The Fastest Age

Masters is about each individual setting their own goals and not letting comparisons with other swimmers determine their success! I am in agreement. We all have different lifestyles and different goals as to what we would like to attain from swimming. I do it for the fun, to stay in shape, and the great feeling I get everytime I swim a personal best!;)

Originally posted by SWinkleblech As a music teacher it is well known that children can learn something much faster then an adult. You can start teaching a child and an adult to play the piano at the same time and you will find the child picking up on playing much faster then the adult. I coached at a swim camp last summer where we observed much the same thing. Although the teenagers were, in general, better swimmers than the younger kids when they came into the camp, the younger kids picked things up much more easily. But it appeared that a lot of the problem was not so much that the teens had a harder time learning - it was that they had more wrong things to unlearn. My five year old daughter just the other day told me to watch her and she did a backstroke flip turn. She learned this just by watching me do it in my workouts. No one ever taught her. No one ever taught me, either, and I was a lot older than your daughter when I started doing them (I won't say exactly how old, since I still don't admit to being that old!) Yet a member of my masters team as trouble even thinking about learning to do the backstroke flipturn. She was never taught how to do it when she was younger. She quit swimming before the backstroke flip turn was allowed in swimming. Now that she has returned to swimming she says she sticking with the way she knows how. I think this would give the "late-bloomer a disadvantage" along with a million other factors that have been mentioned in this never ending thread. Luckily, I didn't have that problem. Since I didn't do competitive swimming when I was younger, I never learned or even saw the older way of doing backstroke turns. That may be why I was able to learn backstroke flip turns without much trouble. Bob

Originally posted by SWinkleblech I am in agreement. We all have different lifestyles and different goals as to what we would like to attain from swimming. I do it for the fun, to stay in shape, and the great feeling I get everytime I swim a personal best!;) Absolutely we all do this for different reasons. Whatever your reasons are, if they get you into the pool, how can they be bad? Here is my reason. You get up in the morning before your spouse, kids, neighbors, co-workers - basically everyone but the other swimmers and the guy who has to make the donuts:) . You get to the pool, shower, stretch, adjust goggles, etc. Then you take off on your warm-up. You look at the pace clock and think - geeze, that was really slow today. But as the cobwebs work out of your head and body you start to get faster. Your lungs start to "open up". Your blood starts pumping. During the main set, you start to really feel good. Now your times are where they should be. (Where they should be for you - not for someone else who swims more or less, harder or not as hard, more focus on technique or less, late-bloomer or not - just comared to you.) Finally, you complete a warm down, stretch, shower, etc. But you are buzzing - you feel the "swimmer's hgh" (and NO, runners do not have exclusive rights to that high). That is the part that is the best. That is why I do this. Yes, I have lost weight. Yes, I am in better shape. Yes, I am faster than I was when I started a year and a half ago. But the reason I come back is I think I am addicted to that high. The one that stays with me until at least mid-afternoon. The one that makes me more productive than the guy who drinks four cups of coffee in the morning to wake up. Maybe I am alone in feeling this way, but I doubt it. I realize that this is off topic - but hey, this thread has been on and off topic so many times, I figured one more time wouldn't hurt. And I didn't insult anybody - not even once!:rolleyes:

Darn, I figured with that long post I may have added the next page!:mad:

Originally posted by aquageek Assuming all things being equal, how much of an advantage could an early blooming swimmer expect to see over a late bloomer DUE SOLELY to V02Max? Swamp Thing, if I may call you that, that's an excellent question and seems to be at the heart of Ion's theory. Once again, I am not an exercise physiologist. I believe that you lose a substantial amount of your VO2max when you stop training. Regaining VO2max requires hard work. An age grouper that walks away from swimming and doesn't train for twenty years will have lost the physiological adaptations to exercise that he or she worked so hard to acquire. Many of us continued to swim but not seriously or consistently, and perhaps tried to keep ourselves reasonably fit and trim. So perhaps we've maintained some of the VO2max we once had, as well as some of the muscle mass. The real difference between a former age grouper and a late starter is in my opinion superior technique. Face it, most skills (sports, music, language) are acquired more readily in childhood.

Do these threads get capped off once they reach a certain size or do USMS run till the server harddrives burst???? ............:rolleyes: ....wonder which blithering idiot started this one.....:rolleyes: oooooooooooppppppppppppppssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss..............it was me...:rolleyes:

Mark, 5-7 hours is about right for what time is available for me. When I started swimming Masters 3.5 years ago, I was way behind the other swimmers. MAny were former age group swimmers. It took time, but there is only one in the group I cannot pass and he is a foot taller than me, and I threaten him every day. Now granted we don't have a real competive group, most are not competing, just there for fitness. But I progressed in several ways. I improved my water conditioning. I was in good condition for a "fat person", did lots of land based cardio and weights, but we all know swimming is a different animal. How many runners try to swim and are shocked at how hard it is! My big improvement came this past year. Two things happened, I had a friend really look at my freestyle and "fix" a lot of my flaws, although they are still there, I am more conscious about them, and I dropped 35 pounds. Since the process of improving my stroke and losing weight were happening during the same time period, Dec-02 thru May-03 I cannot say which had more affect. The improvement was dramatic especially in distance. I did a timed 1650 in November 02 in a little over 31 minutes(whew speedster:). By May I had it down to 29 minutes, now I am stuck at 27 minutes and until I fix more flaws in my free it will probably stay there. BTW these are practice times, never raced this and don't WANT to.

Originally posted by aquageek Conversely, if an early bloomer like myself trains 1/3 of what Ion does (yet smokes him in times), has poor training habits and is generally a slacker, would a late bloomer who obsessively trains and has no life other than swimming still be at a disadvantage DUE SOLELY TO V02Max? You answered your own question. You win because of technique. The same reason I easily pass the guy in the next lane who is sprinting with twice my stroke rate while I'm swimming an easy warmup. Every day he sprints his heart out but never changes his technique. If you want to beat Ion in the 1000, you might have to train more seriously and build up your %VO2max (which is more of a factor in longer events).

Originally posted by sparx35 Do these threads get capped off once they reach a certain size or do USMS run till the server harddrives burst???? ............:rolleyes: ....wonder which blithering idiot started this one.....:rolleyes: oooooooooooppppppppppppppssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss..............it was me...:rolleyes: You might be able to lock the htread, so tere are no more posts to it.. I think, since you;re the starter of it.

Originally posted by gull80 ... Maglischo cites numerous studies showing loss of these adaptations when training stops. Do they lie dormant for decades, as Ion suggests, only to be "reawakened" years later? I doubt it. ... I think they do, as was noted here too: Originally posted by Conniekat8 ... 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. ... All because of their capillaries, mitochondria, and myoglobin. ... I think that muscle physiology allowing to absorb the highest percentage of VO2Max when swimming is developed mostly in the growing years of a person. I.e.: the capillaries, mitochandria and myoglobin in the swimming muscles are developed at most in the growing years; when one doesn't swim much, this development is partially lost; when one starts to re-train, some of this development that was lost comes back, easier than it is for an adult swimmer to do this level of development from scratch; this beats technique.