Why are kids swimming so fast right now? 

I’m now a coach on a Masters team and compete myself and still swim just as fast at 30 training 3 days a week for an hour than I did at 17 swimming 10,000 yards a day over 2 practices daily. I was constantly injured, tired, and sick in high school swimming. I think training smart and having more experienced coaches is a huge part of it. Not so many junk yards or doing 10x100s fast followed by 20x50s all out sprints that just tore up the shoulders of every swimmer on the team.

I don’t think this is the only reason but part of is that we are getting more natural athletes into swimming than ever before. With the increasing of coverage (poorly) and the quick searches of their favorite swimmers races like you said. It reaches a larger audience and has probably had some influence.

This specifically for Summer, she has been a part of the Canadian Olympic team for the past two years and has been getting a very high standard of coaching from some of the best and she swims with and is mentored by people like Penny Oleksiak and Maggie Macneil, both medalists.

I switched teams recently and i went from a 22.21 to 20.98 in the 50 free. This was Within 35 days. I’m hoping to be under 20 seconds by NC senior champs

summer has always been pretty fast. i’m 19 now and coaching now, but i remember when i was 14 and summer mcintosh was only about 11, we would be at the same meets but she would be in the much faster heats than myself already, and she’d be qualified for more events than me and most of my friends… her mother was also an olympic swimmer, so i guess she got them genes. but ya, training for sure plays a part. a couple years ago summer stopped training at her original club and started training with canada’s national team. so she’s been training with olympians everyday since before her first olympics.

I didn't realize how big of a deal that race footage was until now. I started swimming my sophomore year of high school, and now im a rising senior finishing my first year of a year round swim club, and I have been consistently watching race footage since i first state swimming. Alot of swimmers on the high school team ask me how im so naturally good (Which they dont seem to realize im not fast at all in the actual swimming world.) Although i was already comfortable in the water, the only thing that made me faster was swimming more, (year round team), and studying race footage. The race footage helped the most. I went from a 35 second 50 yard free when I first dived in, to a 27 second 50 free. Although its not super impressive, it was done with one high school season. I recently broke 26 with a 25.9 at practice. Ive been lifting with a small machine and doing some body weight training, and I definitely could work on my nutrition. My best event is probably the 100 fly (I went a 1:02 a few months ago with the most atrociously disgusting coach's soul crushing splitting ever, 28 low and a 34 high)

1:09 Won't lie, this might be the only reason.

…if I were a world class teenage swimmer, and I knew that you were going to point me out in front of thousands of people, it would absolutely make me try harder in a race. 100% Better, coaching and nutrition at access training, like you said, main reason

My only complaint is the announcer at the East location. Heilman goes 1:41.7 drops a second off the NAG record as a 15 year old and not a word was mentioned before, during or after the race. Completely killed the hype.

I agree with your points, I'll also throw in mentality and confidence. These kids seem to have have no fear and they maintain their composure like veterans. They're not afraid to take it out hard in a 200. They hold their turns and stroke deep into races. They stick to the strategies they've worked out with their coaches. As an example, someone like Bella Sims seems to be totally unflappable. I go back to Sims' anchor in the 4x200 in Budapest which has to rank as one of the great relay splits by a junior swimmer in history, she just turned the screws. I sense the same confidence and thoughtfulness in Heilman, Deihl and Grimes, they just don't act like young teenagers. Lastly, the coaching seems much more highly individualized than it was. These coaches are true professionals and tease out the small improvements each swimmer can make in each particular event. The kids know exactly what they need to work on the get faster, you can hear it in interviews. This was not my experience when I was racing at 15, lol.

The amount of information regarding teaching technique is huge. A coach who stays on top of new technique development can create fast swimmers much faster these days.

I have the pleasure of watching Scotty Buff in person. Scotty's underwaters are beyond compare with his competition. He also has a great coach Brent Ransom at GTAC.

I feel this way with skateboarding. 12yo kids are doing tricks that we would've deemed impossible 20 years ago. RU-vid & Instagram helped make it so accessible

Late to the party here but I think the reason is just how early they're starting. I'm in my mid 40s and if I had told my parents that the sport I chose in 1988 required practice five days a week for 2.5 hours and 2-4 day long travel meets a dozen times a year they would have laughed at me but yet here I am doing it for my kid. I was a polo player and there were two guys on my high school team who got full scholarships to D1 schools to play polo. Neither of them touched a water polo ball before the age of 13. Today, the 14U polo teams have 15-20 players and virtually all of them have at least 6 years of experience by the time they play 14U. My polo coach used to love that I swam in the off season and vice versa. My son doesn't have an off-season for swimming and if he had time to do both swimming and polo, his coaches would just rather he spend more time swimming than try to do both.

