I hope this post rings true with many of the swimmers out there, and I hope one of you has a solution for this issue.
Just as an introduction:
I am a 47 year old man who came back to swimming as a sport five years ago after a twenty year hiatus from the pool. At one time, in my late teens and early twenties I was pretty decent swimmer: placed in the top twelve at Canadian Nationals in both backstroke events, but realistically that was about as far as I was going to go. I was never going to be an Olympic contender and I was Ok with that.
I left swimming to get a life and here I am nearly thirty years later with a wife, daughter, carreer and all the debt that comes with those responsibilities. My mid-life diversion is now swimming, or more specifically, trying to regain some of my youth from the wreckage that mid-life seems to leave us.
I am now training as well as I ever did really. I seem to go from one work-out to the next with brief rest stops in-between for my carreer and my family. I do dedicated resistance training three to four times each week in my private weight lifting gym in my basement (actually a pretty nice set up, and this is coming from a man who dabbled in body-building for ten years). I teach and train karate a minimum of three times a week right now (just competed, for the hell of it, in the ITKF Nationals last weekend). I do five ninety minute pool sessions each week, logging between twenty to twenty five thousand meters per week.
Today was a typical session:
Warm-up 5 X 100 on 1:40 concentrating on my stroke. Descended down to 1:20 on the final 100.
Pull: 5 X 200 on 2:45, maintaining 2:35 or faster for each rep. No sweat to complete.
Kick: 6 X 100
Swim: 16 X25 on 25 pacing to get at least 7 seconds rest
8X 50 on 45 pacing to stay below 37 seconds per 50
Kick: 6 x 100
Swim: 5 x 100 on 1:30 maintaining at 1:15 to 1:16 on each rep.
Pull: 8X100 Backstroke on 1:40 half with PB, half without. (trying to get my legs more involved.
The point of all this is that, despite training at pace times that should deliver my fairly moderate goals of breaking a 5 minute 400 and a 2:20 for the 200 and maybe pulling my 100 back under 1:10, I am just not getting anywhere near that. In fact, I am getting slower each time I race. Lately my 400 time has gone from 5:02 (felt freaking great) to 5:04 (racing teen agers; I thought I was going to throw up) to 5:05 (felt easy and strong). I am pretty sure, given the right day and rested properly, I could go sub 4:50, which I could really be proud of.
Meanwhile my training has done nothing but intensify. More speed sets, more short interval sets, more stroke correction, more meters. I have lost ten pounds this year and am now UNDER my teen-age racing weight. This is from being a 250 lb blob just over ten years ago. The failure to succeed in what, by any measure, are very moderate goals is just spirit crushing.
This last weekend I had the great indignity of racing a 39 year old who managed to clock a 1:57:06 on the 200 free. I nick-named him "Bubbles" because, throughout the race that is all I got to see of him. He turned around an hour later and logged a 58:10 on a 100 back. He was disappointed because his best time in sub 57. Spririt crushing.
Any suggestions?
Parents
Former Member
plenty of advice has been offered about keeping things in perspective...good advice. However, I think its great to go get what you are after. I don't think age should hold you back from setting a lofty goal and then working towards it consistently for a period of time. Keep it up and you'll hit your goal times. I guarantee it.
First of all, I'm relatively young around here at 33 and I have some big goals that I'm working towards...patiently and consistently. What I notice about people in masters who come back after a long lay off is they try to train the way they did when they were "good". This is a mistake. A lot has changed since you were younger in regards to training, strength, and conditioning.
I don't know exactly what you're doing but here's what I currently think works.
1. Dryland...do not do the old style weight lifting all the time...where you pick a muscle group and then kill it during your training session. It breaks you down so bad that you can't swim. Instead try lifting two times per week for one hour and hit the entire body both times. Do multi-joint compound exercises. Better yet meet with a personal trainer one time every few months to write and adjust your program that is specific to swimming goals.
2. Do not underestimate the amount of rest you need. Wear a fast suit or shave. Taper for three weeks as a starting point.
3. Train all the energy systems in the pool. A lot of masters swimmers think that a lot of aerobic work on short rest intervals is what is going to get them faster. Wrong! Some of that is great. But a steady diet of that forces you to always swim in survival, slightly uncomfortable mode. Instead increase the rest and swim faster at times and make things really uncomfortable.
Basic Endurance Sets
Anaerobic Threshold Sets
VO2MAX Sets
Power/Neural Sets
Lactate Sets
4. Periodize your training plan. General endurance/Threshold phase, then VO2Max phase, then Lactate Phase, then taper. This is just an example. "Swimming Fastest" is a good read to learn about some of these general concepts.
plenty of advice has been offered about keeping things in perspective...good advice. However, I think its great to go get what you are after. I don't think age should hold you back from setting a lofty goal and then working towards it consistently for a period of time. Keep it up and you'll hit your goal times. I guarantee it.
First of all, I'm relatively young around here at 33 and I have some big goals that I'm working towards...patiently and consistently. What I notice about people in masters who come back after a long lay off is they try to train the way they did when they were "good". This is a mistake. A lot has changed since you were younger in regards to training, strength, and conditioning.
I don't know exactly what you're doing but here's what I currently think works.
1. Dryland...do not do the old style weight lifting all the time...where you pick a muscle group and then kill it during your training session. It breaks you down so bad that you can't swim. Instead try lifting two times per week for one hour and hit the entire body both times. Do multi-joint compound exercises. Better yet meet with a personal trainer one time every few months to write and adjust your program that is specific to swimming goals.
2. Do not underestimate the amount of rest you need. Wear a fast suit or shave. Taper for three weeks as a starting point.
3. Train all the energy systems in the pool. A lot of masters swimmers think that a lot of aerobic work on short rest intervals is what is going to get them faster. Wrong! Some of that is great. But a steady diet of that forces you to always swim in survival, slightly uncomfortable mode. Instead increase the rest and swim faster at times and make things really uncomfortable.
Basic Endurance Sets
Anaerobic Threshold Sets
VO2MAX Sets
Power/Neural Sets
Lactate Sets
4. Periodize your training plan. General endurance/Threshold phase, then VO2Max phase, then Lactate Phase, then taper. This is just an example. "Swimming Fastest" is a good read to learn about some of these general concepts.
