What Is A Good Time For My Age?
What is a good time for my age? is one of the most common questions we are asked at Swim Smooth and, to be honest, it's a question we find uncomfortable to answer. That's because it's a bit of a loaded question.
One of the most important duties of a coach (of any type) is to help remove barriers from someone's progress and absolutely never introduce new barriers that were not there to begin with. Normally a swimmer asking this question is looking for an easily achievable target, perhaps one slightly quicker than their current speed, that they can achieve and be happy with. On the face of it this may seem virtuous but such an answer creates a very self limiting mental state that can stay with the swimmer forever: I can't be any better because of my age.
Whether you are 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80 by looking at the age-group world records you will see some scarily quick times. As one quick example, the men's 75-79 100m record is a 1:06 - amazing! The records show us that there really isn't much of a slow-down as the years go by, at least not nearly as much as you might be hoping for. Your stroke technique, consistency of training and mental approach are much bigger factors at play here than your age. Just like the average 25 year old swimmer looking at Michael Phelp's personal bests, there is huge headroom for nearly any swimmer to improve, regardless of age.
We are lucky enough in Perth to have some very good age group swimmers training within the Swim Smooth squads. We conducted an impromptu interview with three of them - Brian, John and Barry (63, 63 and 75 years young respectively) after this Monday's 9:30am squad session. Take a listen, you might find some of their experiences and perspectives quite inspiring as they are still looking for PBs. These guys train very hard and very consistently but you can certainly tell from the interview that they have a lot of fun along the way which is the real secret to great age-group swimming. Take a listen here: www.swimsmooth.com/senior-swimmers-interview.html
So how do we answer the question what is a good time for my age? We strongly suggest you forget your age and just think just of yourself and your current swimming. Where are you at now and what's a good target for for the next six months? Once you achieve that goal then set yourself a new target. You might be very surprised just how far you can progress - perhaps showing some of those twenty year olds a clean pair of heals along the way!
Swim Smooth!
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| L-R: Suzi, Barry, Brian, John, Emmie |
Whether you are 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80 by looking at the age-group world records you will see some scarily quick times. As one quick example, the men's 75-79 100m record is a 1:06 - amazing! The records show us that there really isn't much of a slow-down as the years go by, at least not nearly as much as you might be hoping for. Your stroke technique, consistency of training and mental approach are much bigger factors at play here than your age. Just like the average 25 year old swimmer looking at Michael Phelp's personal bests, there is huge headroom for nearly any swimmer to improve, regardless of age.
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So how do we answer the question what is a good time for my age? We strongly suggest you forget your age and just think just of yourself and your current swimming. Where are you at now and what's a good target for for the next six months? Once you achieve that goal then set yourself a new target. You might be very surprised just how far you can progress - perhaps showing some of those twenty year olds a clean pair of heals along the way!
Swim Smooth!