Finishing Strong

Let's take a look at the 200 freestyle splits at the recent (2014) Pan-Pacific Championships:

Katie Ledecky - current USA freestyle phenom

1. 27.49
2. 29.12
3. 29.49
4. 29.64

Conor Dwyer - up-and-coming USA freestyler

1. 24.83
2. 26.93
3. 27.36
4. 27.33

Ledecky's last three splits were within 0.52 seconds of each other. Dwyer's last three splits were within 0.40 seconds of each other. Is this a coincidence? It almost makes them seem like machines. Well, let's face it. They are. 

Now feast your eyes on something even more mind-blowing...Ledecky's 400 free splits at the same meet in which she set a World Record:

1. 27.85
2. 30.02 (57.87)
3. 30.04
4. 30.39 (1:00.43)
5. 30.07
6. 30.37 (1:00.40)
7. 30.33
8. 29.30 (59.63)

Can you believe that!? That's probably why she is (not so arguably) the best women's freestyler in the history of swimming. She knows how to finish a race. After 300 meters of freestyle holding under world-record pace, she shifted gears and picked it up! She dropped a full second in her last 100. That's determination and a willingness to succeed. She didn't say to herself, "I have a 6 second lead, I'm just going to shut it down and coast to the finish." Good athletes never say that. When there isn't anyone to race, they race the clock.

Negative splitting is a common term in endurance sports like swimming, running, and cycling. It means that if you cut your race in half, the second half is faster than the first half. This is a very tough thing to do because as the race goes on, you get more and more tired and your form starts to turn to garbage.

This week, I have really been working on my girls to finish their races HARD. We get way to caught up in getting out to a fast start, that we forget the end is even more important than the beginning. In a 200 freestyle, no one cares who had the fastest first 50. 

For example...one of my boys swam the 200 free at the state meet in 2013. He went out like a bullet. Out of the 24 swimmers, his firsts 50 was the 2nd fastest. His last 50 was the slowest. He ended up 18th out of 24. Then in 2014 he turned it around. His splits were 24, 26, 27, 27. He ended up 11th and was 2.5 seconds faster than in 2013.

So we have been doing some tough sets that challenge the girls in the SECOND half of their swimming. A lot of negative split 200s and 300s. Last night we did some 50s. The goal of each 50 was to be fast from the turn to the finish. We had a lot of good swims. I am sick of getting passed in the last 10 yards of a race. If you practice swimming fast at the end of your races, and being mentally tough to push through that "brick wall" that is inevitably waiting for you at the 85 yard mark...YOU WILL GET FASTER.

Let's work on figuratively running through a brick wall, not actually running through a brick wall :)

The Swimmer's Drive

The Swimmer's Drive

There are certain things in life that require motivation. Perhaps going on a diet requires you to give up a food that you love (maybe a little too much...). Maybe finishing your work, homework, or a big project before the weekend requires you to skip your lunch break or your free period. These things often require an extra push. They are things that we don't want to do, but we know that it will be worth it once completed. Waking up at 5:30am and diving into a cold pool before the sun comes up is one of those things.

Morning practices can be a bear to get up for.



There are two different types of motivation. The more common of the two is extrinsic motivation. Our society today is becoming more and more reliant on extrinsic motivators. These are usually material items.

• Mom telling her son, "If you clean your room I'll give you a cookie."
• Teacher telling his students, "If you guys are quiet I will give you candy."
• Coach telling his swimmers, "If you get a personal best you earn a piece of candy

We are becoming so reliant on rewards, that we demand them. Construction companies are given a deadline and they only finish on time if there are extra incentives. Kids only behave in class if there is candy at the end of the period. Athletes only perform their bests if they receive something in return. What ever happened to intrinsic motivation?

Intrinsic motivation is motivation from within oneself. The desire to be better for the sole reason that you will be better because of it.

• A kid cleaning his room because he likes the feeling of living in a clean environment.
• A student paying attention in class because it is what they are supposed to do and it will make them a better student.
• A swimmer shooting for personal best times because that means they are becoming a better swimmer.

There is no money in swimming. There are hardly even any scholarships in swimming. The best athletes in the world still receive only partial scholarships. The biggest pay day in swimming was when Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He received $1 million from Speedo. Compare that to the newest big football contract. JJ Watts signed a contract for 6 years and $100 million.

Unless it is an Olympic year, swimming is hardly even recognized as a sport. World records go unnoticed. National champions are not recognized on the street. Sometimes even swimmers' best friends don't realize what their swimmer friend has accomplished. Swimmers generally go unseen. Especially at 5:00am.

