Swimming Blogs - Christopher McCrary

The New York Times recently published an article by Gina Kolata that discusses the “timeless” theory that a swimmers’ potential is linked with his height. The article goes so far as to say that tall athletes make better swimmers. Although the overall tone of the article also includes references that people perform better in sports they love, I’m afraid it will be taken completely out of context and reinforce the Tall-Man Myth in this sport.

I feel compelled to write about this simply because this misconception has permeated the sport of swimming for a long time. At first it applied chiefly to the sprint freestyles. If you wanted to be the 50 guy, you had better be the tall guy.

I’m a stubborn person, especially when ignorant people tell me I can’t do something simply because of one small characteristic. I stand 5’10’’. Nowadays, I’m on the short end of average for a normal guy.

But I was a 5’10’’ giant. I was looked at as the exception to the tall man myth. I stood 5’10’’ in an event where the world class competition I faced averaged 6’5’’. And I still managed to be one of the fastest men in the world.

I am dismayed to see the tall man myth being reinforced. It was bad enough in the 50 free in my day, but now it seems people are saying you have to be tall to be good at any event. How sad.

This is a complete oversimplification of the art of evaluating athletic potential in the sport of swimming.

Think of it like this: Height is only one facet of many that influence your potential as an athlete. Strengths in each facet raise an individual athlete’s potential, but weaknesses in other facets lower that
athlete’s potential. All facets offset each other.

The reason you can’t look to a single facet, such as height, of an individual athlete to determine athletic potential is obvious. An advantage in one facet can easily be offset by a weakness in another.

So what are these facets?

I have been thinking hard about what I look at to evaluate the potential of swimmers I watch, coach, and compete against. First, I break them down into two categories: Physical Attributes and Mental Attributes.

Physical Attributes

1.) Height
2.) Body Mass
3.) Muscular Power
4.) Conditioning
5.) Reaction
6.) Neuromuscular Coordination
7.) Body Feel

Physical attributes are self explanatory. Some you are born with and can’t change (legally) and others you can change through hard work and practice. I’ll walk you through a basic explanation of each, and help you
understand what I look for when I evaluate an athlete on these principles.

1.) Height - our old friend from above. Basically, the taller swimmer has an advantage. Don’t misinterpret what I am saying. I am not disagreeing with the theory that greater height is an advantage.

I disagree with the fact that most people seem to single out this trait above all others in convincing people who can be a great swimmer. A taller swimmer has an advantage, all other facets equal. Thankfully for swimmers like myself, there are lots of facets that make up for being shorter. Being tall just isn’t enough.

2.) Body Mass - Body Mass corresponds with Height, in that, the bigger more solid athlete has a particular advantage. A person with a heavier, more solid build resists the forces of acceleration more than a lighter, less solidly built swimmer. This is both a disadvantage and an advantage. Because a person with more mass resists accelaration better, he accelerates more slowly than his lighter opponent. This is a disadvantage for getting up to speed. It requires him to spend more time and more energy than a lighter swimmer.
But, resisting acceleration is also an advantage, because it also means resistance to deceleration. A heavier, more solidly built swimmer will resist slowing down better than a lighter one. This means that once up to speed, a heavier, more solidly built swimmer will spend less energy maintaining that speed.

3.) Muscular Strength - By muscular strength I am talking about raw muscle strength. The kind you measure with a bar and some plates. The stronger a muscle is, the more power it can generate. A stronger person can pull
more water, push harder off the block and walls, and just plain muscle more speed out of a technique.
Don’t confuse raw strength with actual power in the water. Power is applied strength. The ability to apply your raw strength to water while swimming is determined by the union of Muscular Strength with Neuromuscular Coordination. We’ve all seen the guy who can bench press 400+ pounds and squat a small car 40 times get beat by a guy who can barely bench 180. The littler guy is more powerful in the water, even though he has half the strength on land.

4.) Conditioning - Ah, the obsession with this one. Conditioning. How fit you are. Most of us will spend too much time chasing the spectre of some elite conditioning that will turn us into Michael Phelps. Phelps isn’t better than you because he is better conditioned. He is better than you because he is practically the best a human can be in each of the above facets. You want to be Phelps, perfect them all (and hope you were born as blessed as he was with those you can’t improve through training.) If you want to hear all my thoughts on the conditioning obsession in this sport, talk to me or read about my training philosophy of the Racing Way.

The first four facets are pretty easy to read in an athlete. I’d say most decent coaches read into them (although probably not correctly) when they assess a particular athlete’s ability. These four physical attributes (height, body mass, muscular strength, and conditioning) are the basic facets that a decent coach should know about. If your coach doesn’t have a clue, a red flag should be going up.

The last three facets (Reaction, Coordination, and Body Feel) are the least known, least discussed, and most overlooked facets that measure your potential. In my opinion, that makes thinking about, and developing them, that much more important for any swimmer.

5.) Reaction - This is simply how fast your nerves fire and send signals to your muscles. Reaction is important. The faster you can tell your muscles to move, the faster they will move. If we think about this at all, we usually only think about it when we talk about the start. This is flat out wrong. Every twitch of every muscle in your body while you dive, swim, or turn is started by a series of nerves firing and sending orders to those muscles. The sooner the muscle gets the signal, the sooner it gets to work.
The biggest misconception is that reaction only makes a different in single motions, like the start.

