This thread is reminiscent of the recent thread 'Stroke Length versus Rate' by Bill White, if I recall well.
In another recent thread -'Distance per stroke'-, it appeared that slowing down the stroke -which easily increases the distance per stroke-, is a benefit.
It is a benefit to some degree, but it is not an absolute benefit.
To slow down the rate just to increase the length, that's detrimental overall in speed.
An absolute benefit is when an optimum rate to length ratio is found for each swimmer.
For my improvement now, with my current length, I need a higher rate, or cadence.
At the beginning of today's workout, the approximate following discussion took place between me and a teammate, who used to swim in age-group swimming at Mission Viejo, California.
Me: "Look at that swimmer. He is my height, takes one or two strokes per 25 yards more than I take (i.e.: takes 16 or 17 strokes per 25 yards) , yet he is faster than me."
She: "It's not in the Stroke Length that he gets you. Your Stroke Length is fine. It is with a faster cadence that he gets you."
Me: "There are people posting in the Masters Swimming Forum and there is the Total Immersion book, that emphasize to slow down the cadence only, and therefore to increase the stroke length."
(My note: the Total Immersion book does this emphasis only, by dismissing the benefits of cadence, starting in page 31; it wrongly believes that in time it is more worthy to work on stroke length than on the quickly declining stroke cadence).
She: "I never bought into Total Immersion."
Me: "Neither did I. In 1990, when I was in Canada at my peak, and being coached in a club by a coach who is now coach of the Canadian Olympic Team, when swimming the 100 meters freestyle, he was urging me to increase my arm cadence. Since that peak, I lost in cadence, because I lost alertness."
Me: "How do I increase the cadence?
Isn't this higher cadence obtained with VO2Max (i.e.: oxygen fueling the swimming muscles), with fast-twitch swimming muscles and striated tissue that are developed best when a swimmer has a teenager growing body, and obtained also by physical conditioning?"
She: "It's the mental that commands the physical conditioning.
Think of the rhythm: tak_tak_tak... (type 1, like Matt Biondi is),
as opposed to: tak___tak___tak... (type 2),
as opposed to: tak_____tak_____tak... (type 3),
and as opposed to: tak_______tak_______tak... (type 4).
In distance swimming, you are a type 4 in the arms.
(My note: in the 2002 Long Course Nationals, I think that I was prepared by another coach -a neglectful coach-, as a type 4 in the arms).
When swimming distance, force yourself mentally to turn your arms in the rhythm tak_____tak_____tak... (type 3), and when swimming sprints, force yourself mentally to turn your arms in the rhythm tak____tak____tak... (type 2)."
After today's workout, the approximate following comments took place between me and the coach.
Me: "Kelly says that I have a type 4 cadence in the arms.
How do I quicken my cadence?"
Coach: "What we can do is to slow down your aerobic base send-offs, so that with more rest you can increase the quality in each swim, and develop more gears for speeds."
Me: "What I don't understand is how come I have a quick cadence in kicking, and a slow cadence (type 4) in the arms."
(My note: there were days around Christmas 2002, training Long Course, when I was kicking with a kickboard, 50 meters repeats leaving every 55 seconds while coming in 50 seconds. This is a very fast kicking for the Masters Swimming level. Overall, swimming in Masters Swimming in my age group, I am not very fast, but in long endurance swims I rank higher than in sprints).
Coach: "Are you coming tomorrow at UCSD, and watch the dual meet between UCSD and UC Santa Cruz? I have a late starter in swimming like you, who can kick fast and cannot move her arms quickly. Late starters in swimming are like that."
(My note: the coach is also coaching the middle-distance and the distance group of swimmers for the UCSD college team).
Me: "Isn't this because of VO2Max (i.e.: oxygen fueling the swimming muscles), and because of fast-twitch swimming muscles and striated tissue that are developed best when a swimmer has a teenager growing body?"
I think so.
I started to swim in public swim at age 25, and joined my first swimming club at age 28.
Under these conditions, what I did is very good, and now what I hope for, is to restore my own level from mid-90s and go from there...
