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

Hey Ande! If you are giving advice I can use all that I can get. I have been frustrated over the last 3-5 months in that I no longer seem to see any improvement. I am 47 year old male, 5'11 1/2", 208 lbs, 29% body fat, and have tested my resting heart rate as low as 52 but more often about 54 Beats Per Minute. I only started swimming 1 year ago and had never done any swimming workouts prior to that, though I was a fairly dedicated competitive runner in high school (1:57 half-mile). Other points of note are that I have a ruptured and degenerative disc disease of my L5/S1 lumbar disc (which is the reason why I had to take up swimming to address what was my increasing weight problem). So I only do open turns out of fear about my back. When I began I weighed in at about 230 lbs, dropped down to 198 lbs, but have now come back up to 208 lbs -:( . I swim fairly consistently with a local masters swim club 3 times per week where we average 3,000 - 3,600 yards per workout over an hour to hour and 15 minutes. Most of these workouts consist of shorter intervals (25's, 50's, 100's) and at least one of the weekly workouts is focused or includes IM training. I generally swim an additional 2 times a week on my own. These workouts I tend to do longer distances and have several times exceeded 6,000 yards, but more often average in the 4,000 to 5,000 yard range (intervals of 200's, 300's, and 500's). I have been averaging 16,000 - 20,000 yards per week (when I do not include the rare week where I can't train or only train 1-2 days for work or other reasons). All my training is in SCY pools. While I have not competed yet, I hope to next year. So I am guaging my improvement on "time trials" often completed at the end of workouts with the masters team - all of which are done as push-offs. It is worth noting that when I am swimming with the team, my times are noticably faster - I guess due to the fear of slowing down those in my lane though they make me lead the lane most of the time. Freestyle is my best stroke, with butterfly next. My *** and back are pathetic and I have serious kick issues on all strokes (based upon kick sets I do with the others in my lane, I can easily outpace everyone in my lane when doing full freestyle stroke, but can't come close to keeping up when doing kick sets). About 5 months ago I got a 100y time trail at the end of a workout down to about a 1:05. And last Friday, I did about a 1:07. I have definitely plateaued in ths area and can't figure out how to get out of this rut. Any ideas?

Hey Ande! If you are giving advice I can use all that I can get. I have been frustrated over the last 3-5 months in that I no longer seem to see any improvement. I am 47 year old male, 5'11 1/2", 208 lbs, 29% body fat, and have tested my resting heart rate as low as 52 but more often about 54 Beats Per Minute. I only started swimming 1 year ago and had never done any swimming workouts prior to that, though I was a fairly dedicated competitive runner in high school (1:57 half-mile). Other points of note are that I have a ruptured and degenerative disc disease of my L5/S1 lumbar disc (which is the reason why I had to take up swimming to address what was my increasing weight problem). So I only do open turns out of fear about my back. When I began I weighed in at about 230 lbs, dropped down to 198 lbs, but have now come back up to 208 lbs -:( . I swim fairly consistently with a local masters swim club 3 times per week where we average 3,000 - 3,600 yards per workout over an hour to hour and 15 minutes. Most of these workouts consist of shorter intervals (25's, 50's, 100's) and at least one of the weekly workouts is focused or includes IM training. I generally swim an additional 2 times a week on my own. These workouts I tend to do longer distances and have several times exceeded 6,000 yards, but more often average in the 4,000 to 5,000 yard range (intervals of 200's, 300's, and 500's). I have been averaging 16,000 - 20,000 yards per week (when I do not include the rare week where I can't train or only train 1-2 days for work or other reasons). All my training is in SCY pools. While I have not competed yet, I hope to next year. So I am guaging my improvement on "time trials" often completed at the end of workouts with the masters team - all of which are done as push-offs. It is worth noting that when I am swimming with the team, my times are noticably faster - I guess due to the fear of slowing down those in my lane though they make me lead the lane most of the time. Freestyle is my best stroke, with butterfly next. My *** and back are pathetic and I have serious kick issues on all strokes (based upon kick sets I do with the others in my lane, I can easily outpace everyone in my lane when doing full freestyle stroke, but can't come close to keeping up when doing kick sets). About 5 months ago I got a 100y time trail at the end of a workout down to about a 1:05. And last Friday, I did about a 1:07. I have definitely plateaued in ths area and can't figure out how to get out of this rut. Any ideas?