What's are your favorite crosstraining activities? Do you like it for general overall fitness or because it specifically benefits your swimming? Explain.
The goal is to be a very capable ATHLETE, not necessarily swim the most yardage. Hand quickness, agility, flexibilty, core strength. If you have those, you can swim 20K a week working on feeling the water, lung capactiy, technique and speed and most likely get away with it. Of course, this is assuming you have had some sort of athletic base in your past. Just look Stefan Nystrand - swam the 2nd fastest 100 Free couple months ago - 47.91. How about Ed Moses? A natural athlete setting world records only after two years of swimming. I think people are starting to catch on!
This is part of why I participate in a variety of sports for fun... but general athleticism means you're pretty good at lots of things, and not necessarily outstanding at anything or one thing in particular. Lets look at the two muppets as a case for each:
SwimmieAvsFan is a good example for specialization. She quit soccer and basketball early in her youth to swim. She excelled in her youth and thoughout High School and she was "outstanding" enough to swim in college. She continues to rank highly in the USMS top 10.
On the other end of the spectrum, I swam, played soccer, basketball and baseball for much of my youth. I never did a back-to-back season of anything. No swimming in college for me. While swimming is #1 sport priority now, I do participate in others and do very well. However, back to swimming, I depend on other folks not swimming to appear outstanding in the USMS top 10.
Ed Moses was a great golfer before swimming took over. He was great for 2-3 years, didn't win the golds he'd been slated for, and then disappeared off the radar. I wonder if his general athleticism just got the better of him - that once the swimming specialists took over, he appeared to be just another run-of-the-mill breaststroker. Not to take anything away from Ed - I had a chance to meet and talk with him - great guy w/ a great sense of humor and pretty humble in my opinion.
The goal is to be a very capable ATHLETE, not necessarily swim the most yardage. Hand quickness, agility, flexibilty, core strength. If you have those, you can swim 20K a week working on feeling the water, lung capactiy, technique and speed and most likely get away with it. Of course, this is assuming you have had some sort of athletic base in your past. Just look Stefan Nystrand - swam the 2nd fastest 100 Free couple months ago - 47.91. How about Ed Moses? A natural athlete setting world records only after two years of swimming. I think people are starting to catch on!
This is part of why I participate in a variety of sports for fun... but general athleticism means you're pretty good at lots of things, and not necessarily outstanding at anything or one thing in particular. Lets look at the two muppets as a case for each:
SwimmieAvsFan is a good example for specialization. She quit soccer and basketball early in her youth to swim. She excelled in her youth and thoughout High School and she was "outstanding" enough to swim in college. She continues to rank highly in the USMS top 10.
On the other end of the spectrum, I swam, played soccer, basketball and baseball for much of my youth. I never did a back-to-back season of anything. No swimming in college for me. While swimming is #1 sport priority now, I do participate in others and do very well. However, back to swimming, I depend on other folks not swimming to appear outstanding in the USMS top 10.
Ed Moses was a great golfer before swimming took over. He was great for 2-3 years, didn't win the golds he'd been slated for, and then disappeared off the radar. I wonder if his general athleticism just got the better of him - that once the swimming specialists took over, he appeared to be just another run-of-the-mill breaststroker. Not to take anything away from Ed - I had a chance to meet and talk with him - great guy w/ a great sense of humor and pretty humble in my opinion.
