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.
At 45+, you can't do "nothing but training." Most bodies just won't support it. I honestly don't think that most women who are fifteen years older than I am but can lap me in the 500 are spending way more time than I am on working out (8-10h per week total, not counting travel time). Some may swim more and cross-train less, because their parents kindly gave them shoulders held together inside by something stronger than old rubber bands, but I don't think that most of them spend way more time overall on fitness.
Absolutely right! I am not the lucky beneficiary of bionic shoulders (or anything else) either.
However, I do know a few with bionic shoulders that train like fiends. But that's probably a minority.
Isobel, most women I know that want to improve need to spend more time lifting and doing core work instead of putting in more pool yardage. IMHO, that is.
At 45+, you can't do "nothing but training." Most bodies just won't support it. I honestly don't think that most women who are fifteen years older than I am but can lap me in the 500 are spending way more time than I am on working out (8-10h per week total, not counting travel time). Some may swim more and cross-train less, because their parents kindly gave them shoulders held together inside by something stronger than old rubber bands, but I don't think that most of them spend way more time overall on fitness.
Absolutely right! I am not the lucky beneficiary of bionic shoulders (or anything else) either.
However, I do know a few with bionic shoulders that train like fiends. But that's probably a minority.
Isobel, most women I know that want to improve need to spend more time lifting and doing core work instead of putting in more pool yardage. IMHO, that is.