Yards swimming is all based on turns and underwater dolphin kick. If you can figure out the cheat code to swimming fast underwater dolphin kick you have solved half of the problem.

This year a bunch of freshmen on my school team are swimming 22-25 second 50m free (25m) beginning of the swim season btw. We had a really solid team last year where most of us had between a 28-32 second free in the beginning of the season, and at the end of the season we were swimming 24-28 seconds. Out of 30 kids, only 2 swam a 50m at 30 seconds.

Coaches are getting better with all the technologies too. Underwater cam is used to age group swimmer to help them refine their technic. Better nutrition is introduced to kids pre/during/post practices.

Yeah, im having some mental breakdowns about this also....I used to be really fast and ive hit a slump... but all my friends where there and we swimming at the west meet, in Texas. And i got to go!

Technique and training smarter...no junk yards! Coaching is great.

Im aware im a little late to the party with this comment. In my opinion the biggest reason that people are getting so fast right now is because we arent braking ourselves down which forces us to build our selves back up afterwards. We're building off of an already strong foundation which just leads us to get faster and faster. over the course of the last few weeks, I tried modifying my schedule for swimming just to see what would happen; over the course of 5 days I went from 1:04.6 on the 100 yard breastroke down to 1:03.12, in FIVE days. and then TWO days after that I nearly went 1:02.3ish, the only reason i ended up going 1:03.4 was because i messed up first open turn, my splits were 31 flat and 32.3. The lesser amount of training has led to me feeling far healthier and wayyyyyy more confident with myself and my swimming, because of the drops in time I have been able to pull off over the last few weeks.

Exactly!!! The Sandpipers are so good because they follow you on Twitter, Bro.

I just competed in a national swim meet and the 13-15 50m boys event the gold placer had a time of 25.65. god damn

I myself am a young swimmer and I believe that you’re right but also we’re getting faster because other people are getting faster too. We are more hungry to win big meets than ever before and seeing someone two years younger than you go 3 seconds faster in your best event than you is a big fire in your belly.

I know from personal experience when I first started lifting I was all over the board adding time and when you get use to it I dropped so much time like crazy amounts. Also it’s so easy to get the information they need and there are a lot more swimming camps to with elite level swimmers

I think you should talk about Owen Ekk this kid JUST turned 14 and he has 1:40 in the 200 free

Good analyse bud, got me to subscribe to your channel. I would say they are faster because some of them are coming from top former NCAA swimmers(mom dad) who got married, no doubt about this for sure.

Haven't really been following swimming much anymore but wow those numbers are wild. Nice take Kyle. 👌

Better athletes, more information, better sport and nutrition science. Sandpipers still pile the yardage on, so training is different, but it isn’t really easier. Better sports science and nutrition allows these kids to recover and do more.

better coaching. plain & simple.

Watched Williamson at our regional meet, I’ve never payed that much attention to a race

Bro i born in 2008 and 2010’s kids faster than me . HOWWWWW

I like it. Except for the fact that its the sandpipers of Nevada who are notorious for very high mileage

The biggest reason why kids are getting faster is because of the spread of vast knowledge through the sport & fitness industry. Technology has allowed us to keep track of so many things such as how much we are swimming, how intense our exercises can get, and communication on what has failed and succeeded. It's happening in all sports, but I think we will begin to see a MUCH harder playing field in sports down the road (considering EVERYONE is up to date on ALL the factors that need to be implemented to perform at a max level). The sports world vastly increased in the past 100 years, which is NOT that long of a time if you think about it. This can be dangerous though, if we allow this industry to "take" over our lives, and not focus on what really matters...and that should be the improvement of all life in all aspects (mentally and physically).

Ill keep it plain and simple, our generation is just better. No but if we are going to get serious here, I believe the MAJOR factor for faster kids is simply just the coaching. The real reason kids now are so much faster than the previous generations, is the fact that coaching has developed so immensely over the years. Just from 2016, specifically after Rio, mass amounts of kids have started going unfathomably fast times because of the advances in our knowledge and global reach of the sport. Coaching when done when done well, is a game changer and frankly I think thats the reality as to why a lot of these kids are going so fast.

I begged for tailored training 25 years ago, along with underwater cameras, to no avail. Glad to see just how right I was. Coaches told me to shut up and do the yardage, smh.

I was a decent high school swimmer in Indiana back in the day. I'm watching what these kids are doing these days in that state, and my jaw drops. Just saw a swimmer go 45.33 in the 100 back at sectionals. Unreal.

Why are kids swimming do fast ? My personal experience is my son is 12 and has been competitively swimming since he was 6. His swim team practices 2 to 3 hours a day 6 days a week. Could kids be swimming fast because of conditioning, opportunities to be on private teams , and swimming all year long? I think this plays a great role in bringing up the next swimming generation. These kids are training like high school athletes at the young ages.

