I need some tips to be a better sprinter(swimming)?

Question

I am in high school and i swim in the swim team. I was already in competitive swimming for over 7 years. One of the best in state for the 50 and 100 free. But that was when i was 12. I think i have lost my groove on sprinting. Anyone have any good advice/tips on how to improve?

Answer 1

I would work on your technique with your coach because you body has probably changed a lot since you were twelve. I would also try to kick more when you swim and do weights with a professional.

Answer 2

You gotta focus on the details. The turns, the breathing, the starts and the finish. sure you gotta keep working out and swimming longs distances but work with your coach and try to get everything nailed perfectly. Also you have to be pumped in order to go your fastest. Try listening to music and jump around before sprinting.

Answer 3

Push off the wall hard. Practice your strokes, pulling hard, kicking fast never making to much splashes with your hands. You have to feel part of the water, not just swimming through it. Follow the lines on bottom of the pool, and if there are any lines on the ceiling. I keeps you straight because swimming even slightly diagonal will put you off course. The one thing ive learn about swimming is you have 3 different types of energy, and because you need to keep your pace and speed up you need to use them to your advantage.  

First type is easy to light but burns quickly. So at the start of your swim, you will have a burst of energy that dissappears quickly.

Second type takes longer to spark up, about 20 seconds and last 2 minutes. So the first two minutes of your swim is all good.

Third type takes about 2 minutes to kick in,  but when its kicked in,your energys back up, and you can carry on for a long period.

So if your swimming longer then 2 minutes, between 50 seconds and two minutes you feel like you have no energy. This is when you should take it slightly slower, building up your energy and saving it until you feel able to go for it. Lots of people start to fast and burn it all up.

50 and 100 m you need to really rely on strokes though. Stretch your body out, make yourself more streamlined.  

Answer 4

I was a sprinter.  I had a great reaction time off the blocks.  This helps.  Second, I had a very strong stroke and great legs.  As for practice, sprinters need a differnent regime than a long distance swimmer does.  You need to focus on race pace training with longer periods of rest.  Not that the other training is invalid, in fact, you will need more than this.  However, you need to work on bettering your stroke not on bulking up.  This is what they did to me years back and believe me, it only goes so far and in the end, you will wind up with a back that you probably want to hide and as a girl, this sucks.  Pardon my french. :)  Also you need to be able to build up lactate and a tolerance for it.  Lactic acid build up fatigues the muscles and you need to train out of this.  I used to do alot of vertical kicking and it was brutal but most helpful.  I also fell in love with a set of 10 x 50's...on a minute.  Sounds easy til you get to say number six.  You sprint all out the first twenty-five, quickly check the clock and head back slowly for the other 25.  Wait until the minute is up (that means the minute started when you first left for the sprint) and sprint again and again.  We used to do this at the end of a 6000 yd worout.  The idea is to be consistent with your 25 sprint time each and every time.  You will tire, trust me.  I used to do it in 10 seconds.  I had a 17 yr old state champion 400 IM'er and 200 butterflyer who could not match me.  So, as you can see, specificity training is key here.  Learn also to perfect your turns and to streamline and dolphin effectively underwater.  If you are up too soon, you have to work that much harder to catch the more effective dolphiner.  Treat every finish as if you need to swim trhough the wall not to it.  This will train you to swim hard the entire way and not slow down anticipating the wall.  Good luck to you!  

Answer 5

Try wearing  windbreaker (jacket) when you are swimming to build resistance. Then you will be able to swim faster.