Elitism in Masters Swimming

I wanted to start swimming masters and was immediately turned off by a large local club because I was not into getting up at 5:00 am, swimming doubles or spending 4 hours on a Saturday training then going out with the team for brunch. Seriously? The number of masters swimmers doing doubles has got to be exceptionally low. My experience has been the exact opposite. Most teams are very laissez-faire: here's the workout schedule, come swim when you feel like it.

I was really bummed out when as a former competitive swimmer I wanted to start swimming masters and was immediately turned off by a large local club because I was not into getting up at 5:00 am, swimming doubles or spending 4 hours on a Saturday training then going out with the team for brunch. There was an obvious message that if I wasn't in with both feet then I was out. So we started a new club with old HS friends and were snubbed again at our first meet for starting a new group, instead of being welcomed for bringing 8 new USMS paying members to masters swimming. That elite attitude kept me out of USMS for almost 10 years. Just now getting back to it with another club with a much better vibe.

Our club has two evening works, one at 6 pm and another at 7 PM. Since my my kids are swimming their age group work outs during that entire time, and I'll stick it out for a double on occasion. Usually when I think of "doubles" it means doing a 90-120 minute workout at o-dark-thirty in the morning; then coming back to the pool for another 2+ hour workout around 5 in the afternoon. That's pretty rough for adults to manage that kind of schedule AND still be useful at work, home, etc. Some of our Masters have trained with the Seniors group (elite HS/college/post-grad) where that type of workout schedule is expected.

Honestly, their level makes novices feel uncomfortable. Most ex-serious swimmers are just happy to be able to swim for fun w/o the pressure of a coach or team counting on them and yelling at them. They truly have a lot in common w/ novices. I think this attitude does get projected, but the speed of the top swimmers is what intimidates beginners. The idea of "unintentional intimidation" reminded me of a Howard Jones song. At some point, the problem is the person who thinks they see elitism, rather than expecting others to hold back because of someone's insecurity. Under his nose was a dream come true Been there all the time and he almost knew Thoughts of people in misfortune stopped him doing things well His duty was to use it - left his pearl in the shell

The sun rises around 5am and sets after 10pm during the summer months over here, and since we have 5 weeks vacation over here, I like doing doubles during the summer. my last few weeks of work I go to the pool before going to work, then head to the lake after dinner. while on vacation I just did two lake swims a day 3-4x/week if our evening practices were not so late at night I would be doing doubles 3x a week. as it is now I don't get home until 10pm and can't handle going back to the pool 8 hrs later.

Steve, You may (or may not) be able to speed up the descent of your times. I am not sure I'm an elite swimmer yet in my age group (50-54), but I came back after a 24 year layoff and in less than a year progressed from a 1:03 for the 100SCY down to 56.9 in about 1 year. Having a feel for the water, and some time when I was young hardwiring the basics, definitely helps - but so does training in a way that gives you the maximum benefit. Ande has an important tip (among many in his Swim Faster Faster series) -- anything you measure will improve if you focus on it and work hard. When I started up again I knew I needed to work on my aerobic swimming fitness, my anaerobic swimming fitness, and build muscles that I hadn't been using. My workouts interleaved these three components as much as possible, pushing myself on distance work, interval work (50's, 100's and eventually 200's), and stroke mechanics. I kept track of all times in my workouts. I tried to stay clear of garbage yards, only doing as much as I could with reasonable form, and pushing hard (defined differently for each distance). At the start my workouts would only be 1000 to 1600 yd. One year later they average about 2700 yds. I kept track of how many yards I did within 2-sec ranges for my 100 yd. times in each workout. I tried to have a pyramid with some yardage at my fastest range, and successively more in each higher range up to my cutoff speed (the 1000 yd rate for any time period). As a key measure, I tried to get my pulse into the 160-170 range at least once each workout, preferably toward the end where I was pushing when it was hardest to do so. As soon as I could finish 500 yds in less than 7:30 ( not far from your 9:00 for 500m), I made sure to do a 500 yd time trial as part of my workout at least once a week. At least one other day I tried to see how far I could go just slightly off that 500 pace. By the time I could do 1000 yds in 14 minutes. I did time trials for the 500 and the 1000 each week as part of separate workouts. At the same time, in each workout, I would do at least 3 x 100 yds on whatever interval I could stand -- to start it was 2:00, but I pushed it down to 1:50, and then 1:40 as soon as I could without falling too far behind in my 100 yd. time in these. Now it is often 1:30. The key here is to make these fast, but keep then close in times -- and slowly bring these times down over the months while slowly bringing the interval time down. At the end of the first month I could do 1:15's or 1:16's on an interval of 2:00. Now, one year later, I'm down to 1:09 on 1:30. These interval sets, especially the last one I can handle, are where my pulse hits maximum and it's mind over matter with every stroke. But I can feel the payoff as the weeks go by. I also make sure I recover before moving on to the next set where I push myself (pulse down to 90 works for me). By keeping track of all my workouts on a spreadsheet I could see that I had a natural 9 to 11 week cycle of hitting a temporary plateau (as well as feeling really tired) and then moving on to the next level. I used this to modify my training to take advantage of where I was in each cycle and get the most out of it without breaking down. One caveat. I had some incredibly fitful sleep during the first six months as my muscles were building, and repairing, and the heat output and some general muscular discomfort was quite a lot to handle. But I only went as fast as I felt I could go without overstressing my shoulders -- I backed off if I felt any twinges. Eventually my shoulders were strong enough that they felt pretty well protected and could be more easily pushed. I'm not a coach, and not yet an elite swimmer. This kind of approach may not work for everyone, and it may just work for me, but I think that working simultaneously on pushing yourself on distances and on interval work may lead to more rapid improvement. The problem with muscles is that they become habituated to doing anything, and to get them to go to the next level you need to convince them that it is expected of them. To do that you need focus, and you need a mix of little recovery time within a set, more recovery time between sets, and distance with no break. (Attached graph of best 100 yd times over the past year) What an awesome post! Thanks for sharing!