Yep Connie has been swimming 7 months, and no age group swimming. Ion has been swimming 16 years, no age group swimming.
One other thing that bothers me. Ion began at 28. Most 28 year old men are in pretty good shape, still have lots of athletic ability left in their young bodies.
I wish I had learned to swim at 28 instead of 38. I believe I would be at Nationals with Q times now! I was in the best shape of my life then, even after having a baby 2 years before!
Hey Connie-
You swim with Brian Godell-how awesome! One of my swimming heros growing up-gotta love those distance swimmers (well-most of them)! I think he still held a NAG record up until this year. Wish American dominance would return to the longer events, though I don't mind sharing with the Aussies. Europeans are another story.
Originally posted by aquageek
Ion:
...
At SCY Nats in Tempe last year, you placed 14/18 in your age group in the 1000 (#18 was DQ). You placed 59/67 in your age group in the 100. If being in the bottom 10% of your age group qualifies you as "near the top" then sign me up, amigo.
...
Swampy
Swampygeek,
being in the bottom 10% in the 40 to 44 age group at the USMS Nationals qualifies as "near the top" in all USMS, the ones who go and the ones who don't go to the Nationals:
all USMS.
Originally posted by aquageek
Ion:
...
This is a tired habit of yours when your other arguments fall apart.
...
No Swampygeek, nothing fell apart.
Even Craig explained to your slow thinking that you need VO2Max for the 1,000 free.
The same theory still stands.
Originally posted by dorothyrd
My son was pushed up into the higher training levels because of his speed at 10. Because of that at 16 he is fighting some technique issues. His "VO2" is probably great based on ION's theory, but what he is lacking is some technique that is holding him back from achieving things like Y-nat cuts. The coach recognizes this, is working hard to correct it, and I see some improvements, and with these improvements has come a drop in time 200 free 2:02 to 1:56 this year. Just this year my son has told me he can now feel when the stroke goes bad and that makes him correct.
I think this is one of the more profound statements in this entire thread!
I was rather startled several months ago to read a statement by a former Olympic swimmer in which he said that he thought a competitive swimmer should, for the first 2 or 3 years, not worry about speed at all, but focus entirely on perfecting technique.
Of course, I doubt that very many kids have the maturity to actually do this. But they at least have the advantage that the swimmers they are racing against are also (if their coaches are good) focusing primarily on perfecting their technique. And they also know that they are too young to compete in the Olympics this year, regardless of how good their times are.
While swimmers who begin competing as adults hopefully have more maturity, they also have the disadvantage of having to race against swimmers who have, for the most part, perfected their technique and who are now focusing on speed in their training. And they may also feel a certain urgency about accomplishing their goals, since they know that their body's aging clock is ticking, and that, for them, aging is going to make them less able to achieve their goals, not more able (as it would for a 10-year-old). Also, adults usually feel much freer to ignore the advice of coaches.
The bottom line is that beginning competitive swimmers have needs that are very similar regardless of whether they are 6 years old or 60 years old. It takes a number of years to develop yourself as a competitive swimmer, and trying to find a short cut will most likely just short circuit your long-term progress as a swimmer.
Bob
Forgive the long post, but this may help add another dimension to this discussion.
While stimulating the brain cells over the discussion re age and VO2 max, I re read a lot of my neurology books and journal publications.
I will try to summarize some basics about motor learning, how it is stored.
Motor control is our ability to move in space.
Motor learning is the study of the acquisition and or modification of movement.
While motor control focuses on understanding the control of movement already acquired (learning swimming technique), motor learning focuses on understanding the acquisition or modification of movement (refining technique.) Motor learning involves more than motor process. It involves learning new strategies for sensing as well as moving (e.g. the feel of the water) Thus, like motor control, emerges from a complex of perception-cognition-action process. This process of motor learning can be described as the search for a task that emerges from the interaction of the individual with the task and the environment. Procedural learning refers to learning tasks that can be performed automatically. This develops slowly through repetition of an act over many trials, and is expressed through improved performance of the task that was practiced. During motor skill acquisition, repeating a movement continuously under varying circumstances (eg drills) would typically lead to procedural learning.
