I'm 35 years old 175cm 64kg male self taught swimmer starting from zero 5 years ago. I swam laps for a while, but soon developed interest and passion in swimming fast over short distances and relentless daily practice.
I have times in all strokes, but use freestyle as main benchmark. First time I tried to swim short course 100m freestyle I timed around 1:40. Over time this improved to 1:35, 1:27, 1:17 and reached a plateau there.
So I went through a year or so of the Starting Strength program, deadlifted 100kg in sets of 5 and squatted 80kg. I began to feel like my body line, explosiveness, starts and push offs improved. Freestyle time didn't improve dramatically, only down to 1:15.
At that point I felt I knew plenty about training of energy systems from Olbrecht, so I decided to only focus on improving my pure speed. I take 17 seconds for a push 25 in 18 strokes at 90-100 spm.
I followed Boomer's Freestyle Reimagined and took my stroke apart 4 weeks ago. A stroke change is clearly going to take 4 months or years to happen, not 4 weeks, but I am beginning to lose the enjoyment. I am hugely motivated to see myself break the 15sec 25m and ultimately the freestyle minute, and have no idea whether it is possible with no youth swimming background.
I posted on the UK Swimming Forum, but had no reply and thought I would post here too in search for tips or similar experiences. Would appreciate any comments!
I've seen an adult successfully join an age group program, and haven't tried that myself. I swam with a masters club for 2 years, which was a lot of fun, but these seem to be geared towards fitness and training rather than focused development of speed. Moreover, I am not quite so fast and fit to join some of the higher profile clubs. I've been to see a number of coaches/swimmers for advice, including Swim Smooth, who all had valuable input, but nothing seemed to really point me towards some a big area of improvement. I feel like I might be missing an obvious one. There are definitely areas like "feel for water" and "stroke efficicency" that remain mystical to me despite having read volumes.
Reading Mastery by John Leonard, I've made myself at peace with the idea of lifetime improvement. My master plan is to break a long course minute by the time I am 49. Therefore rule the 50-59 group at county level and beyond here in the UK.
With 14 years to go, a drop of 1-2 seconds a year initially will get me there, with 0.5-1 second a year later on. In all my naivety, I went on and made a fancy graph showing my historical PBs, trajectory towards a sub minute time, and practice volume by month. The dashed red line is how much practice would need to ramp up relative to historical in order to reach 10,000 hours by the end of that period. This is the most realistic attitude on swimming I've ever allowed myself, but might just be what I need to stick to swimming for a long time.
I feel I could do with a training buddy. None of my friends, family and work colleagues is a swimming enthusiast of similar caliber (borderline obsessive), unfortunately. I thought, therefore, I would post here to see if anyone fancies a virtual buddy. The whole purpose is to hold each other accountable, share the experience, and perhaps exchange ideas. The closer your goals are to my "project 1", the better, but I suppose it can work in any kind of swim training programme, whether it's sprint, distance, open water, club or no club. I'm just looking for somebody to join me on the path to adult onset swimming "mastery".
11379
Reading Mastery by John Leonard, I've made myself at peace with the idea of lifetime improvement. My master plan is to break a long course minute by the time I am 49. Therefore rule the 50-59 group at county level and beyond here in the UK.
With 14 years to go, a drop of 1-2 seconds a year initially will get me there, with 0.5-1 second a year later on. In all my naivety, I went on and made a fancy graph showing my historical PBs, trajectory towards a sub minute time, and practice volume by month. The dashed red line is how much practice would need to ramp up relative to historical in order to reach 10,000 hours by the end of that period. This is the most realistic attitude on swimming I've ever allowed myself, but might just be what I need to stick to swimming for a long time.
I feel I could do with a training buddy. None of my friends, family and work colleagues is a swimming enthusiast of similar caliber (borderline obsessive), unfortunately. I thought, therefore, I would post here to see if anyone fancies a virtual buddy. The whole purpose is to hold each other accountable, share the experience, and perhaps exchange ideas. The closer your goals are to my "project 1", the better, but I suppose it can work in any kind of swim training programme, whether it's sprint, distance, open water, club or no club. I'm just looking for somebody to join me on the path to adult onset swimming "mastery".
11379