Former Member
Originally posted by jim thornton
Ion,
Permit me to clarify and simplify, from my point of view, what you are saying.
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Are these assumptions correct?
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Yes.
Originally posted by jim thornton
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As far as C slowing down with age, I had not thought about this before, and I am not sure it is true. Or put it this way: we probably all slow down a little, but how significant is the decline. Could my 25 year old self skip rope twice as fast as I can now at 50? I suspect I might have skipped faster back then--but not hugely so.
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The peak times of Hall and Vendt, done with their own peak Cadences (or 'Tempos') of 59.0 cycles per minute, and 51.1 cycles per minute, cannot be reproduced by Hall and Vendt with less physical conditioning than they were, and cannot be reproduced by Hall and Vendt much later on in life.
Training-wise, if Hall and Vendt will join later on in life the more modest Masters Swimming, they will have their tremendous Stroke Length, but not their lifetime peak Cadences:
Masters Swimmers train more casually than Olympians, including the physical fitness to generate the top Cadence.
Age-wise (i.e.: "...but how significant is the decline."), probably with focused training over the years, the Cadence declines a little bit in step with how the heart rate declines, which is relatively not much.
The key is to have the proper training, obtaining the peak Cadence and maintaining as much of it.
In yesterday's workout, the woman swimmer who used to be an age-group swimmer at Mission Viejo and told me about the types of Cadence, was shouting at me to sprint 25s with my highest Cadence.
The result was that doing these 25s at the end of an aerobic workout, one day after a speed workout, so under extreme fatigue, I produced one 25 yards sprint from push of the wall, in 12.xx seconds.
I am thinking:
"No wonder I lost many years, before focusing now on Cadence, an important parameter in speed.".
Ion,
There has been some very good points brought out in this discussion. Things to think about though is cadence isn't everything, I can get my cadence (arm turnover rate) faster than Gary Hall, that doesn't mean I will swim faster than him (It means I will have shorten my stroke or I am letting my arm slip through the water so each arm stroke is very inefficient). The bicycle analogy was pretty good, another way of thinking this is take a motorized vehicle (a Hummer is pretty close for this comparison)- say 1 gallon of gas in first gear at 6000 rpm, traveling at 20 mph will get you 2 miles (your all out sprint cadence). If you shift your car into second gear that same at 3000 RPM maintaining 20 mph will get you 2 miles with only using 1/2 gallon of gas (assuming we are taking a 2:1 gear ration from first gear or we could keep the same RPM (cadence) of 6000 and travel the same distance in a faster time. You could switch gears again to get even better performance but at some point your engine will bog down because you are trying to push gears that are too hard. I think this is a little better analogy since our body does have a fuel tank with a limited supply of energy, it can be conditioned to perform better but at some point a just a higher turnover rate or a more efficient arm pull with a lower turn over rate will not equate into more speed(hence in the racing world they are always tuning gear ratios - for boats its prop size and pitch in order to find the best performance) its a matter of finding a balance. Your 12.xx time is good, but do you think you could maintain that stroke cadence for a 50,100, 200 ? 50 maybe a 100 but for a 200 you will have to shift things around a little because of that limited power supply (and your bodied ability to rid of the waste buildup). Keep experimenting - remember you will learn from your mistakes as well as your successes.
Jeff
PS - just kidding about the Hummer
Does a low stroke count cause excellent and fast swimming, or does excellent and fast swimming cause low stroke count? If cities with a lot of country music have more suicides, does one cause the other? I think JimT's comment about breathing is interesting. An excellent distance swimmer with 15 strokes per length gets 7 breaths every 15 seconds (holding minutes per hundred) . Meanwhile, as a slower swimmer, if I am at 18 strokes per length, I get 9 breaths every 25 seconds (holding 1:40 per hundred). this is a lot less air. If I go to 16 strokes and 8 breaths it seems to hurt, not help. The less breaths does not make me go faster than 1:40. In fact it is slower and it does not feel good at all.
