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.
This seems so obvious, yet the vast majority of coaches that I have ever known seem to completely ignore (or only give lip service to) the importance of sprint speed. If you can't break :15 for a 25, you certainly can't break 1:00 for a 100, yet they never assign tasks designed to build raw speed. Read Coach Tom Topolski's post, "Do your swimmers know their spot?"
This is such a fundamental point. I'm convinced I wouldn't be able to sustain stomach-churning anaerobic sets long term on my own in public swimming pools without knowing I can ever achieve the necessary speed. So I want to see a sub 15 push 25m. It would probably serve my thread better to title it "break 15 second 25 SCM", because I seem stuck trying to get below 16-17.
I have doubts about this concept, though. Can you really "hack" swimming development this way? Can you mostly work on pure speed and become a sprinter capable of then sharpening the energy systems to the point your new speed can be taken through an entire 100? Or have you missed something in the process by not doing tons of slower swimming like everyone else? Is this really a shortcut coaches don't normally take, but could?
This seems so obvious, yet the vast majority of coaches that I have ever known seem to completely ignore (or only give lip service to) the importance of sprint speed. If you can't break :15 for a 25, you certainly can't break 1:00 for a 100, yet they never assign tasks designed to build raw speed. Read Coach Tom Topolski's post, "Do your swimmers know their spot?"
This is such a fundamental point. I'm convinced I wouldn't be able to sustain stomach-churning anaerobic sets long term on my own in public swimming pools without knowing I can ever achieve the necessary speed. So I want to see a sub 15 push 25m. It would probably serve my thread better to title it "break 15 second 25 SCM", because I seem stuck trying to get below 16-17.
I have doubts about this concept, though. Can you really "hack" swimming development this way? Can you mostly work on pure speed and become a sprinter capable of then sharpening the energy systems to the point your new speed can be taken through an entire 100? Or have you missed something in the process by not doing tons of slower swimming like everyone else? Is this really a shortcut coaches don't normally take, but could?
