From another thread:
> I have no interest in short distances since I have no fast-twitch fibers to speak of.
It's been decades since I was a physiology student, but I have to wonder if fast twitch fibers would be really all that useful to swimming, even to the short sprints. Maybe for 25s. I would think that larger cross sectional area of the swimming musculature (more available power) and the ability to recruit more muscle fibers simultaneously (using a larger fraction of the power on tap) would be more important for sprinting. Are there published studies which demonstrate that drop dead sprinters have a significantly different distribution of fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers than the rest of the swimming population?
I can't explain Dara except that maybe she missed her true calling, but this does explain why you're able to blast from the 50 to the 1650.
Odd, I just watched a video on Dara Torres this weekend where she herself says that only her results and one other teammate were 75% fast twitch and the others were closer to 50/50.
It's somewhere in this mess: http://youtu.be/lQsdJiT1OQM
If I have time later I'll find the correct spot.
myself was 55% red (the slow) and 45% white (the fast).
This maybe the case but ewoks are obviously faster per inch than humans. However you interpret the data you are one fast little ewok!!!! :)
patrick,
to my recollection i have not swum the 1650 since 1987. swc champs to be exact. if my aged memory is correct.
were you and i both in the finals?
egad why do i even want to remember that let alone do it again???OK, I stand corrected ... 50 to 1000, but I'm confident you could knock out a great 1650.
As for SWC champs, unfortunately, I know I swam it every year, but I think '87 was the only year I swam it well. I would really love to find old copies of meet results for those years as that was in my pre-blogging, but post-notebook-logging days of swimming.
Freshman year, I actually typed all my workouts into whatever word processor came with my Mac, but, alas, those files are lost now. I really wish I had them, though.
I'm guessing my fiber composition is 0% slow twitch and 67% percent FT. The remaining percent is just missing
Never been tested, but if I were I'd guess they'd find my composition to be 25% fast-twitch, 25% slow-twitch, and 50% no-twitch.
