Working primarily with age group swimmers these days (ages 11-13), I find myself struggling to teach them to change speeds. It’s not simply that their fast speed is too slow (which it is), but that their fast speed is too close to their cruise speed. To the point where the two speeds are barely distinguishable.
This isn’t a new phenomenon to those who coach young swimmers, 7 through 10. They sort of do warm-up at the same speed they do the set. Coaches across the country yell at them every day to slow down when they do drills. I think there is a reason for this beyond that the young have misplaced energy. Our ability to teach slow swimming is critical to teaching faster swimming.
I’ve never coached track or cross country but I have a suspicion it’s easier to get 11-13 year old kids to run slowly than it is to get them to swim slowly. Why? Because of the basic fact that if you slow down enough in swimming you sink. No one wants to sink, and when you get that sinking feeling in the water you instinctually move your arms and legs faster to stay afloat and get to safety (the wall at the other end of the pool). Remind yourself of this by watching your lesson program for a while. The majority of those kids, and I see it even worse the older they get, are thrashing around in the water, they can’t swim slowly. Or watch some non-swimmer teenage boys at the outdoor pool on a summer day. You’ll see heads whipping back and forth, arms flailing, feet pounding the water. It’s ugly for sure, but those guys have one speed and one speed only, and that is the “get to the other side so you don’t drown” speed.
So what happens when you try to get young competitive swimmers to swim slowly? Well, most struggle quite a bit. I’ve had kids do “super slow” freestyle 25s, which is freestyle with a continuous (so no pausing), but very slow arm recovery. When they get it right, it looks great (put fins on them to start), but some of the kids just cannot slow down (and it’s often the weaker swimmers). “Slow down your arms” “No, I mean really slow down your arms” “No, I mean like ½ that speed” “Come on! GO S-L-O-W-L-Y.” Try it sometime and you will see.
After doing this drill unsuccessfully with different groups and ages on multiple teams, I thought that if the kids I coach can’t swim slowly with good technique, how can I expect them to swim fast with good technique? Here is an anecdote that illustrates the point. When I was coaching at SwimMAC I had a 9-10 group for a bit. Once in a while they would be in the pool at the same time as the post-graduate group, guys like Cullen Jones, Nick Brunelli, Nick Thoman, Josh Schneider, etc. I’d have the little guys and girls go watch them swim for 10 minutes or so. On more than one occasion, from more than one little swimmer, they would watch and say, “How can they go so fast, it looks like they aren’t trying!” At first I just thought they couldn’t tell what their repeat times were, so I would read them off. But it didn’t help, they still thought they weren’t trying. What the kids were noticing was the low stroke rates during the majority of practice and their efficiency. Yes, great swimmers make it look easy, but it’s more than that, it IS easier for them. The non-swimmer racing his buddy at the summer league pool, with his head out of the water, is going much slower with much more effort than a great swimmer.
Well, back to my point about slow swimming. If you can get your kids to slow down many good things will start to happen. They will be able to coordinate the movements of swimming more easily. They will be able to change speeds more dramatically. Going back to track, I love watching the 1,500, 3,000, 5,000 and 10,000 on the track because the runners have such dramatic “kicks” at the end where they go from their normal pace (which is way fast for me or you but not for them) to sprint speed on the final lap or two. It’s awesome to watch. If your swimmers can learn to swim slowly, not only will they feel the change of speed when it’s time to go fast, they will have more energy to change speeds.
We tax kids too much with aerobic swimming done at speeds too fast. I’m not an interval driven coach, and from my understanding of the science, 20-30 seconds rest on aerobic repeats of medium length (100s-300s) is appropriate. Tell them to slow down, to relax, get into an “aerobic groove.” And then when it’s time to go fast, they will have the energy to increase their stroke rate, power and ultimately speed. If your athletes are swimming warm-up and pre-sets at roughly the same stroke rates as highly demanding main sets, something is wrong. They are training in a tired gray zone, where they are working too hard for little return.
Another story to illustrate the point, as relayed to me by a fellow coach. One day Ricky Berens was home and stopped by a SwimMAC practice to get in a workout. Early in the set they were doing some 200s, and Ricky was holding 2:00, not a fast speed for him at all. And if you have ever seen him swim, he is very long and at that speed must have been swimming at a low tempo. Well, a high school boy was excited to be training with Ricky and wanted to stay with him the whole set. Coaches, that’s what we want, right? Well, about halfway through the set the kid is just killing himself to keep up, pounding the water, really high stroke rate and he starting to hurt badly. Ricky turns to him and says, “You are trying way too hard.”
Wait a second, I thought we wanted our kids to try hard? Was Ricky advocating slacking off? What Ricky was picking up on was the kid’s level of effort v. the return on that effort in speed. His high level of effort can be seen through too high of a stroke rate or overall fatigue (high heart rate as well no doubt). The high school kid was working too hard, he lacked efficiency, and you don’t learn efficiency by “going hard” the whole workout at a high stroke rate! And the metabolic cost of swimming the wrong parts of the workout or set at too high of a level inevitably result in the fast swimming being too slow.
At the end of the set Ricky can blow by that hard working kid because he has expended less energy throughout the set and has “somewhere to go” with his stroke rate i.e. it isn’t maxed out yet. Go watch Sun Yang’s world record 1500 from Shanghai, look at that change of speed on the final 100! That change of stroke rate! It’s mind boggling, and it looks like what guys do on the track – the “kick.” Don’t we all want our kids to have that kick? Well, slow them down first.
And this is what the faster swimmers in your group are already doing. It’s easier for them to do the first part of workout, they have more energy to sprint at the end. The middle of the group is trying to keep up the whole time, and by “keeping up” I mean working too hard for not enough speed. And then it’s time to go fast at the end of the set and there is nothing there. Ever push a swimmer and get the response, “I’m trying as hard as I can!” And that’s the problem right there, I bet he or she has been trying too hard for too much of the workout. Tell that swimmer to go in the back of the lane for warm-up and pre-set and see what happens on the main set.
If a kid barely descends a set, is the problem the last 100 or the first? I think I’ve made my point. Remember this coaches, do your aerobic swimming slowly, especially in the 11-13 age group. If you give them enough rest, and set them up with good strokes and kicks, in time that slow aerobic swimming will become what you want it to – low stroke rate, low energy swimming that is actually not so slow. Teach them to do dramatic negative splitting: 100s or 200s where they go extra slow the 1st half, and then extra fast the 2nd half. What a confidence builder when they get into a race and blow by people at the end!
One final story. I’m coaching a little 11 year old who loves distance and he only had one event left he hadn’t competed in this season, the 200 breaststroke. So, as his nature, he had to do it before the end of the season. I said ok. After he does the race for the first time he says to me, “On the first 100 I felt like I was dying because everyone was out in front of me. But on the second 100, I don’t know, it was like I was reborn and I caught up.” Teach your swimmers to swim slowly so they can all be “reborn” and swim fast at the end.
