The Fastest Age

I sent a message to an MD friend of mine, who is also an avid and accomplished swimmer. You guys might be interested in reading his quick professional opinion. >>There's a guy in another group that's been making a lot of arguments about VO2Max and how his swimming is bad because he never swam as a kid, and therefore the blood vessels that deliver the flow into his triceps are underdeveloped as compared to an elite swimmer that had been swimming as a kid.<"The Three Riddles of Swimming," one of which was why people who take up the sport as kids seem to have a lifelong advantage over those who take it up as adults. A related "riddle" was why swimmers needed to train such insanely long distances to swim such short races. I agree with your friend that part of his problem is the undercapillarization of his triceps, lats, etc., relative to swimmers like Andy Miller-Bray, who at age 45 made the USA swimming national open water team which competed at world championships in Barcelona last summer. In the mid-70s, when Andy was a teenager, he was swimming probably a hundred thousand meters a week at Mission Viejo, building up a rich capillary bed around muscle fibers which were previously "white" and relatively avascular. Over the years, I've seen lots of old guys who were former youth swimmers get into the water after a long layoff. First couple of days, they're not so tough. After a month, they are kicking some serious butt. I think it's much more related to muscle physiology than to technique. I don't think that VO2 max enters into it all that much. There isn't a very close relationship at all between VO2 max and performance in swimming (unlike running and cycling and x-c skiing, where there is a significant relationship). It's more related to the "redness" of the swimming muscles...how many capillaries, how many mitochondria, how much myoglobin (all things which make red muscle red). Have you ever noticed how you push off the wall for the first of your warm-up laps and you feel so strong and effortless for the first 50 or so, and then it becomes more of a chore? I do. It's because of the accumulation of lactate, because of the relatively poor ability of my undervascularized and overly white swimming muscles to burn it up and/or transport it away. This fall off in "ease" after the first 50 doesn't happen in high level swimmers, because they produce less lactate, burn it up faster, and carry it away more efficiently. All because of their capillaries, mitochondria, and myoglobin. It's the duck wing/turkey wing thing that I talk about so often.

I sent a message to an MD friend of mine, who is also an avid and accomplished swimmer. You guys might be interested in reading his quick professional opinion. >>There's a guy in another group that's been making a lot of arguments about VO2Max and how his swimming is bad because he never swam as a kid, and therefore the blood vessels that deliver the flow into his triceps are underdeveloped as compared to an elite swimmer that had been swimming as a kid.<"The Three Riddles of Swimming," one of which was why people who take up the sport as kids seem to have a lifelong advantage over those who take it up as adults. A related "riddle" was why swimmers needed to train such insanely long distances to swim such short races. I agree with your friend that part of his problem is the undercapillarization of his triceps, lats, etc., relative to swimmers like Andy Miller-Bray, who at age 45 made the USA swimming national open water team which competed at world championships in Barcelona last summer. In the mid-70s, when Andy was a teenager, he was swimming probably a hundred thousand meters a week at Mission Viejo, building up a rich capillary bed around muscle fibers which were previously "white" and relatively avascular. Over the years, I've seen lots of old guys who were former youth swimmers get into the water after a long layoff. First couple of days, they're not so tough. After a month, they are kicking some serious butt. I think it's much more related to muscle physiology than to technique. I don't think that VO2 max enters into it all that much. There isn't a very close relationship at all between VO2 max and performance in swimming (unlike running and cycling and x-c skiing, where there is a significant relationship). It's more related to the "redness" of the swimming muscles...how many capillaries, how many mitochondria, how much myoglobin (all things which make red muscle red). Have you ever noticed how you push off the wall for the first of your warm-up laps and you feel so strong and effortless for the first 50 or so, and then it becomes more of a chore? I do. It's because of the accumulation of lactate, because of the relatively poor ability of my undervascularized and overly white swimming muscles to burn it up and/or transport it away. This fall off in "ease" after the first 50 doesn't happen in high level swimmers, because they produce less lactate, burn it up faster, and carry it away more efficiently. All because of their capillaries, mitochondria, and myoglobin. It's the duck wing/turkey wing thing that I talk about so often.