A sprint experiment

Former Member
Former Member
So I got the swimming bug again after the World Championships so I decided yesterday to do a swim meet without having swam at all in 12 years. It was more fun than I expected and I swam about as fast as I was when I stopped swimming (at age 17). What changed since then? (1) I have no cardio (i.e. died on 35-40m of the 50m LCMs I swam) and (2) 40 extra pounds of muscle with not a lot of extra fat. I have always been of the view that strength/weight training is vastly underutilized in sports in general and am going to put it to the test in swimming. My training will consist of only technique training, sprints, kick and very very little yardage (like ~1200 yards a WEEK). I figure that will be enough to get my cardio to where I can sprint a 50 without dying and I figure all you need for a sprint is to be able to go all out for the whole race, with the remaining factors being power and technique which don't require much yardage I don't think. Anyone ever try it?
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  • Former Member
    Former Member
    Ask yourself, in your heart of hearts, if you are avoiding pool time because you don't like it/don't feel you are good at it/find it too much hard work for your taste at this particular juncture of life. If the answer to any of these is yes, reconsider the advisability of not swimming much to get better at swimming. And take corrective action! ? So what if his motivation is some variation of laziness? Trying to find an easy way to improve swimming still seems to me like a fun thing to do. It doesn't hurt anyone. It will almost certainly improve his swimming compared with not swimming at all. If he tries his program and it doesn't work (and he answers "yes" to one or more of your questions), then he has some hard decisions to make. Until then, what does it matter if his motivations are impure?
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  • Former Member
    Former Member
    Ask yourself, in your heart of hearts, if you are avoiding pool time because you don't like it/don't feel you are good at it/find it too much hard work for your taste at this particular juncture of life. If the answer to any of these is yes, reconsider the advisability of not swimming much to get better at swimming. And take corrective action! ? So what if his motivation is some variation of laziness? Trying to find an easy way to improve swimming still seems to me like a fun thing to do. It doesn't hurt anyone. It will almost certainly improve his swimming compared with not swimming at all. If he tries his program and it doesn't work (and he answers "yes" to one or more of your questions), then he has some hard decisions to make. Until then, what does it matter if his motivations are impure?
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