I swam in a meet last weekend. For some time I have been working on my freestyle timing and technique, and I think I've made progress. During warm-ups for the 50 free I felt really great--powerful, good acceleration, lots of potential energy. This swimming at maybe 90%. Then, in the race, I found myself hacking at the water--none of the same sense I'd had in warm-ups.
Today, in a workout, I was able to replicate my meet time in the 50 at that same 90% pace I'd used in warmups.
Pause for metaphor introduction: as a kid (and now, for that matter) I was a Cleveland Indians fan. They were uniformly terrible during the 60s, 70s, and 80s. But in the 70s they had an outfielder named George Hendrick, who was a gifted player. Hendrick had an ability to run while looking like he was jogging. He covered a lot of ground, and was quite fast, but he appeared to be dogging it. No strain was ever visible. He got a lot of grief in the press for being lazy, even though it was an optical illusion. He ran really fast but looked slow.
So here's my question: is it possible that I should sprint at less than what feels like 100%, in order to get better efficiency and thus more speed? Or am I kidding myself, and I need to just learn to use a really fast tempo without overswimming?
I say pick a test event, say the 50 or 100 freestyle, and then sign up for a bunch of little local meets (here we have these every 2 weeks thanks to a YMCA masters league).
Try swimming absolutely all out, as hard as you can, your arms churning as quickly as possible.
Next meet, go for pure "easy speed"--as fast as you can without feeling you've lost smoothness and a sense of control.
Next meet, meet the two strategies somewhere in the middle of churning rage of controlled easy speed.
My bet is the all out kick ass approach will give you the best time. It will hurt more, look uglier, create more splashing, and general make children turn to their mothers dirty pillows in fright. But you will do a faster time.
The George Hendrick's of the world have some intrinsic gifts -- perfect muscular translation of force along each link in the kinetic chain. Most of us are not born so smooth. We can imitate it, but we can't get there--for every half million golfers, there's only one Tiger Woods.
So we do the best with what we've got, and in sprints, alas, brute strength is our best bet.
I could be wrong. Let us know.
I say pick a test event, say the 50 or 100 freestyle, and then sign up for a bunch of little local meets (here we have these every 2 weeks thanks to a YMCA masters league).
Try swimming absolutely all out, as hard as you can, your arms churning as quickly as possible.
Next meet, go for pure "easy speed"--as fast as you can without feeling you've lost smoothness and a sense of control.
Next meet, meet the two strategies somewhere in the middle of churning rage of controlled easy speed.
My bet is the all out kick ass approach will give you the best time. It will hurt more, look uglier, create more splashing, and general make children turn to their mothers dirty pillows in fright. But you will do a faster time.
The George Hendrick's of the world have some intrinsic gifts -- perfect muscular translation of force along each link in the kinetic chain. Most of us are not born so smooth. We can imitate it, but we can't get there--for every half million golfers, there's only one Tiger Woods.
So we do the best with what we've got, and in sprints, alas, brute strength is our best bet.
I could be wrong. Let us know.
