Category: Turns and starts

Posted on

Power to be in awe of – Kaylee McKeown

Kaylee McKeown sets a new World 200m women’s backstroke record in a time of 2:03.14

Every body is writing about this fabulous swim so it is hard to say anything new.

What mywaterworld.life has done is look at some of the stats of Kaylee’s magnificent 200 backstroke and we have included, as a comparison, the former world record holder’s times.

Kaylee’s 200m stats

Meters Under Water
(at Start and Turn)		Strokes
(per 50m)		Lap timeSplit timeDPS* (meters)Regan Smith
(lap time)		Regan Smith
(split time)
143229.3229.321.1329.0629.06
103531.411:00.731.1431.311:00.37
93631.111:31.841.1431.471:31.84
93731.302:03.141.1131.512:03.35
* DPS – Distance Per Stroke

Taking a closer look at this data, Kaylee did a magnificent 2nd 100m – just fabulous pacing. Her 1st 100 was in 60.37 while the 2nd was in 62.41. Kaylee was behind Regan by 0.26 seconds at the 50, and a further 0.10 seconds at the 100 meter mark.

From then on it was all Kaylee who caught up the 0.36 advantage Regan held at the 100m mark on the 3rd 50, and then powered home in a 31.30, outpacing Regan on the last 50 by 0.21 seconds.

mywaterworld.life has located footage of this swim on YouTube that is worth watching.

Controlled pace and an amzingly powerful last 50m by Kaylee – a must watch and a lesson to all.*

The footage on YouTube comes from the BairnOwl channel, while Regan Smith’s times were sourced from a SwimSwam news story from July 26, 1019. mywaterworld.life was poolside in Gwangju when Regan smashed Missy Franklin’s record by 0.71 seconds.

Posted on

Reaction Times and More on Pacing

How important and significant are reaction times?

Today we take a dive into the outcome of the Mens 4 x 50m freestyle relay at the World Aquatics Short Course Championships.

The margin between the 1st and 2nd placings was only 0.04 seconds – tighter margins are feasible, but not by much. Australia won this relay, not because it swam faster in the water, it didn’t, but because team members had better reaction times, by 0.09 seconds in total, than those of the Italians – and that was enough for the win.

Check out our story on the importance of reaction times and pacing in 400s.

FINA SC Champs 2022 Melb – Part 2Download
Posted on

Starts, Turns and Pacing

World Aquatics Championships provide a great opportunity to have a look at the difference in skills, and therefore the effectivness of the execution of race plans.

mywaterworld.life has put together this quick analysis of the Women’s 400 and Men’s 1500m freestyle events and the 4 x 100 freestyle relays.

FINA SC Champs 2022 MelbDownload

In none of the events were the diffences in reaction times and skills off the turns significant enough to affect the results in any meaningful ways.

The events featured are all longer events, or relays, but when you get down to the shorter ones (50s and 100s) , and especially as this is short coure racing, hundreths of a second make the diffrence between a podium finish and not even making a final. This equally applies in relays as there are multipel changeovers and corresponding reaction time. It is so important to make evey push-off and turn in training a skill development pririoty. And as for the starts and turns, try some box jumps and burpees.

Pacing for the distance events is critical so have a look at the tables and see how consistent the pacing needs to be – train that pacing.