attention sprinters, have a question on your strength

I swam my best races without doing physical exercises. A little swimming lots of technique and mind over matter. I was very strong and could lift very heavy weights, my legs were very strong but not for any reason other than isometric contractions, a few situps, a little cycling and a lot of slow paced walking.

I don't know if there's a direct correlation with one's strength on land and the ability to do well in a sprint. I've seen many a muscle bound swimmer step up on the blocks...and do very little with their inflated limbs other than give the water a good thrashing. One's time is better served shaping the vessel before building the engine. To answer your question rtodd...my fastest sprint times for the 50 were achieved with dedication to perfecting the start, turn, and finish. Developing lung capacity and flexibility should also be high on the list. Weights will serve you well...but they're not the only ingredient to success.

Here's my two cent's worth. I was a sprinter in high school, my best times were :53 in 100yd fly and :50-:49 in 100yd free (not great but respectable). I didn't lift any weights. Had a 20 year layoff where I did lift weights for bodybuilding and eventually powerlifting. Bodyweight went from 145 to 195 at a height of 5' 10" during that 20 yrs, with an average of 6-9% bodyfat. Did my first masters meet last summer (1st time in the pool since 1986) and swam a 1:02 in the 100m free. So, I was about 5-6 seconds slower than my best 20 yrs previously. So, I think weights can help, but maybe it comes down to technique and the right "muscle memory"? Incidentally, my incline bench is around 295, I do chins with 45-90lbs extra, and squat about 405. Now here's the banana:banana:

Can I do some sort of stroke count analysis? I can glide (warm up speed) across my 100ft pool in 14 strokes, so that would be 42 strokes per 100yd. is this good or lousy? What should a stroke count be for sprinting? does it go down? I would guess it shouldn't because the kick picks up. I would think it would be more useful to count your strokes at race pace than while swimming at warm up pace. It is too easy to fudge an untimed stroke count by streamlining further, adding glide, and kicking harder; things that won't necessarily make you faster if done to excess.

Funkyfish, Lifting weights was certainly not a replacement for swimming since you are stronger than HS, but slower. I would assume you could get it back, but is shows there is no substitute for swimming. I wonder how long it would take you to get back down to a 50? I did power lift for a few years (a few years ago) and did have a 1000lb total (bench/squat/dead), which was decent for a tall runner, but I am not that strong right now and not a runner anymore and that is why I was worried about my strength. But after reading these posts It does not sound like it is a limiting factor in swimming, at least not at my level. I'll revisit strength if I can get down to a 55. I have a meet in a few weeks and the 100 is the first event. Hopefully this will give me a chance at the sub minute. Lindsay, I will have to video, maybe the next meet and hopefully post it for some feedback.

SPL probably the most useless thing you can waste your time with when sprinting, the secret is to get there first and not worry about the stroke count. I never would give a thought to how fast I was turning over. Make the stroke efficient and complete and be in front of the second place swimmer. George I'm sure that may be the case for an elite, established swimmer such as yourself......however I think there is absolute merit in evaluating SPL especially for someone new to the sport and who in all likleyhood may be wasting a lot of effort spinning. As for me personally.....although I swam thru high school and college when I got back into masters I basically forgot how to sprint. My best 50 in the 40-44 age group I think was around 21.6 before John & Rowdy corraled me into focusing on tha race for Indy a few years back...With a lot of focus on just what you pooh poohed I dropped to 20.9......

George....an example of what I'm talking about is the workout below (which I think I have posted before) from Nick Brunelli. I've done this set with him before in a masters workout at ASU (sadly Nic goes 23+ on the 200 pace 50's and I'm 25+!)....and we did use stroke count along with time as a measurement of progress. We've also heard many times of Popov's training using a descening set of 50's long course where he starts over as soon as he adds a stroke...damn...another mention from one of the TI books....bring it on Fort & Geek! ____________________________________________ Joined: 19 Mar 2006 Posts: 102 Location: tempe Arizona Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 7:01 pm Post subject: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday morning's set: 10 times through the following: 1 x 50 easy on 1 min 1 x 50 at 200 pace on 1 min 1 x 50 all out on 1 min The idea of this simple set is to not lose sight of the stroke you race! in the 50 easy don’t be sloppy. In the 50 at 200 pace work your stroke not tempo to get your goal time. And in the all out 50, try to put it all together and go faster with a perfect stroke. I feel like this set helps me set my stroke up while working hard. Sometimes when we do sets that are say 10 x 50's all out, my stroke becomes a mess after number 4 and then I try to just go as fast as I can. Most people can relate to this in the sense that you just want to race and beat the person next to you and if that involves not thinking about your stroke then so be it. BUT that won't make you the best swimmer you can be. Its all about swimming smart AND working hard at the same time! -Nick Brunelli _________________ "Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records"

