What do YOU need to do to have a major swimming breakthrough?"

that's true, as you get closer to competition, if you compete in the sprints, you need to have speed. very often in the 50 and the 100 who ever turns first at the 25 is going to win the race. to develop speed you need to do stroke drills and some very fast, 15 meter, 25's, 50's, 75's, and 100's you need to get used to coming at the wall faster and turning with more speed. At the 1991 Masters meet in Nashville, I went 20.87 in the 50 free. That same year Robert Peel went 19.83. After he did that I interviewed him asking how he trained. He said he'd been lifting weights, playing basketball, and doing a little swimming. On a whim he entered a swim meet and went 21.6 in the 50 free, he was shocked so he started training a little more, he felt he didn't have time to go through a training cycle, so he just concentrated on speed. Mainly doing doing 12.5 and 25 sprints really fast with plenty of rest. he swam in another meet and went 20.6 after training for 4 or 6 weeks, then he went to masters nationals and went 19.83. Robert wound up training for the 1992 Olympic Trials, i think he made top 8 and went 22.83 50 LCM. the point I want to make is that the people who are swimming really fast, like Trip Hedrick and Richard Abrams, do have talent, but they are also training to swim very fast. In 1991 - 1992 I wound up going 50 LCM FR 23.65 and 50 SCY FR 20.52 the 23.65 was my lifetime best time, I did it 5 years after I finished college on less than 3,000 yards a day. ande Originally posted by waves101 I find that I need to "learn to swim fast". By this, I mean most of the time you are building up in the season to a final meet. In this build up time most of workout is focused on endurance but then in the final 6 weeks before the meet I switch to "learning to swim fast". Taper is the ultimate test but I find that periodically I need to continue to swim beyond the final meet. When I do this my base is set at a whole new level and the times drop accordingly.

that's true, as you get closer to competition, if you compete in the sprints, you need to have speed. very often in the 50 and the 100 who ever turns first at the 25 is going to win the race. to develop speed you need to do stroke drills and some very fast, 15 meter, 25's, 50's, 75's, and 100's you need to get used to coming at the wall faster and turning with more speed. At the 1991 Masters meet in Nashville, I went 20.87 in the 50 free. That same year Robert Peel went 19.83. After he did that I interviewed him asking how he trained. He said he'd been lifting weights, playing basketball, and doing a little swimming. On a whim he entered a swim meet and went 21.6 in the 50 free, he was shocked so he started training a little more, he felt he didn't have time to go through a training cycle, so he just concentrated on speed. Mainly doing doing 12.5 and 25 sprints really fast with plenty of rest. he swam in another meet and went 20.6 after training for 4 or 6 weeks, then he went to masters nationals and went 19.83. Robert wound up training for the 1992 Olympic Trials, i think he made top 8 and went 22.83 50 LCM. the point I want to make is that the people who are swimming really fast, like Trip Hedrick and Richard Abrams, do have talent, but they are also training to swim very fast. In 1991 - 1992 I wound up going 50 LCM FR 23.65 and 50 SCY FR 20.52 the 23.65 was my lifetime best time, I did it 5 years after I finished college on less than 3,000 yards a day. ande Originally posted by waves101 I find that I need to "learn to swim fast". By this, I mean most of the time you are building up in the season to a final meet. In this build up time most of workout is focused on endurance but then in the final 6 weeks before the meet I switch to "learning to swim fast". Taper is the ultimate test but I find that periodically I need to continue to swim beyond the final meet. When I do this my base is set at a whole new level and the times drop accordingly.