The nuts and bolts of swimming with Matt Biondi
Matt Biondi on Torpedo Swimtalk
We recently interviewed 11 time Olympic medallist Matt Biondi on Torpedo Swimtalk. Here is an excerpt from that interview
Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast :
You were the first man under 49 seconds for the 100 free, and that was an amazing feat at the time (1988). Talk us through that race.
Matt Biondi:
The key to the 100 free for me was really swimming the 200 and also dropping down to the 50. I got beaten in the 50 by Tom Jager quite frequently. Pablo (Morales) beat me in the butterfly, and Michael Gross in the 200 free. So the 100 was really my specialty. I felt like I was confident in that race when I swam my fastest time, 48.4, at the Olympic trials in Austin. I had swum the 200 previously in that meet and set the American record, so I knew my training was good. The third event was the 100 free, and I knew that I was going to tear it up. I just had an amazing amount of confidence and I'm a pretty modest guy. I walked into the ready room for the 100 free swim at the 88 trials. And when I got there, the other seven guys looked at me and I swear they all said the same thing in their head, which was Matt’s here! Now we're swimming for second! And when I walked out onto the pool deck, you know there were 5,000-6,000 people there. I could almost hear individual voices like go Sean, go Tom, go Matt. It was really quite strange. And when I dove in I remember just sort of like being above my body, like not really in it, not really feeling any of my movements. I hit the one turn and as I looked over, the field was still coming in. They hadn't hit the wall yet and I was already pushing off. So there's a half body, like three-quarters of a body, lead right now. And many of the coaches responded that when I came up from that turn, that they had never seen a swimmer come out so high in the water. Maybe that's not a good thing, but it was just an amazing swim where I felt no pain until maybe the last three strokes and that was it. That was really the highlight of my athletic career. It was the best swim that I ever had and it was really about challenging myself outside the 100, with the 200 free and the 50 free. That made the 100 so good and it's interesting there's really not been a lot of folks who do the 50 and the 200 anymore. Yeah, Popovich maybe is the closest with the 100 and the 200, but my college record stood for 20 some years, my NCAA record, just because they didn't swim that breadth. Afterwards it was all just 50 and 100. I think the NCAA changed their scholarship and events to allow more sprinters to come in and that sort of steered the recruiting class towards the faster events and away from the longer ones.
Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast :
What's your favourite freestyle drill that you do in training these days? What’s your secret for a perfect freestyle?
Matt Biondi:
I think the biggest thing for me is the roll. A lot of swimmers swim like tugboats and their bodies are really dragging in the water, pushing a lot of water. Being able to roll on your side and get your profile more like you're balanced on a rail and not as much just plowing through the water, that is a really a big point for me. And mostly the biggest sort of faux pas or crime in swimming are the elbows. Low elbows. You see it all the time in master swimmers. It is partly because of flexibility. Some of these older gentlemen were marathon runners or track. I mean, their ankles just don't flex. It's a 90 degree angle the whole time and when they kick they go backwards. So flexibility in masters is a big thing and it makes it hard to get the elbows up. But I really encourage rolling and a more efficient pull because it makes swimming more enjoyable. It shouldn't be a struggle at times. You should be able to just relax and, like you're walking with a friend down the street and talking at the same time, You're not worried about what your legs are doing. You're not worried about being out of breath. You're just enjoying company and the sunshine and the fresh air and swimming can be like that.
Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast:
What about your favourite training set that you do for freestyle?
Matt Biondi:
I'll tell you my favourite from my younger days, my high school coach, Stu Khan, called it breakthroughs. Every Wednesday we did 10x100s for time on four minutes from a dive, and all the times were recorded. He had a bar chart that he kept up on the pool deck with all of our times, and so the next week we would do nine, and then eight, and then we would come down, and so the idea is that your overall average would also come down as far as time. And it was such an intense set because you know, with four minutes apart there's waves every minute going off of eight guys and. You know it's like, oh man, two more minutes. And so your whole week, literally your whole week, was based around Wednesday! Wednesday's coming, it's Monday, two more days - till Wednesday and then practice, and then it was over. So Thursday is the greatest amount of time between now and Wednesday. But it was a mentally challenging set and obviously physically really great for training. So that was the most intense set I remember as a high school kid and I did it with my high school kids and they'll say the same thing. The whole week revolved around Wednesday. Now a set that I'm quite fond of, that's challenging, is alternating. So we do a 50 easy and then a 150 fast, and then a 50 easy and then 250 fast and then a 50 easy, 350s, a 50 easy, 450 fast, like at 200 pace for each of the 50s. So we're sprinting on short rest for the fast ones and then we get a long easy swim in between and then we come down for 321 on the fast ones and it takes about 30 minutes and by the end we did this set, I think on Monday, and I had to sit in my car for a few minutes just to drink some water and just kind of like, okay, I got to drive home. Now I mean it was intense. Yeah, yeah, master swimmers are funny, because to most master swimmers a hard workout is how far you went, how many yards you go. But those are the easiest practices for me because I just get in that loop, loop, loop mode.. The hard workouts are when you're on your horse going hard and your lungs are burning and your legs are seasoned up. And a lot of master swimmers don't like that because they don't know how to swim at different degrees, right. They don't have that intensity from their experience, so everything is sort of the same. But if they can learn to swim easy and long at times, then you know, let's go get it on.