So, I think weights can help, but maybe it comes down to technique and the right "muscle memory"? Incidentally, my incline bench is around 295, I do chins with 45-90lbs extra, and squat about 405. I never bench press or do pull ups. :( Can't. Wholly apart from sprint gains, which I do think weight lifting helps some, I wonder if weight lifting helps prevent/recover from injuries? I notice my shoulders generally feel better when I am lifting (apart from RC stuff). And I know breaststrokers who say their knees feel better when they lift weights. I still think some people are just slower now than they were in high school or college whether they're lifting or not and whether they've been counting SPL or not. I think I could swim my brains out with perfect technique and still not do my 100 or 200 fly times from high school or college. But everyone's different. Besides, I don't want or have time to swim my brains out. Dear Mr. TI Smyth: :thhbbb: Gotcha. I am a TI advocate to a fairly large degree. :eek: When I returned to swimming at almost 44, I had a TI-type coach and we worked on nothing but technique, technique, technique. That's why I was called the drill queen for awhile. I just don't like Initial Caps, or close Mindedness about some swim toys or being repeatedly told that shoulder injuries are due almost exclusively to poor technique. (He also ragged on my fly technique sight unseen and hurt my feelings. LOL.) I also think sprinting is somewhat different from what Terry specializes in, although efficient speed a la Popov is no doubt most desirable. But Terry's due to put out his Sprints and TI book after the Endurance and TI book comes out. So we'll see. BTW, I bought the first book for my son when he was learning to swim properly for triathlons and I taught him a lot of TI freestyle drills. Here I go zipper switching away ...:thhbbb:

Lindsay and Paul, I don't know my SPL for race pace 50 or 100. I only count on cooldown laps. It sounds like your SPL goes up a bit when the distance comes down. I watched Ian thorpe on YouTube and it looks like he is 14 to 15 strokes per 50m in the 100, 200, and 400 distances. I looked like he was doing 6 beat on everything. Of course these are all FAST events, and for Ian, there is not much to differentiate in his race pace at these three distances. But if he is the gold standard, then I would assume stroke count should basically be the same for any race distance. Unfortunately I am about 45 strokes/100m, or 50% more than Thorpe. Maybe it is lower at my race pace when I am kicking hard (don't know...yet) If it is around 20/50yds at race pace, is this a sign of serious technique flaws? Paul, it sounds like you are comperable to Thorpe in SPL. A) Should I be concious and keeping track of my stroke count during my workouts? Should I measure SPL for sprint work (significant kicking) and longer sets (less kick effort)? B) Should I be working to lower it? C) Is SPL a measure of efficiency, which ultimately leeds to speed? I assume yes to A,B, and C, but want to hear from the fast guys and girls.

rtodd.....Thorpe is actually taking 28-30 per 50m if you count each individual arm entry.....and he does keep this pretty even for those 3 distances..... One note, long course meters is a 180 from swimming short course yards....almost a differant sport....part of the reason you see a lot of really fast college guys who don't necessarilly excel at international meets swum LCM (Piersol commented on this awhile back in a discussion on how SCY/college swimmers we're excelling in the underwater aspect of racing but he felt few could translate that to LCM). If the 50/100 are your primary distances I would suggest looking not at Thorpe but guys like Hoogie, Gary Hall, Nick Brunelli, etc. Its amazing to watch the combination of speed, power, grace and technique on guys going 21+/22+ in 50 LCM free and sub :20 in 50 yard free.