Measuring Success (Correctly) in Swimming
In the sport
of Swimming, athletes, parents, and coaches seem to have an obsession with
“dropping time”. This obsession can be
healthy when approached with perspective and maturity; but oftentimes our
obsession with “dropping time” is not only unhealthy – but inaccurate when assessing
forward-moving or stagnant performance.
As a
disclaimer: I realize that one of the beautiful things about swimming is that
the stopwatch can tell us exactly what is going on. Things seem black and white with swimming
like they seem to be with Track and Field, which are much different sports when
compared to football, basketball, or soccer.
Many people are drawn to the sport of swimming because it seems relatively
easy to see where you stand and where you rank.
But here’s the problem: the human organism is ever-changing, and to
measure its changes from a black and white perspective simply doesn’t make
sense. Swimming isn’t really black and
white; it just seems to be. Oftentimes,
we don’t account for growth, or lack of growth.
We may not account for how that growth affects stroke technique. We may not account for the learning of a
better racing strategy – or simply trying a new strategy that is less effective
than a previous strategy. Our sport is
not as black and white as we may think it is when looked at from these
perspectives!
Take a look
at the numbers below. I’ve looked at the
USA Swimming database to determine the 1st, 10th, and 50th
ranked times for single age groups (I used men age 14 through 16, and women age
13 through 15 -- from 2011 through 2013).
I looked at the difference between the Top Ranked time at age 14 (for
men) and 13 (for women), and calculated the amount of time dropped over the
next two years (for age 15 and 16 for men, and age 14 and 15 for women). I did the same thing for the 10th
fastest time each year, and the 50th fastest time for each year, as
well as for each gender. I averaged the
time drops for the #1 ranking, the #10 ranking, and the #50 ranking to get the
“Average Time Drop” for the particular age and event.
The facts
show the following:
A. Over the 200M distance, Men drop an
average of 4.4 seconds per year from age 14 to age 15, and an average of 2.4
seconds per year from age 15 to age 16.
B. Over the 200M distance, Women drop an
average of 5.0 seconds per year from age 13 to age 14, and an average of 1.9
seconds per year from age 14 to age 15.
Here are the
raw numbers:
200
Freestyle -- Men
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop/year
2011 (14) 1:56.2 1:59.3 2:01.6
2012 (15) 1:52.2 1:54.9 1:58.1 4.3 seconds
2013 (16) 1:48.6 1:53.8 1:55.9 2.3 seconds
200
Backstroke – Men
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop
2011 (14) 2:08.1 2:11.9 2:16.2
2012 (15) 2:02.9 2:07.8 2:10.9 4.8 seconds
2013 (16) 2:03.5 2:06.1 2:09.5 0.8 seconds
200
Breaststroke – Men
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop
2011 (14) 2:21.2 2:28.0 2:35.2
2012 (15) 2:19.5 2:23.5 2:28.5 4.7 seconds
2013 (16) 2:15.8 2:20.3 2:25.9 3.6 seconds
200
Butterfly – Men
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop
2011 (14) 2:04.1 2:09.9 2:15.7
2012 (15) 2:00.9 2:06.8 2:10.4 3.8 seconds
2013 (16) 1:56.5 2:04.4 2:08.4 2.9 seconds
200
Freestlye --Women
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop
2011 (13) 2:05.0 2:08.2 2:11.0
2012 (14) 2:00.0 2:04.0 2:07.2 4.3 seconds
2013 (15) 1:59.3 2:03.1 2:06.1 0.9 seconds
200
Backstroke – Women
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop
2011 (13) 2:19.8 2:21.8 2:27.2
2012 (14) 2:14.2 2:17.7 2:23.0 4.6 seconds
2013 (15) 2:10.3 2:16.6 2:20.7 2.8 seconds
200
Breaststroke – Women
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop
2011 (13) 2:37.1 2:41.1 2:49.5
2012 (14) 2:26.3 2:37.7 2:44.3 7.0 seconds
2013 (15) 2:31.0 2:36.2 2:42.7 2.6 seconds
200
Butterfly – Women
Year (Age) #1 US Time #10 US Time #50 US
Time Average Time Drop
2011 (13) 2:15.2 2:22.2 2:27.5
2012 (14) 2:11.1 2:18.0 2:23.2 4.2 seconds
2013 (15) 2:10.3 2:17.5 2:21.6 1.3 seconds
It’s easy to
draw a few conclusions with these facts:
A. If you are not dropping 4-5 seconds
off of your 200, during the critical years (14-15 for men and 13-14 for women),
then you are simply not keeping up with your competitors throughout the US. Many athletes, parents, and coaches will be
very excited to see a 3 second time drop in an event, from year to year; but
between these years, a 3 second time drop means that the athlete is simply not
holding their US ranking.
B. If you are not dropping about 2
seconds the following year (15-16 for men and 14-15 for women), then you are
not keeping up. The same idea applies,
but here the challenge is to keep our stagnant swimmers into the sport and
looking forward with optimism. To have a
smaller time drop during this time of their career is normal; and certainly we
would like to see a bigger drop, but this is when “relative plateaus” may
occur. These athletes need to keep
plugging.
C. Men, when compared to women, drop
less time ‘early’ and more time ‘late’; whereas women drop more time ‘early’
and less time ‘late’. The implications
for this are vast, particularly on the women’s side: women who are dropping the
big time ‘early’ need to realize that it’s normal to see their time drops level
off a bit (they still may be gaining on their competitors if they drop 3.8
seconds from 13 to 14, and only 2.5 from 14 to 15); but on the other side of
the thought process, both the women and men should realize that at the age of
15 or 16 many of their peers are not improving at the same rate that they did
when they were 14 or 15 – which leaves an open door for a committed, focused
young athlete. Certainly the top
athletes in the US keep the ‘pedal down to the floor’ from age 15 through age
18 – and they do so with better efficiency than their peers.
There is a lot to this type of comparison, and certainly I’m
aware that it is small sample size. I don’t see this type of comparison as a
way to determine what types of athlete will make the 2016 Olympic Team – it’s
more of a comment on 18 and under athletes in the US, and how we can accurately
assess performance.
We need to be careful when assessing performance, because
swimming is not the black and white sport many of us are guilty of believing it
to be.
See my post on FloridaSwimNetwork.com:
http://flaswimnetwork.com/paul-yetter/
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