This is insulting. A substantial part of swimming is starts and turns. Unless meets are going to be held in an endless pool from this point on, you cannot ignore the importance of all aspects of a swimming race. If you can't start and have sorry turns, you probably won't be a great swimmer. The first thing I did to shave serious time off my events was dramatically improve my turns.
True. I have also now read several posts suggesting that some people are "turners" and some people are "swimmers." Just because someone likes SCY or SCM does not make them only "turners" and non-"swimmers." Aside from the Olympics, which most of us folks are only watching and commenting on, USMS "swimmers" compete in SCY, SCM and LCM. All are "swimmers." Now, that said, I'm going to follow Geek's example and work on my turns more. :D
This is insulting. A substantial part of swimming is starts and turns. Unless meets are going to be held in an endless pool from this point on, you cannot ignore the importance of all aspects of a swimming race. If you can't start and have sorry turns, you probably won't be a great swimmer. The first thing I did to shave serious time off my events was dramatically improve my turns.
I don't think Terry was trying to be insulting. I think what he was saying was that successful short course swimmers who cannot duplicate their success in long course meters are simply more skilled than their peers at starts and turns and perhaps less efficient than them at straight swimming. This echoes my opinion that swimmers who are better short course than long course are better at swimming under water, since this is where most of the start and turns are swum.
My daughter is a perfect example. She is a 5' sprinter swimming against 5'8" and up girls. She can beat them in a short course pool, but rarely beats them in long course. She has a tremendous under water dolphin kick and usually surfaces a good 1/2 body length to a full body length ahead despite being significantly shorter. While she is technically as good a swimmer as any of her peers, she cannot be as efficient because of the height disadvantage. She simply has to take more strokes to get across the length of the pool.
You're definitely right that people do tend to ignore the importance of starts and turns and that there is a tremendous opportunity to shave time by improving both.
2. I believe your stroke technique has to be better and hold up in the races. Leg conditioning is just as important as for short course turns because if your legs die and stop working for your kick, you will be swimming one dimensional and this will make your body feel more verticle instead of horizontal causing stroke flaws and fatigue.
That's for sure. I've had my legs die in a LC 100 m free and that pool becomes really, really long!
I love LCM and dislike SCY. 50 SCY *** it'shard for me to get into a rhythm before the wall gets in the way. Also in *** the taller swimmer has an advantage on the turns. You get one pulldown,one dolphin kick and one whip kick underwater so long arms and legs can be an advantage,not to mention that with long arms they don't have to swim as far. In free the underwater phase is relatively less important than in back and fly as underwater dolphin is not significantly faster than surface free for many freestylers,therefor they take about 3 dolphins off the wall to hold the push-off speed before breaking the surface. Since the underwater part is less important,a taller freestyler will have an advantage SCY as the just don't have to swim as far,an advantage that is magnified by flip turns. The shorter swimmer can mitigate this by going further underwater and pushing off harder,but is still playing catch-up.
Ok my newbie butt wants to interject something... :o)
I'm still coming to terms with my crawl. I clicked a bit lastnight wen I figured out that b/c of working on streamlining and rolling--I was not thinking about my kicks I was doing rapid little kicks...I felt this going on and though wait a second...there's no power there...so I slowed the pace of the kicks and opened my legs more...I took off and really felt it all come together (it was a "ray of lightthrough the clouds" kind of good). then I had to turn b/c I am at the wall in a 25yrd pool. After the (open/bob) turn it all went wrong and I had to re-click it.
If I didn't have to turn, I would have gone 100 yards, easily, the stop and turn messed my ryhthm and breathing. I can only assume that turns will affect a good crawler even if only a slight bit. No?
Sorry for not being 100% on topic..just thought I'd share that thought though...damn wall:frustrated:
