Katie Ledecky swims pool length with glass of milk on head

I am surprised by the depth of knowledge on this thread. Thanks everyone.

retired swimming coach wrote:

Yes, Mark, there have been some changes that had significant speed impact (breaststroke and backstroke rule changes for example) but goggles were universal in training by 1972, and your teammates Jim Montgomery, John Kinsella and Bruce Furniss all swam front quadrant freestyle back then. The supersuits of 2008-2009 were truly outlandish in their advantage but current suits not so much.

So really, the distance free times are easily compared from your 72 Olympics success onward.

Yes, stroke techniques have improved in some ways, but even back in your prime, I would have had you lengthen the finish of your fly stroke and press your chin closer to the water on your breath had I been your coach ?.

Excellent advice Coach, Mark you could have been even more great!

To Mark's credit, the Munich pool was about 3 1/2 feet deep on the far end and didn't have tiny bubbles to push him to the surface.

I would be interested in differences in training back in the day versus today, i.e., volume, intensity, etc.

G Cup wrote:

I am surprised by the depth of knowledge on this thread. Thanks everyone.

Agree. No shallow posts here.

In basic naval architecture froude number dictates that in part resistance is proportional to root gL, so the longer L, the lower resistance, in general.

so, provided wetted surface area and wave making is equal (which it wont be), be as long as possible. Look at skulls, eights, etc.

and even skis maybe, etc.

However i would guess that the drag / vortices etc between the outstrecthed arm and the head would be weird. It can also be a wave making thing, with the arm, like a bulbous bow, influencing the wave making profile - filling in the first 'trough' and so reducing wave making drag. Also controlled turbulence can be useful.

who knows?

I was never a serious swimmer, but my brother-in-law qualified for the '68 and '72 O-trials, and my wife is a distance swimmer who qualified for multiple Nationals. I think one of the biggest differences between back in the day ('60s and '70s) versus today (and even versus 25-30 years ago), when Mark was swimming, is that training still involved very little dry land work. Not too long after Spitz's career ended weight training became a much more important aspect of swim training. I think that Spitz was talented enough that if he had adopted then-modern weight training, as well as his traditional pool work, when he tried his comeback at age 40, he might have had a real shot at making that O-team.

In response to your earlier post, here are some cursory observations on training differences over the decades (you will certainly be able to find swim coaches who will disagree with some of these summaries, so consider these one old coach's observations only)

60s - Swim training mimicked the moderate/long rest interval training used by runners. You can find the Jim Ryun training log online as trained by his HS swim coach Timmons. The track intervals there are similar to the swim workout intervals used in that decade. No goggles so daily swim mileage ranged from 3,000 meters to (in double workouts) 10,000 meters. As Jefe in CO noted in his post, weight training is minimal.

70s - Short rest interval training in the pool is pretty standard in all successful programs (to the extreme of doing repeat 400 meter swims with only 10 seconds rest between!) Goggles are universal and swim mileage balloons to major programs doing 15,000 - 20,000 meters PER DAY! Australians popularize the running LSD to the pool with great success in longer distance swim racing. Even weight training is popular as short rest interval circuit training, eg. swimmers rotate from weight station to weight station doing 45 seconds of work and 15 seconds to switch to the next station.

80s - still high swim mileage but not as much as in the 70s. Heavy weight work becomes popular with nautilus type machines being available. Exercise scientists promote low yardage training as beneficial and more quality work is incorporated in many programs.

Efforts to "train smarter" include widespread lactate testing in workouts to find optimal training intensities.

90s - Some core strength training with med balls gains popularity. Higher quality sprint work programs developed. Recent swim podcast includes 90ish Auburn head swim coach, now Olympic coach testifying to his success as a sprint swim coach being due to his incorporation of Auburn Track coach sprint training protocols back then.

(editorializing on my part now....1 - do running coaches ever incorporate anything from swim coach colleagues? 2 - 90s saw Michael Jordan effect, i.e. very few Big Males show up in the sport of swimming in this decade)

00s - increased focus on quality work for both distance and sprint swim training (most programs still believe in double workouts, but not necessarily every day) . Weight training significantly diversified and free weight work embraced more universally. Big men return to the sport (editorializing). Huge increase (almost 100%) in number of age group swimmers joining the sport and so "cream rises". Top programs daily mileage around 5,000-7,000 for single workout days and 10,000-12,000 for double workout days, but specific sprinter training probably around 60-70% of that mileage.