This is flat out wrong thinking. Think about throwing a punch. If we both stood side by side, looking at a light, and threw a single punch when the light went off, our reactions would barely be different. But if we threw a punch every time the light went off, and the light repeatedly blinks 100 times, by the end the person with the better reaction will be reacting to the light much faster than the person with slower reaction.

Reaction dulls over constant repetition. The sharper your Reaction, the less your reaction dulls over the same amount of repetition.

6.) Neuromuscular Coordination - The most important and underrated facet an athlete can develop. When we get down to it, this means technique. In its essence, it is measured by how well your nerves are coordinated to tell specific muscles how to work in such a sequence as to perform a movement. Basically put, when you pull, you send signals down your nerves in a sequence that tells the muscles to activate in a sequence to produce a specific movement. When your technique is sloppy, the nerves aren’t sending the signals to the right muscles with the right timing. This makes your muscles do the wrong things at the wrong time.
If you improve your coordination by practicing your technique, then you will increase how fast your muscles can move in coordination, and how much power they can apply.

Why is swimming so difficult a sport? Because, our bodies aren’t wired to work in water. Our nerves are prebuilt to teach us how to walk and run. Every swimmer, no matter what level, is in the process of reprogramming his nerves to coordinate the muscles to swim. You are in this process. Every swimming technique you try to master starts with a blank slate. You nerves have no idea how to tell you muscles how to do it.

Slowly, through constant practice and proper feedback, you will coordinate the nerves to tell the muscles how to do it. The better you coordinate your nerves to tell those muscles what to do, the better a swimmer you are. Flat out. Don’t buy the obsession with strict Conditioning. The most important thing you can do is improve your Neuromuscular Coordination. Then worry about getting super fit.

7.) Body Feel - This is so advanced a concept, I really don’t know if I can do it justice here. It is at the heart of my Racing Way training philosophy. Body Feel is an intuitive sense of what your body is doing, an instant analysis of that information, and a nearly instant assessment of what you need to do to improve. A swimmer with great Body Feel is self critiquing every movement, every stroke, every kick, every flip, etc.

Body Feel is not necessarily an internal dialogue about your technique. It is simply an awareness of and instantaneous reaction to everything that your body is doing in the water. A swimmer with great Body Feel can improve their own technique without being told, can correct technique on the fly during a race, and can do so without taking their mind of the actual racing to be done. A swimmer naturally possessing this skill is a rarity. A swimmer who develops this skill is truly precious.

These facets are the Physical Attributes that I have determined influence a swimmers potential to be great in this sport.

I encourage you to evaluate yourself in terms of these facets. What can you do to improve each facet?

What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?

Think about how each facet plays off the others. Use your imagination and think up swimmers with different combinations of strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate swimmers you see, teammates and opponents. If you get the opportunity, watch some of the best swimmers in the world, and evaluate them. Seeing how these facets work in other people will help you understand how they work together to make up your own potential.

Here’s a tip for evaluating potential. Don’t just figure out where they rank as far as a facet goes.

Look at how easily they can develop that particular facet.

Example of a Bad Evaluation:

Bob is not a particularly coordinated swimmer. He’s only been swimming for a year and a half. He would rank low as far as Neuromuscular Coordination goes. His potential is limited.

Example of a Good Evaluation:
Bob is not a particularly coordinated swimmer. He’s only been swimming for a year and a half. He would rank low as far as Neuromuscular Coordination goes. However, he can learn techniques quickly, and he masters them just as quickly. His Neuromuscular Coordination improves very quickly. His potential is limited in the short run, but in the long run he will improve faster than most everybody else, so at some point, given the right training, he will not only catch other athletes, but will surpass them.

Another Example of a Bad Evaluation:
Jack isn’t in very good shape. He can barely make a whole practice right now. He just got back from summer break and he hasn’t been swimming for a month. His Conditioning is poor.

Another Example of a Good Evaluation:
Jack isn’t in very good shape. He can barely make a whole practice right now. He just got back from summer break, and he hasn’t been swimming in a month. However, his body gets in shape very quickly. He even looked more fit by the end of practice. His conditioning improves faster than other people’s, so his Conditioning potential is high.

Also, don’t do what the study did. Evaluate someone across all the facets, especially those that influence each other. For example, Muscle Strength and Neuromuscular Coordination.

Example:
Phill is so strong. He lifts weights all the time and can put up a lot of weight. He also runs in the morning. His Muscle Strength is very high. He only goes to half the practices though, and we don’t do a lot of technique work. He has a weird, off-balance stroke. His pull seems to slip in the water and his rhythm stutters. Phill’s Neuromuscular Coordination is very weak. Phills potential is low. He might be strong, but he can’t put any of that strength into the water.

Disclaimer: I realise there are many other physical facets to evaluate people on. Breath Control and Flexibility come to mind. I would add these two at least to the above list. I am not giving you “The Formula” for evaluating swimming potential. My goal is just to get you thinking in a multi-faceted way about how to evaluate swimming potential.

Link to the New York Times Article