Always Fast or a late bloomer?

Don't despair. You can be a late bloomer. Like many sports, for some, swimming comes effortlessly. But talent cannot replace hard work and good coaching entirely. I was pretty fast when I was young, but was only ranked as a young age grouper and was not in the Top 10 as I grew older and through college. I was competitive, had a nice career, but wasn't going to the Olympics. I stopped swimming for 25 years after burnout and family and what not and just went back 14 months ago. Because I had always stayed in reasonable shape during my life, I'm now in the Top 10 in lots of events as a 45 year old. But I think it really helped me to have a great coach the first 10 months or so who straightened out all the kinks in my strokes. I'm a real believer in proper technique and drilling. It's especially helped my butterfly and freestyle, which was very old school. Once you have an efficient technique, you can ramp up the yardage a bit, although overtraining isn't really necessary unless you want to do lots of long, open water events. I only train about 10-15,000 yards a week max. I train some on my own and some with a team, but I really think it helps to join a masters team and have people motivate you in practice. Strenghtening the old core helps too. There are a couple other people on my team who didn't swim in college that have logged some Top 10 times. Good luck! Leslie

Thanks for the replies. Since I don't have a coach and I swim alone and actually enjoy it, I am pretty self motivated swimming 5-6x a week 3-3500 yds. at a time usually long ( 500 yds.) intervals, what are some good videos or other methods of getting better. I am not really slow but nowhere near as fast as I would like. Thanks again, Paul

Wow! If you're swimming that much on your own, you are very self-motivated. About the most I can do on my own is 3,000 before boredom starts to set in. One thing I like about swimming on a team (which I only do 2-3 times per week) is that you swim against fast people and it makes you faster. So if you want to get faster, that might help. Also, it's tough to get fast doing just 500 intervals. That's an awful lot of what I call LSD (long slow distance) training. That's valuable to do, but you have to mix in some shorter distances too (10 x 100 or 12 x 150 with a 50 easy after each 3). There are tons of workouts you can get on line or in the swimming magazines. You can go on Terry's total immersion website and even watch live video clips of his drills for specific strokes. Technique is just as important as hard training. Not everyone has a great feel for the water. I didn't at first. My strength was my best asset. But I've really worked on my strokes, and it's helped. Good luck. And get your self entered in a meet! There are lots of distance meets. That will really motivate you. Leslie

I started competitive swimming at 14,which age groupers consider pretty late,and have been swimming in meets ever since. Even though I swam in college I was at best a middling swimmer then. I did my fastest times in my early 30s. I'm slower now than I was then(I'm 57) but the trick is to get slower slowly.

I agree with you Terry, it is amazing what some of these " older" athletes are doing, in all sports, I spent the last 15 years as a masters rower and there were some very fast rowers over 50 and 60. The reason for my original post was to see if anyone out there became faster as they got older. It appears that it can be done, I swam till I was 18 then became a lap swimmer doing 1800 yd swims in the 26-27 minute range for the next 30 years. Now I want to see how fast I can get and to be faster in my 50's than my 20's. This Forum has been a Great source of information and inspiration for someone without team mates to bounce things off. Thanks.

Thanks for the encouraging words Leslie, much appreciated.