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.
This kind of workout cannot be good for kids unless they are strong and have already developed really good strokes.
It is a challenging masters workout -- and certainly a credit to (S)he-man's conditioning and work ethic -- but fairly routine (light even) for the kids around here.
Geoff Brown (NOVA coach) once commented to me that kids' strokes are pretty well "burned in" by the time they hit 12 -- especially in freestyle -- if they've been swimming since a fairly early age. Certainly stroke changes are possible but they are difficult to make. That's why stroke mechanics are so important in the little ones.
This kind of workout cannot be good for kids unless they are strong and have already developed really good strokes.
It is a challenging masters workout -- and certainly a credit to (S)he-man's conditioning and work ethic -- but fairly routine (light even) for the kids around here.
Geoff Brown (NOVA coach) once commented to me that kids' strokes are pretty well "burned in" by the time they hit 12 -- especially in freestyle -- if they've been swimming since a fairly early age. Certainly stroke changes are possible but they are difficult to make. That's why stroke mechanics are so important in the little ones.