I think coaching is huge. I’m 37 and having to fix things now that my coach should have picked up on when I was 16. Additionally, I think there might be less pressure to swim races you aren’t good at at the club level. I’m a terrible sprinter yet regularly 50/100m races on my card in high school. I had the fastest 5000m straight of any girl on my team but was rarely entered in a distance race. Now I focus on training for 3km+ open water races exclusively. I was never going to be pro but I think someone who could have been, given the coaching I had, would have been wasted potential.

Definitely the easy access to footage. The others, maybe. But, definitely the access to footage.

They have legends to stand on the shoulders of

is going 2 minutes to 1:26 minutes in 6 months good?

im following u on twitter right this second

My good friend studied Alex Honnold's free soloing... God rest his soul. 😉

I also feel like media coverage. I’ve been on RU-vid since 2008 and the only places i ever saw swimming related content was like NBC sports. No one ever talked about it and it wasn’t exposed at all. There was never enough coverage. But nowadays starting around 2016 we saw like Cody Miller and also general coverage and a bunch of RU-vid feed. Another reason why is people are taking away kids from other popular sports like football and basketball.

I’m just here with seinor champ cuts lol

Saw a 14 year old go a 22.32 in a 50 freestyle 😭

there is more people than ever involved in the sport, maybe it has to do with that. More kids means more kids swimming fast

I honestly think that some of these kids that are going to us open or us Olympic trials are taking some sort of enhancement and getting away with it because they are so young. I’ve seen someone go from barely making winter juniors to going straight to Olympic trials in just a few months

Tbh I think it’s only cuz they follow you on Twitter

Do you think these kids will peak sooner than people have been in the past?

What if times just runs slower than it was 10 years ago?)

The idea of “better” coaching might be a bit subjective & hard to define; but evaluating training philosophy & overall approach would be more objective. Where an old school coach might just push a lot of yardage, a more progressive coach is going to emphasize technique-distance per stroke, high elbow, hip rotation, streamline, etc., etc. Drills, drills, drills that develop technique at the age group level is where the “better” coaches are today.

Thank you for someone making this video. Idk wtf is happening in this sport…

Because they loved the sport at a young age and started training with intent and got better and better and then at 9 they are where you are at 13. Its almost all hard work

I hit 15 seconds on my 25 meters. I think its good for a 11 year old for me.

Re: the boys. Fewer prime athletes playing football and more opting for sports like swimming.

Kids are so fast these days!

What do you think about PED usage and doping and how it could be used in this case🧐🧐🧐

Scotty buff just swam a 19.67 in the 50 free

me too

You remind me of Caeleb Dressel

Unfortunately, the college swimming environment doesn't always translate to success at the world level (i.e. LCM swimming). Particularly for female athletes, it's hard to find a lot of examples of truly elite level swimmers who went to college and improved from the trajectory they were already on. When you look at the girls swimming for Sandpipers, you have to ask if any of them will really benefit from leaving that training and program and going to college (at least from a strictly swimming standpoint)

Nicholas Castella

First reason is probably true

there is this really fast 12 year old on my team and has a 50 sec 50scy freestyle

i am pretty sure that summer in Florida bring all girls faster

Im no biologist, but as for the girls don’t we typically see women peak at younger ages in the 14-20 range? Outliers could be Ledecky and Lazor who seem to get better with age. Isn’t this due to their body maturing fast then preparing itself for parenthood?

My friend is 12 she goes a 56 on her 100 yard free

our genetics are much better and more developed than previous generations....training methods were developed over the years so now a 2 hour practice in 2023 is much efficient than a 3 hour practice in 2000 .....we go through puberty at 12 and 13 while before average age was 15 16 soo increase in muscle mass plays a huge role in being able to go fast times....im literally 16 and went 1,05.21 at my 100 breast nationals soo this pretty much explains it

There's alot more kids taking pre-workout drinks. As well as recovery drinks, and those make a big difference. Look at caeleb dressel, openly said during an post race interview that he took to much pre-workout. I've personally used it, and I've dropped time dramatically. I went from only swimming two events in a weekend meet to being able to swim 4 to 6.

USRPT and Threshold & Overload

yeah im 11 and my 100 free is 1.05 and my 50 free is 29 is that good?

Women peak younger ?

doping

my friend who’s only 13 has at 23 50 free

juicing jk

Missed the major one -- nod to Darwin -- natural selection. Genetic advancement toward sleeker aquadynamism...

Soy Milk.

bc of covid

I'm 16 year old age group swimmer i started swimming around 2020 and i now have 1.10 in the 100m backstroke, i almost never skip practice, always make sure to go 110%in every practice and same thing for nutrition and gym do u think i have a shot competing with guys like this?

Maybe they should have stricter doping rules, or maybe I'm just hating and they have some natural unreal talent idk at this point

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