Slowest rate ever?

[terry]

Originally Posted by Richardsk

This weekend, if family commitment permit, I may try some more one-arm drills.

Richard
If you were to give the TT another chance, and do 800 to 1500m cumulatively per week of repeats that combine tempo with SPL, I feel fairly certain you would see satisfying improvements in your 1500m pace. You could post the details of your sets on the Favorite Practices conference and get feedback and guidance on how to adjust them to produce systematic progress.

Single-arm drills, on the other hand, are far less likely to result in improvement.

[terry]

For the record, the slowest tempo I've ever swum at is 2.0. One goal I recommend to people is to work at expanding their Tempo Comfort Zone. For instance, Richard mentioned being comfortable between 1.3 and 1.4. If he were to expand his comfort zone to, say, 1.20 to 1.50, I feel fairly sure he'd see improvements in both his shorter and longer events.

I've swum at tempos as fast as .80, without feeling frantic, and as slow as 1.80 and managed to feel quite stable. My range is somewhat greater in OW than in the pool.

[Richardsk]

Originally Posted by CharlesCouturier

Where are you based in the UK exactly?

Thanks for clarifying all this. I must admit that I'm now a big fan of yours. My bad, soon 78 and still young at heart.

In everything Total Immersion could bring to you. What has the most important aspects been?

Hello again Charles

Before I discovered Total Immersion in 2006, I had struggled for all my swimming life, which started in 1947, with the crawl. I learned the breaststroke and side stroke quite early but couldn't swim crawl, mainly because I couldn't do a decent flutter kick and at the time thought it was the most important part of the stroke. Then, some time in the late 'sixties or early 'seventies I read an article that stated that the kick was not really useful for propulsion in crawl and managed to make slight improvements by not kicking at all but could still only swim short distances with crawl, whereas I had always been able to swim quite long distances with breaststroke.

Then in 2006 I met a swimmer at the local pool who recommended the original TI book, and in a very short time I was swimming a recognizable crawl - still very slow and with a lot of strokes per length - around thirty, I think. I joined a masters club and found I could enter for competitions and entered my first competition in November 2006. In 2007 I took a TI course in all strokes with the late Ian Smith, Jai Evans and Ian's daughter, whose name I forget. Ian advised me to forget about swimming butterfly but I refused to listen, being a stubborn old so-and-so, but he may well have been right. However, this year I managed to swim both a long course and short course 200 IM (very slowly) with my bizarre version of butterfly.

I am now also very fond of backstroke, which I swim very slowly so the list of things I owe to Terry and TI is very long. Undying gratitude is the right expression, I think.

The usual progression in swimming times is downward as you get older, but since I am starting from such a low base I believe that I can still go faster as I get older and maybe catch some of these fast ninety-year-olds if I can live that long. I am deeply impressed at the moment with Maurine Kornfeld of Mission Viejo Nadadores who has set a new championship record of 19:28.25 for the 90-94 age group in the 800 meters at the recent World Masters Championships in Riccione, Italy. A respectable time of 24:49.15 was also recorded in the 85-89 group by a Japanese lady, Toshiko Amano, and another impressive time in the 80-84 group by Dorothy Dickey of Australia in 16:15.77.

I could probably stay with the Japanese lady but the other two would leave me far behind.

The two men in the 90-94 group were both slower than Maurine Kornfeld, and I would have been close but of course nowhere near the swimmers in my own age group or the 85-89 or 80-84 groups. Maybe by 2014 when the Worlds are held in Montreal? Lots of question marks required there. ;-)

[andyinnorway]

Inspired by this thread I tried something new today, set my TT to 0.5 and used it to swim alternate lengths of 1.0 and 1.5 with a rest in between.

Instead of trying to max my DPS at the lower rate, I tried to emulate my 1.0 stroke in slow motion and used the extra time to observe it. Curiously it works as my SPL stayed constant at both TT settings.

Swimming this way, I think I could get nearer to 2.0 than trying to swim fast at a slow TT setting

and after a few lengths my SPL at 1.0 went down by a stroke too so the observations were working.

[WFEGb]

Hi Richardsk,

think it's necessary to tell you my deep respect and a BIG THANK YOU for your posts and your swimming.

For a mortal one like me who took his first steps to senescence and TI parallel, your story is very encouraging. Hope I can hold my enthusiasm for TI-swimming as you are still doing and hope to reach your results or hold them over the years.

Best regards,
Werner

PS: Please be generous, I'm a German and writing in English hopefully will improve the Kaizen way as TI will...

[Richardsk]

Hi Werner

Thanks for your kind remarks. If you would like to correspond in German with personal messages please feel free to do so. I spent two years in Germany in the late 'fifties and have worked as a freelance translator with German as one of my languages. My written German is not perfect but I expect it can be understood.

Richard

[CoachEricDeSanto]

I agree with Andy that, with a pull buoy, I don't see much of a reason to have a slowest point.

I personally enjoy the challenge of swimming very slowly without a pull buoy. I have swum as slow as 4-5 seconds per stroke with a two beat kick. It is hard to maintain coordination and balance well enough that you don't stop dead in the water. I have to cheat a bit by either stacking too much, allowing myself to flatten out as I recover, or allowing small kicks to stay rotated. I keep my hands in the water and use a snorkel so I don't have to worry about breathing with no bow wave. I am not sure if there is any value to it other than a fun challenge. But it is entertaining.

It is also really annoying to others if you are sharing a lane. Warning.