10s - Age Group professional swimmer Michael Andrew popularizes a "new" training called USRPT (ultra short race pace training), which basically incorporates the short rest interval work begun in the 70s with low daily mileage and high level repeat speed. (a sample track workout using USRPT would be 20-30 x 200s with 20-30 sec rest between repeats holding your 800 PR pace on the 200s.)

Yep, and Andrew has been demonized for being non-traditional, especially because of his lack of NCAA commitment.

Pretty good review. I would add rule changes like 15m and selective enforcement like the Lochte rule.

And the major improvement over Spitz is the shaving of moustaches.?

Lol I suck at distance swimming, but I do almost 2000m every 2nd day. Wife was a swimmer, lots of swim friends, access to WR-level guys to critique my stroke. Cousin was a shade under a BR WR back in the day, now deceased. I am working on the real FR basics to get rid of initial bad habits, before I present my new bad habits to friends for criticism.?

It’s really great as long as you breathe bilaterally so that you don’t get swimmer’s shoulder. I’m doing 1800+m in about 45 mins now, really easy, not sucking wind, working on mechanics, 50% with paddles. My goal this year is to get to 2000m in 30 mins,, pretty easy. I just made a huge stride: keeping my neck relaxed, and making sure one goggle lens remains in the water on the breath, and looking straight at the bottom of the pool, not forward a bit.

It’s great to find a new challenge since I am no longer competitive for a track medal even at hack local open meets. I’m still sprint training, but there is much to learn in swimming, and I’m on the upslope.

But, even though the workouts seem easy, I am totally bagged for the rest of the day.

One of the solid LR threads that keeps me coming back.

i started swimming in my 20s to supplement my running and i've never regretted it. 30 years later I'm still trying to improve my stroke.

It's rare to find masters swim coaches who do give you stroke advice and don't just stick up a workout.

Retired Swim Coach...what is you best suggestion for drills to improve distance per stroke in freestyle? i find the inability to hold my breath long enough makes me shorten my stroke.

Back somewhere in the 90s, I think it was, I bought a stroke series particularly for my swim instruction classes called Total Immersion swimming. I found it a great series also for developing fundamentals for competitive freestyle and used them with my team. You can find these drills and concepts on YouTube under the same title. I would encourage you to check them out as they also address your issues with breathing and stroke length.

Jefe in the CO wrote:

Generally speaking it's call Front Quadrant Swimming and has been all the range since the early 90's(?). It's the process of reducing drag by increasing length. More closely resembles the modified catchup drill rather than full catchup. Every swimmer needs to master the modified catchup drill before they can entertain the notion of becoming proficient.

My take on Front Quadrant Swimming has long been that it isn't some sort of goal or preferred stroke style; it's just what happens because the recovery arm outside the water faces so much less resistance when you're flinging it through the air than the in water arm, which is moving slower because it's actually doing something useful in terms of propelling you through the water.

Ledecky's freestyle stroke type has long been pretty much middle of the road- neither the hyper long distance per stroke you get with some of the guys like Ian Thorpe or Sun Yang nor the high turnover 'waterbug' style like Janet Evans at her teenage peak.

And for the adult-onset swimmer, Ledecky's style is a lot better to model than Thorpe or Sun because those dudes relied on a highly propulsive kick upon hand entry and extension in order to maintain forward propulsion when there seemed to be a long glide on entry while you don't need that scarily good kick with a Ledecky-style freestyle. (Though Ledecky doing a kick set would be scarily fast itself.)

The propulsive flutter kick- does not necessarily look like much when you're talking beyond a 200M race, but if you have big feet and hyperflexible ankles, you can actually get a lot of speed without putting a ton of energy into it. A good swimmer has the ankle flexibility of a prima ballerina and knows how to use it to make it easier to go fast while having it look somewhat effortless. This is hard to build in an adult onset swimmer, especially in one with runner's ankles.

