muscular endurance

My coach trains me just fine while I am in the pool, and makes a lot of comments and criticisms, but he knows I like to read and understand why I am making the changes I am making. My coach is responsible for 43 swimmers across both the mens and womens teams, and just doesn't have the time to take 20minutes out of a practice to devote to one person. I am plenty fine with the fact that he is having me read the book.

My fault - I have never handed any one a book I like to do stroke corrections on anyone I am with. Does he not have an assistant coach so he can do stroke improvement. I am glad you are happy with the way things are going. When I had large groups I would spend time with a lane at a time doing stroke corrections, 5 minutes does wonders. I guess it would be easier to give everyone a book I only wish I could find one that I would have confidence in. Maybe I should write one? I just remembered I started one thirty years ago, it was called Power Swimming from the Start.

Why not use the TI book?

Hi blainesapprentice, my coach Sean Fowler suggested the following a couple of weeks ago and I am working on it (I used to finishing my strokes early): first, if you can't feel your pull at the end of your stroke, be sure that you are, in fact, finishing your pull before pulling up your elbows. many swimmers will pull up their elbows at 7 or 8 'o' clock. Be sure that your elbows don't come up before your hand points to 9 'o' clock. second, be careful with hand paddles. they are good at strengthening hand pulls, but more focus these days is on the hand and forearm as a single unit. be careful not to adapt your stroke to emphasize the hand pulls to the detriment of the hand and forearm synchronous pull. Check out the following video (particularly around 3:08) www.youtube.com/watch Now, Dr. Haljand seems to be advocating the I-Pull to the S-Pull in this video, and that's the way I'd swim it. But, more importantly, note that he has her press with her palm AND elbow (which is the end of the forearm). Also notice that he always keeps the hand and forearm inline. He deliberately worked to ensure that she kept her hand and forearm working as one tool. Hand paddles are good tools, but just be careful that they don't teach you to move your hands and forearms as separate units. Good luck,:applaud: Warren you said I wont even be breathing hard but my arms are tired. I think both are correlated; if you do not breath hard enough, your muscles will be tired because of lack of oxygen. (just look who's talking, I'm swiming like a locomotive in the water and giving advice to Warren) :rofl:

Why not use the TI book? Are you trying to get me in trouble with the administrator. I like lots of pros written in some books but not all. Eg. darting the hand forward the Japanesse swimmers did that in 1956 but Councillman came and squashed that idea but now some do say that again, but I do not like that one.

Not gonna lie, my coach is by no means superb or even good. He does the best that he's willing to put forth basically, which is why I have come to this forum and joined masters, because I needed to kinda distance myself from purely the collegiate realm of things. My coach was ONLY a distance freestyler, and really is not good at any stroke and has little knowledge in terms of sprinting. We have an assistant coach who is good, but he can only be there so often because he has another job (our school does not give us funds for an assistant). We spend the first 2 weeks of the season--way back in September "relearning" how to swim, but it feels over generalized and not really efficient, because his knowledge of swimming comes from what he did as a swimmer, and from books that he read, but has not taken much time to attend coaching clinics or swimming clinics and learn new thoughts and aspects of teaching swimming and tweaking ones stroke. Then...following that 2 week period, he gets into his yardage thing, and from there we lose a lot of our stroke, because we are all of a sudden asked to jump from very easy 2 weeks of floating around--learning how to swim, into a 5000 yard regime with intervals and all that. I have made countless suggestions as to how he could make sure everyone got individual time with him for positive criticism--such as rotating from lane to lane each day (we only have 4 lanes) so every 4 days everyone would have had some individualized feedback from him, but he's totally ADD and hardly watches us at all while we're in practice. He's a very frustrating coach, and if it weren't for my scholarship, I most likely would have quit and just moved onto swimming with a USS team up here, that is well known and respected. I don't feel like I have improved at all since coming to my college, and thats just frustrating--because I am putting in so much more time and effort then ever before, yet my times don't compare. But, what are you gonna do? Read a book apparently, and hope it helps:-P... --sorry. that was really long.-- Morgan

yeah I did just have a meet...two actually...one sunday and a double dual meet on monday. We lost on Sunday, and we lost to the team that we wanted to beat on Sunday and killed the other team that was at that meet, so essentially, we lost all our meets.--well the women's squad did...the men won all three. I won all my events, and I am athlete of the week for the college, and I was noted as the mvp-female of both meets...so that was good I guess, but my times are still subpar from where I would like to be. On Sunday I swam: 50fly in the medley relay (27.5) 200 free (2:05.20) 100 fly (1:04.4) On Monday I swam: 50 free (26.6) 100free (58.1) 100free anchor on the 400 free relay (58.4) so yeah, I guess I am most disappointed with my 100free times, I haven't swam a 58 in like 3 years, and now I am stuck on it, last year during taper and shave I went a 55.0...I had been hoping that would drop even more this year, but...I just don't know, since I am now swimming slower than I had all season last year. My 200 time is also kinda disheartening, because I know I can go a 2:00.00 I really wanted to be under 2minutes this season...but that too...I just can't seem to move any faster... boo.

The original question was about muscular endurance. I'd like to take a different approach to answer Warren other than stroke technique. People's muscular endurance is very individualized, but in general natural sprinters will have much lower muscular endurance than distance types. An aquaintance who is a college strength and conditioning coach recently did this experiment. He tested everyone on the team for maximum bench press (one rep). The sprinters, on average, could lift substantially more weight than the distance swimmers. On another day, when everyone was rested, he asked all his swimmers to see how many reps they could do at 70% of their maximum. No sprinter could do over 10 reps, while the distance folks averaged over 20 reps. This tells me that there is a large component to muscular endurance that is somewhat predetermined by your natural physiology. I feel a lot of it cannot be overcome by adjusting your technique or training. Maybe I'm just rationalizing my own pathetic workout performances, but I cannot stay anywhere near swimmers in workout who I am much faster than in a one time race. This is not for lack of trying, focusing on technique, etc. So Warren, based on some earlier posts where you mentioned some of your times, I'm afraid you may have to suffer through many a workout and have your confidence shaken by those who can come within 10% of their PR's while doing 10 X 100 with 10 seconds rest. All will be redeemed on race day... assuming you don't do anything stupid like race a 200 or, heaven forbid, a 500. Rich That was some valuable information. Thanks. :wave:

Rich- pathetic? Oh, come now! You could wear a full-body cast and still not be pathetic in a pool.

I really like what you're saying Rich, it makes a lot of sense. I've heard a lot of similar info since coming to this forum, and it's given me more confidence and patience in practice...when I can't keep up with these distance swimmers who are holding times better than I can. I am most certainly a sprinter--I can not float to save my life...according to my coach...thats a sign of a sprinter...? Whatever, I sometimes wish I could perform better at distance events, because sprinting kinda gets old--esp. when your in a rut, and you just want to mix up your events a little bit...I can hold my own in the 500 but, I am def. not nearly as valuable there as I am in the 50 or 100 or 200. Well this forum really has been helpful!:applaud: