Masters swimmers that don't compete

BenGay

Can you guess where I was while that thread was current. I did not even make a post. Chuckie and I were packing our bags for our short 2 month the trip to Mexico Considerably more ecumenical views on Masters swimmers were posted on this thread. forums.usms.org/showthread.php Regards, VB

Kurt, Kurt, Kurt, be nice to your elders. They know not what they do, or the reason why they don't do it.

The first thing that crossed my mind was weight training. Lots of people pay lots of money to join health clubs, hire personal trainers, etc. with their only goal being to get in better shape. Very few people lifting weights at a club will ever enter a bodybuilding competition. C'mon Kirk...we all know that you compete in your bedroom mirror! Show us your muscles!!

This is a good point, although I don't really consider weight lifting a sport as the highest level of competition in that arena is the drug fueled class. But, if someone trained as hard in weights as we do in swimming (6+ hours a week), had a coach and a training group, I suspect there might be competitions to enter. There are regional competitions and a specific "natural" class..oddly the natural class is typically won by some significantly bigger, more ripped, bodybuilder than the rest of the field. They all test clean...

To add on to Michael's reply, here's some more numbers from our meet results database and nationals meet entry database: In 2007, we had: 44,134 Members 8,680 Competed in any meet (19.67%) 2,122 Entered at least 1 Nationals (4.81%) Thanks for breaking that out. I definitely do not feel out of place now for not doing meets, and it sounds like my team fits the overall averages fairly closely. I also still stand by my comments that USMS should be open and inclusive for all swimmers, regardless of if they do meets or not.

For nationals, here's the number of USMS members who have entered at least 1 nationals event over the years (2006 includes Worlds): 2002: 1,912 2003: 2,347 2004: 2,328 2005: 2,447 2006: 4,073 2007: 2,122 Nice work, Jim. It would be interesting to know how many individual swimmers have competed at nationals during the five year period 2003-2007. It would be more interesting to note if you broke out how many only competed at worlds and not at any of the nationals. The five year figure is interesting as many swimmers compete in the first year they age up and dont train hard again for five years. Again, nice work. michael

Are there any concrete numbers as to: * The total number of registered swimmers with USMS * The total number of USMS swimmers who swim at least 1 meet a year * The number who swims at 1 or more national events a year? Total # of registered swimmers with USMS 2007 44,134 Total # of swimmers who swim in at least 1 meet a year - I would guess about 20% - I did a check of how many Pacific swimmers competed in at least one event (pool or open water) a few years ago and it was about 20%. We had about and still have about 10,000 swimmers, I dont think it would change much in a normal year. In 2006 we had Worlds in our LMSC - as i recall we had about 1,400 swimmers who competed in just Worlds so that would skew the results. Worlds had over 3,000 USMS Swimmer in the pool and over 5000 swimmers total. New England Masters has about 1600 members and has about 800 swimmers who will compete at their scy meet. That is 50% of their LMSC competing. The number who will compete at 1 or more nationals - I dont know of any one who has totaled that. But if you want a rough idea take the total of the SCY and LCM nationals and subtract 400. That would give you a rough number. SCY nationals varies from about 1500 to 2000 a 33% variability. For those who want to compete, it is a lot of fun. I dont know if our Pacific's or USMS Championships can get much bigger than they are now. The meets are multiday meets that take up those days. If people dont want to compete that is fine, they wont make top ten times or any records - if you want a record you have to earn it and part of that is going to a meet. michael

It would be interesting to figure out how many people would swim time trials if you factored out all the inconvenience of attending meets. Say the time trials were held in regular workouts so no extra time commitment were involved and only some lanes were used so you could still get on with your workout. That would deliver the value of measuring your performance, although for people who thrive on head to head competition it would depend on whether you have someone on your team to compete against, although at smaller meets there is no guarantee of close competition either. For people who don't like competition it might be better than a meet. I wonder what other factors make people swim faster at meets and whether they could be simulated in a team time trial setup. Does anyone swim with a team that does this? Do more people participate (voluntarily) than go to meets?

Does anyone swim with a team that does this? Do more people participate (voluntarily) than go to meets? I don't understand what you mean by time trials. Almost every workout my team does is timed to some extent, everything is either on a total time interval (like 100's on 1:30) or a rest interval (such as 10 sec between sets). At least once a week we do more of a sprint day, such 200's on 6 min in the more distance lanes. Regardless of what we're doing, the clock is always on deck so you can get your time, and quite often (70%+) there's a coach also yelling out times as you come in. We never have pads in the pool to get official times, no times are recorded for any records, or anything like that. I guess if you wanted, the coach would write down your times for you and give it to you afterwards, but I've never done that, and don't know anyone who has. We typically have 35-40 people at our workouts, and many days when we do fast sets it is quite easy to find someone to swim against, if that's what you're looking for. From what it sounds, the people who do meets are usually the same all the time. From our morning group, there's about 8-10 people who always do meets, with little variation.