Yakob swimming

Who cares? What would you get him for his birthday?

Henrik is an excellent swimmer, beautiful form, could glide a little more but he is sprinting so its understandable. Could probably take up triathlon and make the Olympics in that event for Norway?

Filip also has good form, more of a distance freestyle stroke.

I won't guess the 1000m time but I think with training, both Henrik and Filip would get down to around 22/21 minutes (or less) for 1500m in not a very long time.

Jakob is less practised and I think he forgot to breathe but still far more proficient than the average individual.

I think whats noticeable is how all 3 brothers were comfortable in the water and had good skills in a completely different sport than athletics. Indicates they have had a good general sporting upbringing before specialising.

This is a great post overall, but I very much doubt that Henrik or Filip could get down to 21/22 minutes in a reasonable time.

People say that swimming is all about technique, but this video really shows it. Jakob is one of the greatest middle distance runners in the history of the sport, and he absolutely bombs the second half of this race. That seems completely crazy on one level. It's reasonable that a non-swimmer wouldn't be fast, or wouldn't have the technique to swim long distances. But Jakob gets crushed by Filip on the second half of a 50, after being ahead off the start. He's clearly not lacking in general endurance, but he is totally lacking in swimming-specific endurance, so much so that an 8-year-old beginning club swimmer could hold on through a 50 better than Jakob did (although the 8-year-old might still be slower overall)

Henrik in particular looked really good here, but if you extend over a longer distance, you'll see the same thing happen with him relative to a competitive swimmer with pretty much any experience. You've all seen how generally athletic people can run fast for short distances and then be almost totally unable to keep going for longer ones. Well, imagine a world where humans weren't born for running, and in fact, barely spend any time on land. This is similar to the situation in swimming, and the only way to overcome it is to spend many hours in the water, preferably from an early age. I don't get the sense any of these three have done that.

A 21-22 minute 1500m is far from university-level, but it's pretty much impossible for anyone to get to without long-term training. There may be a few exceptionally talented individuals who can do so more quickly, but this kind of talent is pretty much orthogonal to general athleticism, of which these three of course have legions. *Perhaps* Henrik could eventually break a minute in the 100m. Even though that's a far better time than a 21-minute 1500m, it's much more achievable for a talented athlete without years of swim-specific training.

You don't know much about swimming, do you? 21/22 minutes isn't fast or elite level for 1500m, its a good age group time in triathlon.

I don't know why you are talking about Jakob so much, since my post clearly stated that he was the worst swimmer of the three. Or the least trained.

Theres very little about either Henrik or Filip's swim technique that indicate that they are going to slow drastically over a longer distance. In fact, they lack the speed to sprint properly and have relatively muted leg kicks, Filip in particular. I see no reason why they shouldn't achieve 21/22 minutes for a 1500m swim with some regular training because, as previously stated, its not that fast. And they don't have poor technique at all. Its much easier to achieve that sort of time over 1500m, particularly if they are from an endurance base, than to achieve a fast 100m time in swimming. Countless age groupers do it every year.

I have no idea what swimming video you watched but the guy in foreground "winning" I'd probably get out of the guard tower because he looks like a drowner.

50 something seconds in a 50m is terrible for my mother, and worse for an athlete. This is not a 21/22 minute 1500m swimmer (1:30/ 100m), aka substantially faster than this thrashing. This is someone that needs to learn how to swim efficiently,.and at an advanced age is far from a given.

*Disclaimer, ex-swimmer, low 21 SCY and low 24 SCM in the 50 free,

Currently from the wall I'll go around 26 in a 50m free, SCY, but am also old

Guys, this is so slow. I'm a middle-aged recreational swimmer and I laze through a 3k stretch way faster than this.

How close is your track PB to 3:28?

This.

They are dog awful swimmers. Many six-year olds are better, and that is not an exaggeration. But who cares.

Henrik is a much faster swimmer perhaps because he's had to spend so much more time in the pool rehabbing from injuries, but it does show that his pr's aren't necessarily slower because he isn't as good an athlete. In fact, he's actually run very competitively during the rare bouts of health he's had in the last five years.

I remember we used to have one pool workout a week (mostly water-running but warmed up with a number of laps). The girls were almost uniformly better than the guys and there was almost an inverse relationship with the fastest male runners being the slowest swimmers.

