Sprint Swimming Races are getting A LOT FASTER!
I recall one of my coaches for a long time, Harvey Humphries telling me on deck that he was amazed at how fast the swimmers have become over the last ten years – and that he was the head coach at the University of Georgia for 38 years! In typical Harvey style, he told me, “The pool hasn’t gotten any shorter – but the swimmers just keep getting faster and faster.”
It’s also the truth. Swimming has become more efficient over the last decade. Records that people believed would never be to be touched in the period of suits were broken. So what is the significance of that? We are learning to train our swimmers more effectively. This covers all training components, including sleep/recovery, nutrition, dryland, and general training in the pool.
Science has advanced in a positive way which has helped us better comprehend what it takes to improve our training and the efficiency of our energy systems so that we can achieve speeds others have claimed were not feasible.
Our Bodies are in BETTER SWIMMING SHAPE!
As we learn how to coach swimmers effectively and efficiently, we’re producing athletes who can sustain incredible speed over more time. This leads to the issue of oxygen, especially if we’re using an aerobic energy source to run Sprint Swimming Races – the amount of lactate we generate when a trained swimmer is compared to. An inefficiently trained athlete is different. The boneless well-trained one will begin producing lactate more quickly and accumulate more lactate than the more proficient swimmer.
If this sounds similar to your situation or where you are at this point in your season, it’s beneficial to incorporate additional lactate thresholds and training sessions in your training schedule to raise the bar on when your swimmers begin and how much they can produce overall. If you need help establishing the season’s schedule, we’ve got the answers for you. Go here to learn more.
What’s the reason behind this?
This is so important if you know that your swimmer has issues in sprint races and produces tons of lactate. You would recommend that they breathe as much as they can before the start during Sprint Swimming Races, so it slows down the production of lactate and the overall accumulation. If they do not breathe enough initially, they will likely reach their threshold quickly and feel like a pile of rocks/lock up quite severely when they return home.
If, on the other hand, there is a swimming athlete who is highly well-trained and isn’t able to handle producing lactate at the same speed during a Sprint Swimming Race, you could advise them to hold their breath or not take more breaths at the start of their races because biologically, they can take more than their counterpart components.
The second piece of advice is essential in this case. The fact that you’re dealing with an athlete who is top of the line doesn’t mean they can be excused from having no breathing in any way. Based on my experience, discussing the breathing ratio between inefficient and. efficient swimmers. Each is different. I still believe that breathing in the first half of Sprint Swimming Races is suitable for all swimmers, regardless of ability, as it allows them to stay under their lactate threshold longer. It also means the race will be less painful for them once they complete it.
To clarify things about lactate. I’m not saying an efficient swimmer doesn’t make lactate; they produce it. Lactate is directly linked to a swimmer’s level of effort and how their body is being trained physiologically. Therefore, when two athletes (one inefficient, one inefficient vs. one who is efficient) swim at the speed they can, they’ll each produce lactate. It is the timing and amount that differs.
Breathing Automatically MEANS MORE DRAG!
Wrong! If you’re doing it right, you can maintain your speed and take a few deep breaths It’s all you have to do is do this breathing technique and prepare for the race using the race plan. Have you ever heard of breathing in the Nathan Adrian breathing style? I coined the name to describe the fast breaths we see nowadays. It is shorter and does not connect to the swimmer’s Freestyle Pull. The benefits of this breathing technique are that it keeps a swimmer’s stroke speed higher and allows them to get a stronger pull from the bottom of their arms. The downside of this breathing technique is that it’s a quicker breath, meaning there’s less oxygen consumption per breath. This is why it’s typically associated with breathing every stroke, as we do at most Men Sprint Swimming Races now.
Even though it’s lower in oxygen per breath but it’s still better than zero oxygen. If you want more details about this breathing technique and the best way to teach it to your children, visit this link.
Suppose you’re not using it with the Nathan Adrian style of breathing but a more traditional one where the breath occurs along with your stroke. Yes, this breathing style can take too long to last and may create drag if done repeatedly in a swimming competition. Do we notice that there aren’t any absolutes in this situation?
