Swim fitness or technique? (Page 2)

You can pause at times (like the stun gun drill), or you can just slow all the movements way down.  It's like swimming in slow motion.  It can be an incredibly challenging drill for someone like you (and myself) who swims in that 1:20-1:40 range, because we're fast enough to benefit a lot from lift, but the technique usually isn't there that's needed to swim closer to a 1:00 pace.  When the lift generated by speed is removed, balance issues tend to rear their ugly head.  

I could equally argue that it was more likely your natural genetic given ability was responsible for your ability to swim the speed you did even after all that time off. 

I ran a 5k a few years ago with a friend who never ran for fitness, didn't play a single sport for 10+ years due to his work/family, and was never on any competitive sports team. He played league soccer in adolescence, and that was it, other than gym class or pickup soccer games that he didn't play regularly. He didn't even know what a good time was - I told him since he wasn't overweight, a 9min/mile would be a very good result (28-29min 5k).

The guy ran a freaking 19:30. I thought he misread the clock until the results were posted. I encouraged him to run another one, and a few months later, with a modicum of training, he was low 17s. I don't think he ran another one after that, though - back to work and family for him!

Well, consider yourself a lot more talented than me in swimming! After 2 years of trying regular and dedicated swim training to get faster, I was a 2:10/100yd swimmer. And it wasn't due to lack of effort, coaching, or time. 

 I can swim 1:20s for an hour no problem now, but if the pools here close and I take more than 6 weeks off, my comeback speed even after than short layoff is 1:55/100yds for anything over 400. (Fortunately, it comes back quick)

You could, but you'd likely be wrong.  

Running and swimming are apples and oranges.  It's common for someone to run a 'fast' 5k without any technique development.  To swim 'fast' without any technique development is nearly unheard of.  That's because the primary limiter in running is aerobic capacity.  The primary limiter in swimming is skill.  (Don't misconstrue this to mean that fitness doesn't matter.  It just means that the density of water combined with us being land animals makes technique much more relevant.)

What changed?  Was it that you learned how to suffer?  No, I'm not being snarky.  I'm serious.

I don't know your background, but unless someone has a competitive swimming background, they usually have to learn how to suffer (AFTER at least some technique development) before they can post competitive times in the water.  Runners have no idea how to suffer, because the majority of run training is at a low intensity.  Cyclists have a better idea how to suffer, but the constantly changing scenery and recoveries during descents can provide sizable breaks which help mentally for the next hard effort. Competitive swimmers know how to suffer like few other athletes.  They swim hard almost all the time, hour after hour, week after week, month after month, and sometimes year after year, with only their own thoughts and pain to keep them company, all while staring at a black line in the bottom of the pool.

You're misinterpreting me. I NEVER said that technique in swimming was meaningless - search my posts - I always say that for beginners, technique is paramount, and for them, it should comprise close to 100% of their work, as they are far more technique limited than fitness limited. As they get better, power becomes more important.

I however differ with all the ex-comp swimmers who commonly say 'it's all technique' or "80% technique or more" figures. There's a huge fitness component, and I think it kicks in at a lot earlier stages than people suspect. For sure, it's not the case that you have to technique your way to a FOMOP swim time for a triathlete before training hard in the pool. 

I only bring up the running fitness as a clear example of the huge differences in fitness (not technique) that are natural given gifts. Those same differences exist in swimming (different muscle groups obviously). Of course, if your technique is terrible, no fitness will save you, but eliminate the major errors and those gifts show up in full force. So someone with middling swim fitness genetics might be stuck at 2:00/100 with moderate training, whereas a naturally gifted swimmer might see 1:20 or lower with moderate (or even close to no) training.

What I take issue with is people discounting this reality of natural swim fitness ability. What usually happens is that these gifted folks give all the credit to their technique, without acknowledging their natural gifts. And the fast swimmers are always fast to begin with, with rapid improvement on little training. They often don't think they're fast because they're already racing against peers who are monsters in the pool, but make no doubt about it - compared them to the other 20 kids or adults picked at random from any swim class, and even if you made them do the exact same training coming up through the swim ranks, they'd be far ahead no matter what.

Yes, range of motion and feel could very well be natural gifts. Although from your earlier descriptions that might not describe you either.

Yep, could still be technique.

Although to be fair, I did see your original swim video (nice pace, BTW!) and the most notable thing about it was your rapid arm turnover. You can call that technique all you want, but I'm calling that power, power, and more power, to be able to grip the water effectively yet maintain a high turnover rate. I kinda got out of breath just watching it!

Back to a couple things involving Don's posts, this is one where people seem to "misunderstand" you. The phrasing chosen in the second part seems to dismiss anything technique may have to do with it in spite of the opening sentence of the post. It also seems to allude to this being a binary thing again by making it an either/or statement. One side vs another. And By repeating power so much, it really looks like you're trying to say power is is the dominating factor in swimming.

Fair enough - I could see why you and others misread my posts.

But I will add that I'm much more on the power-based side of swimming for triathletes than technique, once past slow-beginner levels. I'm sure that for competitive swimmers, technique may make or break, especially since they're contending for gaps of tenths, and sometimes hundreths of a second between 1st and 2nd place, not to say the already hellacious paces they are already swimming. 

But for the typical triathlete who's been stuck at 2:00/100 pace, power is sorely lacking - in most of the videos I've seen posted around here of folks at that pace, the lack of power and turnover is by far the most noticeable thing. You crank their stroke rate up to that of 3mar's in his video, and they'll be pretty darn close to his 1:20 pace despite all those legit technical flaws. 

Well, that's a bit of an oversimplification that the power and turnover just get faster. It takes additional skill to hold things together too.The pathways of movement are not fixed. One may attempt to scale the timing up faster, but because the actual time to initiate, sustain or change anything in the stroke will change, that new timing has to be learned.