There are several theories related to Skilled Learning. Basically, after a person learns a movement 4 things are stored in memory. A) the initial movement conditions, such as position and amount of force, sequence of joints. B) the parameters used in the generalized motor program. C) the outcome of the movement in terms on knowledge of results and d) the sensory consequences of the movement.
There are several factors involved in the consideration of movement training.
1. Feed back. There are 2 kinds. A) Intrinsic e.g. coming from the sensory systems as a result of the normal production of movement. This includes visual information as to the accuracy of the movement, as well as somatosensory information concerning the position of the limbs as one is moving. The person is able to tell say a coach how this movement feels. B) Extrinsic feedback is when another person asks the person to adjust the movement.
2. Feed forward. This occurs at a different level in the brain. It is when a person can draw on a past motor memory to reproduce that movement. If you ask a person to move their arms like they were swinging a baseball bat, then if they have done that movement they will be able to feed forward and reproduce the movement.
3. The brain does not process in a linear hierarchical manner. Processing is serial, parallel and multi-modal
4. Aspects of movement are ‘hardwired’. Synergies are coded in the brain through the ‘hardwiring' of the groups of neurons. This is how the brain controls multiple degrees of freedom of the joints rapidly and efficiently. Simply put, neurons that fire together, wire together. For example when a person has a stoke and needs to re learn how to walk, they can through the process of feed forward and the pathways and muscle memory areas draw on that to gain movement back. And if some of the wires have been damaged, a skilled therapist can help to rewire and facilitate the learning process.
5. All movement relies on the sensory information in a “feedback” and a “feed forward” way. Feed back is especially important for the learning of a new movement. Movements are coded in the nervous system related to context and task.
I have lots more including the differences between Kinesthesia, proprioception and body awareness all important in this learning process.
However I think that this helps to illustrate why a person who has learnt to swim and has achieved a good skill level by swimming as a young person has the ability to swim well as an adult. I agree that the conditioning and training effects may not be there, but with training this will return to a degree, perhaps not quite to the same level. But that depends on the individual.
The individual’s overall state of being influences the nervous system’s ability to learn.
That is why late bloomers can learn and train and achieve.
Just my thoughts!
From an article published elsewhere at www.baltimoresun.com/.../bal-sp.phelps09mar09,0,7849826,print.story .
"With training," Bowman said, "prepubescent children can significantly impact their heart and lung size, more substantially than they can after puberty. The larger the heart and lungs, the bigger the engine."
This at least partially supports the idea that those of us that started early gained something. I was training 90-100,000 meters a week during summers by the time I was 14 as were many people back in the early and mid 70's. I have no scientific proof that any of it stayed around during my layoff but my gut tells me I didn't lose it all. I'm also sure muscle memory contributes significantly. The feel of the water was in my head and knew instantly when it came back. It's possible it's all feel and muscle memory but I don't think so. I'm not saying anyone is right or wrong. This is just my experience.
The are some other interesting things in the article as well.
Ion:
Pretty predictable behavior from you - post a fallacy, have it dispelled, refuse to provide evidence, resort to personal attacks, make fun of women.
If you could ever just support your own postulations you'd be in a much happier place. You are in a sad place, where the pool is always closed.
As amusing as most of these posts are (including Ion's, for all the wrong reasons), people need to be careful.
AquaGeek in July 2002:
I didn't mean offense to anyone but apologize as that is exactly what I did anyway, especially to Ion.
I don't think the lively discourse of topics is mean, even if it gets a little wild at times. While heated, I had fun on the exchange of barbs.
Now compare it to this thread, that is what will happen when you try to argue too long with the man who fails the Turing Intelligence Test. (It also shows that at one time, AquaGeek was trying to be civil to Ion, until that goodwill was abused too often.)
