller than me (and younger), he refuses to gridge me in the 50 back!
