Looking at one-hour results, and just finishing New England Masters SCY Championships at Harvard, how is it that older swimmers are getting faster and faster, and pretty much everyone is getting faster and faster compared to a few years ago when there seemed to be more mortal swimmers?
What are older (45+ women; at this point 65+ men) swimmers doing that keeps them at such elite levels? Weights? Extensive training? How much of both? How do they have jobs and families and train? The field of fast swimmers is getting deeper and deeper. Anyone have idea as to why?
I want to know the secrets. Are the people who race now self-selecting more and more as elite swimmers? Has everyone swum all their lives? I know to swim hard you have to train hard, but I am baffled by sudden increase in amazing fast times and so many records getting broken.
I agree with carlos...
I think the science of training continues to evolve. I took 8 years off and just started back in this year and am amazed at how much technique and training philosophy have changed in that time. When I swam in high school and college, the training focus was a lot more on crunching out yards. We'd do drills for the first week or two and then off we'd go into mileage. Now, we do drills every practice, and really focus on swimming quality yardage as opposed to quantity yardage.
It also seems to me that quite a few of the fastest USMS swimmers were fast college (even olympic swimmers) back in their heyday. So another thing that I think is happening is a lot of people are coming back after 10-20 years and they are able to leverage the miles and miles they put in early in their life.
The masters swimmers that I know do it because they think swimming is fun and the best way to get exercise. I swim with quite a few top-10 swimmers here in Colorado, and none of them that I know take it so seriously that they'd endanger their health to make it there.
I agree with carlos...
I think the science of training continues to evolve. I took 8 years off and just started back in this year and am amazed at how much technique and training philosophy have changed in that time. When I swam in high school and college, the training focus was a lot more on crunching out yards. We'd do drills for the first week or two and then off we'd go into mileage. Now, we do drills every practice, and really focus on swimming quality yardage as opposed to quantity yardage.
It also seems to me that quite a few of the fastest USMS swimmers were fast college (even olympic swimmers) back in their heyday. So another thing that I think is happening is a lot of people are coming back after 10-20 years and they are able to leverage the miles and miles they put in early in their life.
The masters swimmers that I know do it because they think swimming is fun and the best way to get exercise. I swim with quite a few top-10 swimmers here in Colorado, and none of them that I know take it so seriously that they'd endanger their health to make it there.
