IGX

I had a guy on our cycling team that was an open water swim guy. Multiple national titles in a sport no one knows about. Dude was a shit cyclist but had one of the hardest heads I have ever seen. Would fly to Fiji on his own dime to compete in open water 25k swim, win and get a ribbon and a plaque. .Would not quit no matter how shitty it got. Great training partner. Swimming is awesome

Boris wrote:I'm back on the pool deck these days and, not to take a thing away from the Steve Rogers of the swimming world, but there are always a few kids that work waaay too f-king hard and can't ever dial it back long enough to iron out their technique issues.

There's a life and lifting lesson there too, I suppose...

Not to quote myself and say this is gold, but I am and it is...

Sometimes it's the coach's fault. It doesn't take much knowledge or experience to pound a kid versus technique analysis. Other kids just can NOT slow things the f down.

I have a handful of kids (spurred on by well-intentioned parents) that just go gangbusters every freaking set, even drills. Every stroke they take is fossilizing less than (sometimes far less than) perfect technique, but every technical suggestion, even when received, takes a back seat to beating someone else or hitting a goal time...

They'll end up being decent because they work like dogs, but they probably won't ever reach anything close to their potential without dealing w. their technical shortcomings...

It is said that swim coaches can work a kid harder than coaches can in other sports. A growing kid can't take too much running; wrestling workouts must be paced for youngsters. But swimming doesn't stress young bones. At least that was the explanation I always heard when I was swimming my double workouts. I swam competitively from age 10. Won the high school state meet in freestyle sprints and went to the University of Wisconsin on a swimming scholarship.

I do not have shoulder issues.

I don't know about technique vs. insane training. Back then we'd just gotten an underwater window in the high school pool. My team won 9 out of 11 events in the state meet. We were filmed from the underwater window and these films were distributed throughout the state to help other coaches and athletes. But the young swimmers were told not to try to emulate my stroke. It was, they said, all just strength, fast twitch muscle fiber and conditioning.

Maybe so. I believed I had a chance to qualify for the Olympics. A swimmer from my school, 5 years older than me, had made it. My times were faster than his state meet winning times. As it turned out, everyone else, all over the damn country, had gotten faster too. I didn't come close to qualifying.

Lack of technique, I guess.

seeahill wrote:It is said that swim coaches can work a kid harder than coaches can in other sports. A growing kid can't take too much running; wrestling workouts must be paced for youngsters. But swimming doesn't stress young bones. At least that was the explanation I always heard when I was swimming my double workouts. I swam competitively from age 10. Won the high school state meet in freestyle sprints and went to the University of Wisconsin on a swimming scholarship.

I do not have shoulder issues.

I don't know about technique vs. insane training. Back then we'd just gotten an underwater window in the high school pool. My team won 9 out of 11 events in the state meet. We were filmed from the underwater window and these films were distributed throughout the state to help other coaches and athletes. But the young swimmers were told not to try to emulate my stroke. It was, they said, all just strength, fast twitch muscle fiber and conditioning.

Maybe so. I believed I had a chance to qualify for the Olympics. A swimmer from my school, 5 years older than me, had made it. My times were faster than his state meet winning times. As it turned out, everyone else, all over the damn country, had gotten faster too. I didn't come close to qualifying.

Lack of technique, I guess.

Good thing you were such a strong swimmer, or you might have drowned when that inner tube tipped over last year.

DikTracy6000 wrote: Good thing you were such a strong swimmer, or you might have drowned when that inner tube tipped over last year.

Yep. Remember, I swam the fuck out of the river and only died after I got to the beach.

Just listened to an interesting podcast with Raph Ruiz about working S&C stuff with the US Olympic Swim team. "Infantile" is what he called the current state of swimming S&C in the US.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Just listened to an interesting podcast with Raph Ruiz about working S&C stuff with the US Olympic Swim team. "Infantile" is what he called the current state of swimming S&C in the US.

While my own views are a bit limited, I think that describes a lot of S&C for various sports in this country, especially at HS level and below.

Shafpocalypse Now wrote:Just listened to an interesting podcast with Raph Ruiz about working S&C stuff with the US Olympic Swim team. "Infantile" is what he called the current state of swimming S&C in the US.

Well, that's kind of true...

To be fair, it's also true that there are a lot of trainers/boxes/etc. who work w. swimmers and then send them to their swim coaches too stiff to streamline properly... A trainer that does that isn't going to have an opportunity to work with my swimmers again if I have anything to say about it.

Swimmers are a complicated lot - many really are fish out of water when you take them out of the pool. And swimming does demand a somewhat unique mix of tension-relaxation-breathing.... S&C coaches who don't understand swimming well can potentially fuck things up pretty badly pretty quickly.