I agree with you Ion that speed declines with age. Just because there are some 45 plus people doing near best times or best times doesn't mean that everyone else does. The times for women in 50 yard freestyle from the 20's to the 45-49 age group proves your point. The youngest age group have a national qualifying time of 27.98 for 19-24 year olds and 29.83 for women in the 45 to 49 year old age group. Other age groups in their 20's to early 40's are in-between. But the decline really starts to take place with the 45 to 49 age group. For example in the younger age groups in 100 yard freestyle the time is between 1:01.97 to 1:02.97 for the 40 to 44, but over a 3 second jump to 1:06.15 in the 45 to 49 age group. In strokes like breastroke and butterfly and backstroke there are more differences between the age groups 45 plus and the younger age groups in 50's and 100's. For example, the 19 to 24 age women 50 yard backstroke is 32.64 and the 45 to 49 age group time is 35.82. In butterfly the 50 yard time is 30.96 and in the 45 to 49 age is 32.62. Also, their is over a 3 second difference in breastroke. In the 19 to 24 year old age group the National qualifying time is 36.63 and in the 45 to 49 age group its 40.11. And the 100's in breastroke and butterfly and backstoke their are bigger time gaps.
My 2 cents worth…
No matter at what age you start training, you need to work very hard to reach the top.
Working hard does not mean doing mega yardage.
Working hard means focusing hard on training right.
You need to begin with efficiency in the water, also called proper technique.
Efficient swimmers take less strokes per length.
Efficiency takes a lot of hard work in paying attention to how your hands and arms are pitched underwater. A quarter of an inch the wrong way can be crucial.
There are different cadences for each distance that you race. The 50 is different from the 100, the 100 different from the 200, etc.
You need to work hard at determining and using the different cadences for each distance.
This can be practiced by training at the different cadences. Train at the cadence you want to use in your race.
You need sprint enduance for each race, not workout enduance for mega yardage.
In general, sprinters focus on a quick catch with a steady kick and instant downward press while distance swimmers focus on a catch up stroke and integrated kick.
Power and strength in the water are critical to speed and stroke length, this is not power and strength in the weight room.
Individuals vary in their strength, flexibility and mental focus. One drill that helps one swimmer might ruin another.
A really good coach can discern what a swimmers good stroke assets are and help eliminate the poor ones. Most masters coaches unfortunately are "group trainers" and only by individual instruction can you gain insight into your stroke analysis.
There are enough videos of great swimmers around that anyone can readily study.
A word to the wise is sufficient. If you can determine what you need to do, it is your responsibility to do it. A swimmer can be told in five minutes what to do, but it might take them five years of hard work to do it.
Originally posted by cinc310
I agree with you Ion that speed declines with age. Just because there are some 45 plus people doing near best times or best times doesn't mean that everyone else does.
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Yes.
I think that Richard Abrahams in Swim Magazine from Nov/Dec 2002, is on to something that works in the only exceptional cases that exist:
"You have to trick yourself," he explains. "A lot of our workouts are designed to trick ourselves into performing at a really high level."
I agree with some of what Mr Abrams said. Its hard to do what he is talking about-it takes guts. I tried to swim a 100 yard breastroke at full speed and the last 25 I died-this was in practice. Maybe, its because I'm not in prime shape and breastroke is a more difficult stroke than freestyle. The underwater pulling takes your breath away.
Thank you for the kine remarks.....By integrated kicking I mean kicking in synchronization with the arm stroke. This is whether you have a 2,4 or 6 beat kick. If you have a six beat kick, beat #1 and 4 should be timed when the downbeat is kicking the entering arm forward. When the right foot kicks down on beat 1, the right arm enters the water, left foot kicks down when the left arm enters the water at beat #4. Hope this helps......it takes practice.....
Swimmers age at different times, depending on how you have abused your body in your lifetime and from genetic programing. One of the first things you notice is that the breaststroke pulldowns begin to get difficult. You need to decide between getting an advantage in doing the pull down and paying for it with increased oxygen debt. That is why you see a lot of older swimmers not doing it and not doing flip turns. Not easy getting old. It is a lot more physically painful to swim in competition, but we keep doing it.......
