Hello!
I´m from Germany 25 years old and I hope my english is understandable... :)
I´m swimming for 3 years now, and I really love it and want to be as good as i can!
For the last year i started practicing very hard. 5-7 times a week, but i have the problem that i dont see any improvements in the 50m of any stroke...
I dont have a Trainer, and there are no forums like this in german where i could ask someone. at the moment i´m swimming with someone i know from university (but he is a much better swimmer than me, 25.2s on 50m) but he doesnt know how to help either, hes just telling me to keep training^^ thats what i will do anyway!!
Maybe someone has experienced a similiar problem and knows how to fix it. i will try to explain where the problems in my swimming skills are...
when i started swimming and learned the techniques by myself, watchning youtube videos and reading a lot of books about swimming i have been improving very fast until i swim ~30s on 50m short course. that was about 1,5years after i started. about half a year later i was down to 28.8s on 50m short course, but from this point on wasnt improving anymore. that 28.8 is still my best time...
last weekend i swam 30.1 on 50m long course. i dont understand it because i put so much effort in my swimming training, and i got better i.e. in holding good times in intervalls, or in 100m and 200m and longer distances. but no improvement in 50m. i believe i´m naturally a sprinter, i always was, in evry sport i did, canoeing, and bicycling which i first did on the street but then changed to velodrome. still i love swimming more than any other sport i did.
that 30.1 makes me kind of upset... so that i want to train even harder >.
My feeling is you've probably reached the limit of your speed with your current swimming technique. Your kick seems like an obvious problem area. Keep working on it. How is your ankle flexibility? Good kicker tend to have very flexible ankles. For your pull are you getting into a high elbow position as early as possible? Fast swimmers get their forearm into a nearly vertical (pointing down at the pool bottom) position early in the stroke to maximize propulsion. How about your starts and your turns?
I think it would be worthwhile for you to find a coach/trainer who could look at your strokes and point you in the right direction. Very often what you think you're doing in the water and what you are really doing are not the same at all!
My feeling is you've probably reached the limit of your speed with your current swimming technique. Your kick seems like an obvious problem area. Keep working on it. How is your ankle flexibility? Good kicker tend to have very flexible ankles. For your pull are you getting into a high elbow position as early as possible? Fast swimmers get their forearm into a nearly vertical (pointing down at the pool bottom) position early in the stroke to maximize propulsion. How about your starts and your turns?
I think it would be worthwhile for you to find a coach/trainer who could look at your strokes and point you in the right direction. Very often what you think you're doing in the water and what you are really doing are not the same at all!
