Do 50m sprinters go “balls-to-the-wall” from beginning to end? Or are they “prudent”/“measured” in how they use their energy in the 50m sprint?
In other words, is the 50m sprint truly an all out sprint, where the athlete is pulling as hard as one possibly can – at a given moment – from beginning to end?
Or do these athletes make a trade-off of peak velocity – which can only be held for a small amount of time – for a slightly lower velocity that can held for a longer period of time, thus ensuring the average velocity is sufficiently high to minimize their total travel time of 50m?
The phrase “Balls to the Wall” originates from early fighter planes, where their accelerator handle was ball-shaped. So pushing it all the way to the wall was maxing out the engine. Similar to pedal to the metal.
This has nothing to do with your question. But my friend and I were coaching a meet and we yelled that, and we thought to ourselves “uh oh… I hope that isn’t an inappropriate saying”. So we looked it up. Turns out it’s fine lol.
@Gracen
Another fun fact. The phrase “balls out” comes from steam engines during the industrial revolution. They had a device called the Flyball Governor. It would spin around and if the engine started to overspeed, the balls would fly out and slow it down.
Gabi said: @Gracen
This was so good! Thank you kindly, good Sir/Ma’am…
Also yes usually a 50 sprint is all out from beginning to end. Sometimes even 100. The interesting part is how you define all out through the swim, bc there are several parts of it that are dramatically different. So I think a better phrasing is that while they are going all out for the whole swim, each individual part has its own version of all out.
Of course, if a phrase has come to be associated with sex, you may want to be careful where you say it–even if the original meaning was totally innocent. I don’t talk about shooting my wad in business meetings.
Yes, a 50 is a full-out 100% effort. The 100 is long enough that most can’t go 100% the entire time, but it will be a very high level of effort.
The 200 is a miserable distance - too long to sprint, too short to dial it back, not a lot of margin to recover if your pacing is off. Despite swimming it in almost every meet, it was my most hated event (and this holds true for our kids as well).
@Blayne
I can count the times I’ve paced a 200 right on the fingers of one hand in the last five years lol.
Also 200 short course and 200 long course feel like different animals. 200 short course sprinters have the advantage, 200 long course the 400+ swimmers crushed the last length imo.
@Omar
And if you finally learn how to pace a 200, you won’t know how to pace any other race. I learned how to do it in my 200 consistently, and then never could do it in a 500, 1650, or 100 ever again.