Another subtle point where you can tell the fish from the land mammals is watching for shoulder flexibility (the more you swim, the more you can use superior shoulder flexibility to extend your arm even further out on the catch without having excessive body roll) and whether they're leading with the lats on stroke recovery or leading with the elbow or wrist. Lats are nice relatively big muscles and it takes less effort to let them drive recovery than the other option.

The end result there is that you can spot the long time freestyle fish because they're showing the world their armpits on most strokes.

beachmouse wrote:

....

Another subtle point where you can tell the fish from the land mammals is watching for shoulder flexibility (the more you swim, the more you can use superior shoulder flexibility to extend your arm even further out on the catch without having excessive body roll) and whether they're leading with the lats on stroke recovery or leading with the elbow or wrist. Lats are nice relatively big muscles and it takes less effort to let them drive recovery than the other option.

The end result there is that you can spot the long time freestyle fish because they're showing the world their armpits on most strokes.

My wife, who was a very good butterflyer, when she was younger could lace her fingers together behind her back and raise her hands well above her head. I could barely get mine even with my shoulders.

Also, no one has mentioned 2-beat, 4-beat or 6-beat kicking yet. Many of the best distance freestylers are mostly 2-beat kickers because the large muscles of the legs and the relative inefficiency of kicking for propulsion make minimizing it a more energy efficient style. However, a whole bunch of factors like limb length, hand and foot size, knee and ankle flexibility, as well as shoulder flexibility affect the best turnover rate and swimming style for each individual.

The relaxed flexibility thing is critical, and is antithetical to sprinting. Keeping my ankles cocked has been sprint drilled into me, along with being stiff for max energy return. In today’s sprint workout I think I strained a rotator cuff a bit due to explosiveness at max ROM, I hope it mellow snout before tomorrow morning’s swim, because I need to work on that shoulder relaxation/ROM you’re talking about.

Swimming is so insanely technical, the water is unforgiving, and totally revealing. Early gains are really fun because they are so noticeable. I hope my body holds together. I want to keep it up until I die.

“Mellows out”?

For ridiculous depth of knowledge, check out swimswam.

https://swimswam.com/

zxczxcv wrote:

Is that the typical technique to let your forward arm remain in the water a moment after it enters the water before pulling it back to reduce turbulence? Her stroke is incredibly efficient. I use about five times the effort to get through a length, I would guess.

Yes indeed. It’s called “front quadrant swimming.” It enables you to always hold onto water during the entire freestyle cycle. Miss Ledecky’s front hand stayed longer in the water, in this video, because she was swimming very slowly and carefully, at least at the beginning.

You don’t want to keep the hand there too long however, as it can slow down your stroke too much. If you watch Ledecky in a race, the hand doesn’t stay out front for very long at all.

Slow Moving Vehicle wrote:

That's a pretty cool thing to do (although I agree that using *chocolate* milk was a bit ill-considered), but is it anything more than a neat trick? Is there some benefit to holding your head steady and level while swimming? I suspect there is, but I don't know enough about the sport to know.

Absolutely, you must hold your head still. The body will follow the head. If the head is moving back and forth, the body will tend to zigzag, and break rhythm. Your stroke will be very much out of alignment with the head isn’t still. I think if your head is a hinge and the entire body rotates around it.

I was a thoroughly average female D3 distance swimmer back in the day with a 2 beat kick that was more like a beat and a half most of the time.

Coach loved his mid-practice kick sets because they kept the heart rate in the right zone while giving the arms a bit of a break and I remember many 10x100 yard flutter kick sets where my lane had a 1;40 sendoff and we were expected to hold 1:30 or faster and I'd figured out the efficiency and flexibility thing well enough I used to be able to hit those with my heels barely breaking the surface of the water.

Your distance kick style sounds like current world record holder Sun Yang's kick and a half ?

Although 2 beat kick variations are most common for distance swims (the vast majority of swimmers I coached who used 2 beat distance kicks used 4-6 beat kicks in short races), consider this. In 1976, Monty Skinner (now a famous coach) broke the world record 100 mt. Free by almost 6 tenths using a 2 beat crossover kick. I don't see any sprinters using that kick anymore.