Therefore, swimmers MUST rely on intrinsic factors of motivation. They have to want to be better. They have to want to beat their rival. They have to want to drop their time by even a hundredth of a second. They must live and die on improving their times by the smallest of margins. They must recognize these improvements to reassure themselves that they are getting better. That they are getting faster. That all of the hard work is worth it.

Staring at a black line back and forth for hours and hours can be boring. Not being able to talk to the people around you, not being able to hear anything, not being able to listen to music, and not being able to breathe for the majority of your workout - this is what dampens the mood of swimming for most. But swimmers thrive in these conditions. When you are left alone with your thoughts, there is a lot of battling going on in your brain whether to give in to the pain or to push through it.

Those that possess the intrinsic motivation push through the pain because they want to be better.

Those that require extrinsic motivation are not likely to find it.

And those that require no motivation...well...they probably just aren't cut out to be swimmers.

Michael Phelps and Garret Weber-Gale celebrate after the greatest come-from-behind race in history.
The men's 4x100 freestyle relay at the 2008 Olympics. Want to see inspiring? Search YouTube for the video.

WHICH WILL YOU BE?



How to split a race

Recently I had a boring day at work, so I decided to nerd out a little bit. Ok a lotta bit. I wanted to know the relationship between different splits in a race. For example...if Swimmer A is swimming a 100 freestyle, what percentage of their race is spent swimming the first 50, and what percentage of the race is spent swimming the second 50. In a perfect world, it would be 50% for each. But when you factor in the start, and the extra energy the swimmer has at the beginning of the race things get a little more complex.

Before I dive in, you might be thinking, "Why in the world would you want to know this information?" It can come in very useful in practice and in meet situations. Say I have a swimmer (we'll call her Erin) that wants to qualify for the state meet in the 100 breaststroke. Erin needs to swim a 1:10 to have a good shot at qualifying. As her coach, I can use the data I found and have Erin practice swimming the pace she needs to go to get her goal time. In a meet, I can look at her first split and know if she is on track, below her pace, or going to slow to get her goal time.

So in my initial research, I found someone had done this sort of thing for NCAA swimmers. This gave me a good start, but I wanted to know how splits were related in high school swimmers being that high school swimmers are generally less physically mature and less experienced. So to expand on this research, I recorded splits of high school swimmers at the Iowa High School State Championship meet from 2009-2012. Here is a sample of the data from the girls 100 breaststroke:

Total Time          First 50 (%)          Second 50 (%) 
1:01.18              28.59 (46.7)           32.59 (53.3)
1:04.97              30.99 (47.7)           33.98 (52.3)
1:05.30              31.00 (47.5)           34.30 (52.5)

I did this for four years of times totaling 96 different times. I took the average percentages found each year and compared them. Here is what the averages look like:

Year     1st 50 %          2nd 50 %
2009      46.6                 53.4
2010      46.6                 53.4
2011      46.7                 53.3
2012      46.5                 53.5

I was taken aback by how similar these averages were! So I had to test them out for myself. I took the split percentages and applied them to several of the 100 breaststroke races I have coached over the last couple years. Almost every swim was dead on these same split percentages! I decided that this is no coincidence. 

From this data, I have created split cards for my swimmers. That way if they have a goal time, they know what they need to swim for a split from a start and from a push to achieve that goal.

Every event has different percentages for different reasons. It seems that breaststroke has the highest drop off from the first to the second 50. This could be because the start plays a bigger factor, or that breaststroke requires a large amount of power and wears the athlete out more than other strokes.  Backstroke has the smallest drop off from first to second split for the simple fact that the swimmer is not diving from the blocks for the first split.

Here are the breakdowns for percent of time spent on each split for different races. This data was compiled from NCAA athletes by Doug Huestis (the head coach for the Bay Masters program) and then added to by myself featuring Iowa high school athletes.

Event          Men          Women
50 Free       .4791         .4807
                   .5209         .5193

100 Free     .4715         .4752
                   .5285         .5248

200 Free     .2328        .2387
                   .2535        .2542
                   .2584        .2567
                   .2553        .2504

100 Back    .4831        .4834
                   .5169        .5166

100 Breast .4659        .4666
                   .5341       .5334

100 Fly       .4698       .4756
                   .5302       .5244
    
If you take these decimals and multiply by 100 you will get the percentage of time ideally spent on each split for any particular races. I stuck to these times because these are the races we see in a high school meet and races that are most common. The 50 percentages are per 25.

Hopefully this concept makes sense. If you understand it, it can be extremely useful in practicing at race pace and training for a specific goal. Keep in mind that the splits taken in a race in backstroke and freestyle were taken when the feet hit the wall on the turn. So if you are comparing times, that is something you might want to think about.