This site is devoted to swimming. Why is it called Twenty-Three Seconds? Because my goal is to swim 50 meters within twenty-three seconds. Follow along as I analyze my crawl stroke to death and maybe you'll learn a few things to improve your own time.
My last update, about 6 months ago, was about improving my average freestyle crawl time by measuring my breathing carefully. It is well known that breathing less increases your time. Since that time I have been trying various drills to improve my 50 meter freestyle average time. I’ve dropped it to around 49 seconds still [...]
Ever feel a bit sick, a bit tired, and a bit unmotivated and then really tear shit up? That is the perfect sentiment for today swim. I can tell a cold is sneaking up on my nose and my motivation seemed to be heading in the other direction. Getting into the pool I felt like [...]
This is a very interesting post I found. I think it is from a coach of a swim team and discusses the differences that water can have on swim times. I’d certainly like to see some more research on this issue and will try to put some together. Someone told me yesterday that the Lacombe [...]
At some point it is important to look back and enjoy the gains you have made. I often forget how far I have come and I really enjoy thinking back to one year ago, thrashing around, the water fighting me on every stroke. My first blog post on swimming came on June 27th and I [...]
Here is some biographical information on some of the world’s greatest swimmers. Ian Thorpe Birth Date: October 13, 1982 Birth Place: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia Birth Name: Ian James Thorpe Height: 6’5" (195.58 cm) Foot Size: 17 Arm Span: 192 cm coach: Doug Frost, Tracey Menzies Alexander Popov Birth Date: November 16, 1971 Birth [...]
After a second very frustrating week I finally made some serious progress back towards my record time. I chopped a second off my previous time and am now only one second more than my previous record. grr. At some point while I was swimming my feel for the water came back. It is strange, because [...]
Being sick is seriously not fun. I had a week of vacation and I thought I would rest my arms as I had strained my tendons. But then I went and got sick. Ouch, out of the pool for two weeks. After jumping back in this week I have made a massive un-improvement. In fact, [...]
This frame by frame analysis was originally on limmatsharks.com. The sequence shown is taken from the 800 m freestyle final in Fukuoka 2001. I won’t repeat the analysis as I think it is enough to see the images and make your own judgements. The only two points to highlight are: 1) Notice how high their [...]
I am really happy with the progress I am making. The week before last (week 39) was frustrating for me, but I learned an important lesson that made a big difference for me. I figured out that if you want to swim fast, you need to practice swimming fast EVERY DAY. Most of my practice [...]
Yes. I am a geek. Oh well. Breaking personal goals is always fun, but if you see that my 50 meter time is double the current world record time it helps me keep things in perspective. The chart below is for sprints on 25 meters The chart below is for sprints on 50 meters