I'm looking to gain more knowledge about sprint freestyle swimming. As an long retired distance freestyler I don't have a great deal of personal knowledge of how to swim the 50 or 100 freestyle. I've coached many sprint freestylers and I know that many of the best sprinters have what I would say an amazing strategy to their sprint swims. I am currently giving private lessons to many age groupers and high school swimmers and I've been explaining to them that some of the best sprinters in the world swim their 50 or 100 with more strategy than just the plain old thought of swimming "FAST".
I would very much appreciate any of you sprinters out there who would like to share your strategies for swimming these two events. I would love to be able to pass on some of this information, but I think many of us in the masters community could learn from some of you as well. I look forward to seeing some of the responses. Maybe I will try sprinting one day (LOL):rofl: .
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Former Member
It's the fact that you don't have a deep swimming background that makes you more open to ideas (you might call it the "emerging paradigm") that may not fit the "prevailing paradigm" that more experienced swimmers -- including me -- grew up with. Many achieved a degree of success with that approach and some who did may resist ideas that don't match that worldview.
Originally posted by Terry Laughlin
Actually I do have a pretty extensive swimming background Terry.....BUT I haven't been involved in Masters swimming for very long. When I grew up as an agegroup swimmer, over-distancing and swimming long sets with very short intervals was the prevailing philosophy. I think I gained a lot from that philosophy (don't get me wrong)....but I also became a little burned out on swimming as a kid when we swam somewhere around 20,000 meters a day in the summer (2 10,000 meter practices a day) ....where we would aften swim sets like 20 200's on some rediculous interval (like somewhere in the range of 2:30-2:40 in LCM )....I remember doing 20 100's on the 1:05 in SCY on a routine basis when we were around 15-16 years of age. The problem was that I don't recall the coaches really focusing on our technique that much.....it was much more about endurance training. I like the idea of swimming slow to focus on technique and then gradually picking up the pace while maintaining proper technique. I still believe in doing some hard sets in a workout (like maybe one main set that has a challenging interval).....but I am much more focused on the mechanics of swimming (and energy efficiency...etc..) as an older swimmer than I was as a younger swimmer.
Newmastersswimmer
It's the fact that you don't have a deep swimming background that makes you more open to ideas (you might call it the "emerging paradigm") that may not fit the "prevailing paradigm" that more experienced swimmers -- including me -- grew up with. Many achieved a degree of success with that approach and some who did may resist ideas that don't match that worldview.
Originally posted by Terry Laughlin
Actually I do have a pretty extensive swimming background Terry.....BUT I haven't been involved in Masters swimming for very long. When I grew up as an agegroup swimmer, over-distancing and swimming long sets with very short intervals was the prevailing philosophy. I think I gained a lot from that philosophy (don't get me wrong)....but I also became a little burned out on swimming as a kid when we swam somewhere around 20,000 meters a day in the summer (2 10,000 meter practices a day) ....where we would aften swim sets like 20 200's on some rediculous interval (like somewhere in the range of 2:30-2:40 in LCM )....I remember doing 20 100's on the 1:05 in SCY on a routine basis when we were around 15-16 years of age. The problem was that I don't recall the coaches really focusing on our technique that much.....it was much more about endurance training. I like the idea of swimming slow to focus on technique and then gradually picking up the pace while maintaining proper technique. I still believe in doing some hard sets in a workout (like maybe one main set that has a challenging interval).....but I am much more focused on the mechanics of swimming (and energy efficiency...etc..) as an older swimmer than I was as a younger swimmer.
Newmastersswimmer
