tricep fatigue

I know this is blunt, but it means your triceps are weak and you need to get them stronger.

The fact that you are utilizing your triceps is a good thing. That means you are pushing at the end of your stroke, straightening and extending your arm past your hips. Many people simply pull their hand out of the water after passing the belly instead of shifting from pulling to pushing. If your lats don't seem to strain, I suspect you might just be sliding your arm through the water during the front half of your stroke instead of using your hand to pull yourself through the water. Get some paddles like these: www.swimoutlet.com/.../ and remove the wrist strap. Try pulling using just the middle finger strap. If you don't keep your hands in a position to propel yourself, the paddles will come off.

Something is always going to be the limiting factor. Everybody's body proportions, muscle strength, and limb length ratios are going to be different, so everybody's limiting factors and strengths/weaknesses are going to be different. If your triceps are becoming tired due to a technical error, you are going to be able to see that in a video or via coaching. Otherwise, you may not need a stroke correction and you just might have to get your triceps stronger, or that might just be the way your body is built. Let's not miss the forest (swimming as well as possible overall) for the trees (exactly which muscle gets tired first).

I did 30 x 100 m interval today That's a really hard workout. Maybe some of the guys here do more, but from where I sit, that is huge,

I did 30 x 100 m interval today and started feeling my lats, but my triceps are still the limiting factor.

miklcct, It will really help to have you post a video of your swimming. In one of your previous posts, you mentioned that your stroke count (for a length of a 50 meter pool) ranges from 42 to as high as 64. Your stroke count should NOT change more than 2-3 strokes/length no matter how tired you are. To me, coupled with your comment about tricep fatigue, you may be doing one or both of the following: a) straight arm pulling and/or elbow first pulling w/ a cocked wrist. Either of these will stress the tricep more than the lats or pecs. I also suspect you are NOT doing EVF effectively. We have a fellow at our pool who takes 60 strokes/25 yards. Yup - no joke. His arm is never straight, his elbow always leads the pull, and his hand exits the water in front of his hip. I swim almost 100 yards in the time it takes him to swim 35 yards and I am not going fast. So, putting all of your posts together suggest that your technique is severely limiting. Video is really the only way for this forum to help and finding a coach would also be helpful. Good Luck Paul

miklcct, It will really help to have you post a video of your swimming. In one of your previous posts, you mentioned that your stroke count (for a length of a 50 meter pool) ranges from 42 to as high as 64. Your stroke count should NOT change more than 2-3 strokes/length no matter how tired you are. To me, coupled with your comment about tricep fatigue, you may be doing one or both of the following: a) straight arm pulling and/or elbow first pulling w/ a cocked wrist. Either of these will stress the tricep more than the lats or pecs. I also suspect you are NOT doing EVF effectively. We have a fellow at our pool who takes 60 strokes/25 yards. Yup - no joke. His arm is never straight, his elbow always leads the pull, and his hand exits the water in front of his hip. I swim almost 100 yards in the time it takes him to swim 35 yards and I am not going fast. So, putting all of your posts together suggest that your technique is severely limiting. Video is really the only way for this forum to help and finding a coach would also be helpful. Good Luck Paul I haven't got a video yet because some of the pools I use don't allow video-recording. I joined a session in a club last night and the coach identified some problems in my legs making me slow down, but the club will be suspending training in December so after a month I will be on my own again. Your have mentioned something about elbow first pulling w/ a cocked wrist. That may be exactly my problem when I get tired, at that time I no longer had the ability to do the pull properly. In a drill using paddles, even the first 50 seems very difficult for me despite using small paddles. Let me clarify about my stroke count - 42 is done using excessive gliding and unreproduceable even long period of rest in the same session; 46 is done in the beginning of a session when starting slowly as a kind of warm up; 50 is the minimum sustainable at "continuous slow swimming" (about CSS + 10"), requiring me to mentally count it every lap; 54 is about the number where I start an interval set at my maximum sustainable pace; 58 is when I start to get tired and working hard to sustain the pace; and 62 is the number where I am breaking down, telling me to stop my set. i.e. the vastly different stroke counts are done at different combinations of speeds and intensities. Btw, what I am doing in these weeks are: 1 - 2 USRPT sessions (at most 30 x 100 m on 15 - 20 s rest, upgrading my target when I can do them all - just passed the 2'5" / 100 m target on Monday and will do 2'0" / 100 m afterwards) ​1 sprint session - swim 50 - 200 s as fast as possible with long recovery periods, may include a little technique work if time allows 1 coached session in my swim club - this session is labelled "improvers" and suitable for people in 2'0" - 2'20" / 100 m range - with a lot of drills 1 open water session

16-17, and I am 5'7-1/2"

Yes, we are counting strokes the same way. Yes, SPL should not be much different when sprinting vs longer distances. SPL is more a function of fatigue. You are suggesting that your SPL changes alot between both distance and speed. Based on your earlier posts, your SPL does change alot between both effort and distance. Neither should happen. Bottom line, your stroke technique needs alot of improvement in efficiency. Watch the faster swimmers around you, count their strokes, see if you can imitate them. Without video, we cannot help. Without video, anything we offer is purely speculation. Paul

For whatever it is worth in benchmarking, my sprint 25's take 19-20 strokes per 25 yards. I'm pretty short, 5'8", or about 1.7M by non-US standards. My 100's are 16, my 200's are 14, and my 500's are 13 (I was hitting 14 about half the time at the end of a 40x50 set this AM). Extrapolating (which one shouldn't do!!!!!), for longer sets, I'd probably be about 30 per 50M. If you are at 50 for a regular stroke, I suspect that you are not getting good reach and you are not engaging your lats. For whatever strange reason, what killed me this morning was leg cramps in my quads from pushoffs. Never had that happen before.