Hello

I have a swimming comp coming up for our school and its this Friday. I used to swim pro(not really that pro) but it's been at least two years since I have done it properly. I have 50m Free, 100m Free, 4x100m free relay & 100m breastroke. I have done two weeks of laps & feeling quite confident.
What my question is what can I do to muke sure my arms & legs are strong enough to perpell me & to decrease my fatique?
I have been doing some weights but I want quick results because i have until Friday.
Any tips of ways to swim that makes me go faster, but doesn't use to much energy?

Sorry if this deosnt make any sense, I am thinking of so many things right now! lol.

I am hoping F-unit is on here...

Thank you

Jaimie

Practice, a good diet, good form, lots of repititions, and to mentally prepare for your event. You can say this about anysport but to ensure victory you must ensure a great amount of practice. It seems you don't have a lot of time so I suggest you hurry up now.

If you only have less than a week to go there isn't much that you can do to increase your fitness or strength, the main thing you should work on is technique.

Since I can't actually see your technique there isn't much i can say, it would be better to find a coach or someone who knows what they are talking about to watch your technique, but I can give you some general advice.

1. Make sure that you keep your stroke long when sprinting, most people will naturally shorten their stroke when they try and swim fast.

2. Make sure your body is as straight as possible all the time in freestyle, and in the breaststroke when you are gliding through the water in the extended position.

By 'laps' do you mean simply swimming up and down the pool continuously? If so you should start doing some shorter distances of a higher intensity with rest in between. This is also a great way to practice technique contrary to popular belief, it's not much good to a swimmer competing in short ditances to have perfect technique when swimming easy long distance stuff, but to lose that technique when sprinting.

Starts, turns and finishes would be good to work on as well, as you can take a lot of time off by getting these right. And with the weights, you might want to go easy on them leading up to the competition so your muscles can recover for it.

If there are any more specific questions feel free to ask, but there isn't much general advice I can give over the internet.

Thank you for the input guys.
My mum was an Aust. champ so she is my coach. She has been just fine tuning some stuff(ie 'reaching out' more and not 'placing' my hand).

Anyways, the swimming comp was today and I got:

2nd: 4x50m relay
2nd: 4x50m house relay
3rd: 50m freestyle
3rd: 100m freestyle.

I am going to zone.


Thanks again.

Just out of curiosity, what were the times you got in the individual events?

I'm too embarrassed to say, lol.