Having watched the local high school swim team at practice this past week I can say that Jacob fits in well with the novice group there. Although, unlike Jacob, some of them lose their side breathing pattern near the end of just a 25 yard repeat! Certainly, Jacob could develop his swimming as well as those boys do over a season of practices.

Side question: What athlete has the best competitive swimming/competitive running career? I offer Jeff Kostoff. During his senior year at Stanford University (1986-87) he ran on the Stanford Cross Country team at the NCAA D1 championships in November. Then in March he set the American Record in winning the 1650 yard Freestyle at the NCAA D1 Swimming Championships!!

50 m in 52 s is just not impressive on any level.

My 10-year-old daughter does summer swim. She is not particularly athletic. She doesn't swim year round. It's a casual fun program.

She is faster than Jakob!

I haven't swum a 50 free in a couple decades and generally despise swimming, but I'm pretty sure I could swim faster than this as a 42 year old woman. I was faster than this as a kid who only did summer swim and wasn't very good at it at all. Free was my worst event, and I still swam faster than this.

52 s for 50 m is a terrible time! Maybe you mean 100 m?? I didn't watch the video.

The fact that all three of them left early and that Gert didn't object does make you wonder about their win-at-all-costs mentality.

Rewatched for some reason

This pace is similar to breaststroke pull only with a buoy (which is about the slowest way to get across the pool that is used in any drill)

Take the buoy off from between your knees and it's easy to go under 45s in a 50m because of the glide and deeper pull in breaststroke.

Regardless, those are amazing athletes. That isn't debatable

Another former swimmer chiming in here (pretty average D3 swimmer back in the day) who has also spent a fair amount of time trying to help aspiring triathletes not drown on the swim leg.

The thing with most adult-onset swimmers is that they just don’t want to put in the work that a typical 13 year old girl does in the pool. They want to learn how to get through about 500 meters as easily as possible and don’t want to have to put the real time in to get decent in the water.

When you’ve got guys coming over from elite level middle distance running where it’s acceptable to desirable to vomit after a hard practice or race, they can dial it down a fair amount and still be out-working the 13 year old girl.

As far as technique goes, I’m pleasantly surprised at the decent shoulder flexibility, which is something a lot of adult onset swimmers struggle with. They don’t know what to really do with it- in running you don’t want to be rotating your body while you swing your arms while in swimming you wan to do a decent amount of rolling your body to be able to catch and push more watch, but that’s a fixable thing with some technique work.

The kick is the hard part- a good efficient swim kick requires the ankle flexibility of a prima ballerina. I’ve been out of the pool for a long time now and my resting foot position when I put my feet up on the ottoman is still en point. It’s just misunderstood because a good efficient distance free kick often doesn’t look like much. With my pretty average college team, we’d do 10x100 short course yards on the 1:45 hold around 1:30 as a mid-practice recovery set and my heels barely broke the water.

You don’t need to build that level of hyper flexible ankles and for a runner there are reasons why you don’t want to go there. And every swim team has one or two fast people who are utterly awful kickers but you do need to get your feet our of the way so they aren’t anchors or full up airplane flaps from a drag perspective and learn how to compensate for a bad kick with other parts of your stroke if that’s the case.

Upside potential- I go with Paul Yetter’s ‘anyone can get to AA time standards with good coaching and an excellent work ethic; beyond that, you need talent’ (AA refers to mid-level on the USA Swimming time charts and AA times are often used as qualifying times at many state meets.)

Looking at the 2024 USAS time charts, AA for 17-18 boys in the 1500M long course free is 17:59. So call a 18:00 1500M not insanely crazy if they were willing to do a pretty extended training block. I’ll also note that the infamous ‘Erik the Eel’ from Equatorial Guinea went from a 1:52 100 meters at the Sydney Olympics to a 56 second 100 meters by 2004 (hitting the AAA time standard for USAS 17-18 Boys in that event) so it may not be as totally aspirational as it sounds.(Yeah, different event focus and all but the brothers understand how to correctly suffer in a distance lane)

The question is whether it would be worth it because of the changes to their bodies. In addition to making ankles less stiff, you’re also talking adding upper body muscle mass that isn’t really useful for a distance runner, ie. extra weight without return on that muscle.

So IMO not worth messing with now but the potential is there to surprise a few folks if they ever sign up for a master’s swim program after their elite running days are over.

Did anyone else used to pee in the swimming baths?