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?
Former Member
Chill out. It is time to enjoy swimming.
Why does anyone have to prove how great they are? I swim for pleasure.
There are a lot of fast swimmers out there, senor (that's my Spanish slipping in). All the way into their 60s and beyond. So keep training for yourself, be happy you are getting in shape, and don't compare yourself to others.
Make sure training is fun so you can stick with it.
It sounds like you might be doing too much physical stuff (but I'm a couch potato relative to most posters on this board). You could be getting tired and that's why you aren't seeing the improvements you want.
You might have to dedicate yourself to swimming as your primary sport, and focus all your training around it, possibly sacrificing the karate.
And that is my late-night :2cents:.
3.Kicking:
kick (without flippers.
How come I now get absolutely no propulsion from my feet?
ankle/ foot flexibility, technique, conditioning, attitude
Does a person actually lose that much ankle flexibility as they age?
probably
humanpunchingbag,
I was a slow kicker as a kid and was still a slow kicker until a few months ago. I started working on my kick regularly at the beginning of the year, and started stretching my ankles every night, first just sitting on my ankles leaning forward (lookup child's pose yoga), then sitting upright, then sitting back, then sitting back with my kneed elevated balancing on the front of my toes. Now I sit upright on my ankles, but my toes are suspended on a foam roller and my knees are on the floor. If my ankles ever get to the floor from this position, I am done :)
I spend 2 minutes every day stretching my ankles. Since I started stretching the ankles about the time I started working my kick, I don't know how much difference one made independently, but combined, they made a huge difference. My wife could lap me on a 200 kick, and now I can finish with her. She is a decent kicker.
So your kick is still very improvable as is your ankle flexibility.
I too think you suffer from over training. Maybe you need to consider introducing meditation, yoga and other active relaxation activities during your taper. That way you are "doing" something, but you are letting your body repair and refuel. Obviously you need to pick activities that are more about relaxation then about activity.
Not to seem flip, but gaze at your subject heading for a moment. Pretend that your mobility had been compromised by an accident, or some other misfortune. Imagine that you were undergoing treatment for a nasty illness. Try to get a momentary glimpse of how blessed you'd feel to glide through the water under your own power. If your training is truly unrewarded, it seems to me that you might be calculating reward in a strange currency. Be thankful.
Good advice. It is difficult not getting caught up in comparing our 40+ selves with our 20+ selves, but in many ways age is like an accident. Just as you might lose flexibility and strength following an accident, so too one can lose these things with age.
This is not to say that you shouldn't try to improve, however.
First, I would recommend that you read some of Ande's posts in Swimming Faster Faster. One that comes to my mind when I read you post is Tip 159: Build a Better Boat.
Second, 2:20 in the 200 requires some speed. I would argue that a good 400 also requires some speed. I didn't read much information about you working on your speed. Aerobic work is fine, but alone it will not make you a fast swimmer.
Third, have you videotaped you swimming? This is related to the "Build a Better Boat" concept. Improving technique can have a much more dramatic effect on your swimming speed than conditioning.
Fourth, are you resting enough for meets? Several have suggested this, but really. What have your in-season times been like compared with your rested times? If you are not showing significant improvements when resting, then I would argue that there is something wrong with the way you are resting.
Hi. Its Juszczec from from the Karate Underground.
I think you are being waaaay too hard on yourself.
First of all, you're what, 47? You're 47 and doing everything you said in the list: physically, career-wise and with your family.
Dude, I've got relatives just a little past 47 (I'm 42) who can't get down on the floor.
So what that teenagers are faster than you? So what that some guy 8 years younger is faster than you.
For every person that can outperform you in the pool, I can pull out 10 that can't come close to what you are doing.
Now that we've got that in perspective, someone suggested you might be overtraining and I've gotta agree:
weights 3-4x a week
karate 3x a week
swimming 5x a week (90 min per session)
That's alot. This is me:
swimming 3x a week (1k, half hour)
weights 2x a week
karate 6x a week (I vary these sessions from easy to exhausting)
I think mine is ambitious, but its a walk in the park compared to yours.
Mark
Mark: pleasure to meet you here too. Same old issues too: the focussed and overwhelming effort to take every pleasurable hobby I have and turn it into hard, grinding work.
Question: I note you do six sessions a week in the dojo. How long is each session? My dojo is a fifteen minute drive from home, so every hour session actually represents two hours by the time you factor in travel and change time. My training pool and my dojo are less than a mile apart; but I have tried training swimming and karate back to back: absolutely mind numbingly exhausting and guaranteed to lead to injuries.
To everyone else: your advise is absolutely great and I am going to start implementing some of it immediately. Summer slow down is coming fast here: the indoor Olympic pool is closing for bi-annual maintenance and the only worthwhile outdoor pool in town will only be available to me for 1 hour at lunch time for most of July and August. I will be forced to cut my sessions back somewhat. I am definetly going to check out many of the resources mentioned here immediately. Especially the kicking drills: I am pretty sure my lack of legs is the major issue at least with my backstroke.
I might even break down and see a doctor. Among my many phobias is fear of doctors, which is pretty funny seeing as how I am a veterinarian.
One last thing... get the book Swimming Fastest by Ernest Maglischo. It is like having the repair manual for your car. It unmasks a lot of the mystery around swimming.
I lied. One more thing... when we talk about speed work, there are several different energy systems which are involved. Make sure to investigate each of them. As you were mentioning working on your speed by doing 100's, I started to wince. My fear is that you will still be working one of your aerobic energy zones. You should experiment with some "real" speed work as well like 25 yard sprints and less. Why? Doing a 1:10-1:12 for a 100 free is much easier if you can do a :15 or better for a 25.
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.
To add a little more...
Slowly add to your workload. Your doing so much right now that your blocking yourself in. Take the long term approach. Think about where you want to be in two years. What are you going to be able to add/change along the way to overload the system in a new way?
You need a long term plan...IMHO. Cut back now and then rebuild over the course of a few seasons/years.
Here's my last simple piece of advice...If you want to swim faster, then you will actually have to swim faster. Think about this in workout.
Question: I note you do six sessions a week in the dojo. How long is each session? My dojo is a fifteen minute drive from home, so every hour session actually represents two hours by the time you factor in travel and change time. My training pool and my dojo are less than a mile apart; but I have tried training swimming and karate back to back: absolutely mind numbingly exhausting and guaranteed to lead to injuries.
Ah, I'm actually only breaking a sweat in the dojo twice a week. I've got a heavy bag at home and a fitness area at work that I use for the other 4 sessions.
I do combine karate and swimming on the same day twice a week. BUT on those days I either hit the heavy bag by myself OR just do drills with others - no sparring.
Also, I swim 1k. That's it. No more. It takes about 25 minutes and I use swimming as a means to an end - cardio training easier on the body than running. I'm not looking to excel as a swimmer much more than is necessary to keep my weight down and give me enough endurance so exhaustion isn't a problem when doing karate.
Mark
You should experiment with some "real" speed work as well like 25 yard sprints and less. Why? Doing a 1:10-1:12 for a 100 free is much easier if you can do a :15 or better for a 25.
:applaud: :applaud: :applaud: :applaud:
That is one of the most poorly understood(?), accepted(?), trained(?) aspect of swimming. 25 yard speed is critical as every swim consists of a series of 25s. So, assuming good over all conditioning, the faster you can swim a 25, the faster you can swim a 50,100,200,500, etc...
I struggle with this with my kids that I coach. When we do 25 sprints, they just cruise and then wonder why they're not getting faster for 50s and 100s. 25 Speed is such a HUGE building block for faster swimming.
