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.
I thought I would post back to say I've managed to drop 5 seconds by swimming a 1:11 short course metres
I've implemented stroke advice that radically changed the way I swim 100m freestyle – much flatter hips with less body roll, little or no 'extension' out front, just high elbows (or so I try). This seems to suit my body build much more than trying to extend and reach far on each stroke. Reaching appears to throw my alignment off balance and create wiggling and lots of frontal drag.
In addition I've done a good number of USRPT sets that allowed me to swim at ever faster stroke rate without getting swamped by lactate. In video of my personal best I maintain around 110 spm. With USRPT comes a lot of controversy (especially in the topics of drills, aids and kicking) but I have to say it worked well for me. In particular the fact that most of my sessions took 20 intense minutes during which I would do 100 warm-up, 10-20 x 25 short rest race pace and 100 cool-down (and job done).
The dream is still 59 seconds (short course is fine), so while it's great to drop 5 seconds, there are still 12 more to go. My raw speed per 25 has increased somewhat to 16 seconds push to feet. I suspect this really needs to be 14 seconds.
My stroke above and under water now looks like this:
www.youtube.com/watchwww.youtube.com/watch
Any thoughts beyond what's already been said that would help me get from 16 seconds per 25 to 15 and 14?
Thanks!
I thought I would post back to say I've managed to drop 5 seconds by swimming a 1:11 short course metres
I've implemented stroke advice that radically changed the way I swim 100m freestyle – much flatter hips with less body roll, little or no 'extension' out front, just high elbows (or so I try). This seems to suit my body build much more than trying to extend and reach far on each stroke. Reaching appears to throw my alignment off balance and create wiggling and lots of frontal drag.
In addition I've done a good number of USRPT sets that allowed me to swim at ever faster stroke rate without getting swamped by lactate. In video of my personal best I maintain around 110 spm. With USRPT comes a lot of controversy (especially in the topics of drills, aids and kicking) but I have to say it worked well for me. In particular the fact that most of my sessions took 20 intense minutes during which I would do 100 warm-up, 10-20 x 25 short rest race pace and 100 cool-down (and job done).
The dream is still 59 seconds (short course is fine), so while it's great to drop 5 seconds, there are still 12 more to go. My raw speed per 25 has increased somewhat to 16 seconds push to feet. I suspect this really needs to be 14 seconds.
My stroke above and under water now looks like this:
www.youtube.com/watchwww.youtube.com/watch
Any thoughts beyond what's already been said that would help me get from 16 seconds per 25 to 15 and 14?
Thanks!
