how to be a faster swimmer?

abennett -- I know this is an old thread but I though I would add my 2 cents anyway. I participated in a study at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs many years ago. (1993, I believe.) They were measuring muscle glycogen depletion, among other things. It was a rush! A lot of the physical testing was done in their flume. They took small muscle biopsies along the way, so they were using masters swimmers instead of their own elite swimmers. I would do it again (and again) if they ever did something like that again! Anyway, one of the points of the study was to demonstrate the difference in speed, strength and endurance gain by incorporating more intervals into a person's workouts. They selected mostly aerobic swimmers -- those of us who did looooong plodding workouts at a relatively good clip. (For instance, 40-45 seconds per 50 yards, 500-1000 yards at a time.) We did a series of tests, and then were given new workouts to go off and do for 2 months. The new workouts retained our respective old yardage, but we were given more intervals of varying lengths, paces and techniques. As you can probably guess, we all showed marked performance improvement from doing more intervals. What SPECIFICALLY should you be doing? It's hard to say without knowing you, your capabilities and your current workout. And I don't want to pretend that I can tell you even if you came back and started giving me specifics about you and your workouts. Let me just suggest that you consider adding sets of various paces and short lengths to your current workout. If you do all 500s, try doing 1000 yards of 100s at quicker and quicker pace as you develop into it. Besides improving your swimming speed, have you looked into improving your technique? If you do a basic open turn, for instance, then by developing a competent flip turn you can improve a half second on each turn (maybe a whole second depending on how lumbering your current turn is and how well you develop the flip.) A half second per turn over a mile distance (assuming in a pool and not open water!) is 30 seconds right there. And if you are a 30-minute miler, I'll bet there is room for improvement in your stroke technique that will merit you improvement on two fronts: 1) It will increase your speed. 2) It will eliminate energy wasted on poor technique that can be very valuable in maintaining your pace over that last 200 yards.

abennett -- I know this is an old thread but I though I would add my 2 cents anyway. I participated in a study at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs many years ago. (1993, I believe.) They were measuring muscle glycogen depletion, among other things. It was a rush! A lot of the physical testing was done in their flume. They took small muscle biopsies along the way, so they were using masters swimmers instead of their own elite swimmers. I would do it again (and again) if they ever did something like that again! Anyway, one of the points of the study was to demonstrate the difference in speed, strength and endurance gain by incorporating more intervals into a person's workouts. They selected mostly aerobic swimmers -- those of us who did looooong plodding workouts at a relatively good clip. (For instance, 40-45 seconds per 50 yards, 500-1000 yards at a time.) We did a series of tests, and then were given new workouts to go off and do for 2 months. The new workouts retained our respective old yardage, but we were given more intervals of varying lengths, paces and techniques. As you can probably guess, we all showed marked performance improvement from doing more intervals. What SPECIFICALLY should you be doing? It's hard to say without knowing you, your capabilities and your current workout. And I don't want to pretend that I can tell you even if you came back and started giving me specifics about you and your workouts. Let me just suggest that you consider adding sets of various paces and short lengths to your current workout. If you do all 500s, try doing 1000 yards of 100s at quicker and quicker pace as you develop into it. Besides improving your swimming speed, have you looked into improving your technique? If you do a basic open turn, for instance, then by developing a competent flip turn you can improve a half second on each turn (maybe a whole second depending on how lumbering your current turn is and how well you develop the flip.) A half second per turn over a mile distance (assuming in a pool and not open water!) is 30 seconds right there. And if you are a 30-minute miler, I'll bet there is room for improvement in your stroke technique that will merit you improvement on two fronts: 1) It will increase your speed. 2) It will eliminate energy wasted on poor technique that can be very valuable in maintaining your pace over that last 200 yards.