Masters Swimming - I pulled the trigger
After struggling to improve my swimming on my own I decided to join a local masters swim group here in Charlotte. I'm going to get my butt kicked I'm sure but I am really looking forward to pushing the envelope on my swimming. Any advice from you good swimmers before I go to my first session tomorrow? As background, I first started swimming three years ago and my last IM swim split was 1:31.
Thanks Team!
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My only suggestion is to stick with it and keep going every week. If your group has a good coach you should be all set. Swimming with a masters group will get you working harder but improving your technique and efficiency is just as important.
I did the same thing and it took me nearly a year before I was able to put all the drills and techniques together and figure out my stroke. I'm still not the fastest but I'm not getting my butt handed to me either.
You will be glad you joined them. Remember that Rome wasn't built in a day. Small incremental steps towards improvement is the key. Have fun!
Dusty, I actually started swimming with masters from day 1 and was with them from my incredibly awful start. I no longer swim with masters, but probably should get back into it.
Anyway, my word of advice to you was going to actually be to be very wary of the exact opposite of what you just said. Masters is a great resource, but in my experience the coach on deck is trying to watch over many athletes of varying skill and fitness levels. They tend to give good, but very generic advice and drill sets that work for most of the people.
The advice given and the drills practiced are generally good, but may not always be right for you and your specific physiology and ability level. I'm definitely not saying that masters is bad, I think it's a great resource, but in the end it's not really a substitute for more 1-on-1 swim coaching with a skilled coach who will have the dedicated time and attention to pay to just you.
Again, by no means should you avoid masters, I'm just disclaiming that I swam awfully for years under the watchful eye of a masters coach who just didn't have the bandwidth to really intervene with me. When I consider how much I am in the process of changing in my stroke now, and how easy it was for my technique coach to spot, I hit myself in the head for not doing this years ago.
Obviously there is a big focus within EN on bike and run because the gains you can realize in those events typically far exceed the more modest gains you can get out of swimming. But more me personally, I'm just fed up at being a poor swimmer.
I love the feeling of being a FOP biker or runner, of having the hard work you invest into training be validated with results. Quite frankly, I want to be good at what I do and it's a bummer coming out of the swim huffing and puffing because you were working hard but still getting out-swam by grandmas (no disrespect to grandmas). And I think that is what bothers me most about it, because I know they aren't stronger than me. I know they don't work harder than me, they just are far more efficient than me, I work harder for poorer results and that's the toughest pill to swallow.
So that's my rant. I probably still bigger gains to squeeze out of the bike and run in terms of absolute time, but the swim is still my major Achilles heel in terms of discipline-specific placement, and I'm on a mission to change that.
I think it's an ego thing.