I’m curious how much doing your sets with one arm slows you down? My right arm was amputated years ago. I started swimming with a team last year and really enjoy it. I’ve always wondered though how I would stack up with two arms. Still very much a novice but the fastest I can swim a 25M freestyle is about 23 seconds that starting in the water. When I started I would do it in 30s and I was dead after. Looking at the special olympics, those people are amazing - I’m not expecting I could ever reach even close to them. Anyone ever time themselves with one arm?
No idea how much slower, but it’s impressive that you’re swimming even with only 1 arm. Keep it up.
That’s great to hear you found (or refound) swimming! It’s a great form of exercise for people of virtually all body types, levels of able-bodiedness, mental ability, etc. I do a drill of swimming with just one arm as it helps see which side needs work done with technique and rotation. My 25s are about 3-5 seconds slower than my regular cruising speed, and my 50s are somewhere around 8-12 seconds slower than my cruising speed. It all depends on how tired I already am from a previous workout, or just feeling that day. You’d probably be well under 20 seconds per 25 if you had two arms.
I believe a 1-arm amputee falls into the S8 category in para-swimming (based on a quick Google search, so I may be wrong), where the world record for men’s 100m freestyle is 55.84, which is 9.44 seconds slower than the able-bodied WR, and for women, it’s 1:03.66, which is 11.95 seconds slower than the able-bodied WR.
@Crosby
Wow, I have two arms and would be pretty stoked with a 55 100m!
Thane said:
@Crosby
Wow, I have two arms and would be pretty stoked with a 55 100m!
Yeah, there are some incredibly impressive para-swimmers out there. For example, I know there’s a Chinese guy who has no arms at all and swims his 50m free in under 30 seconds just doing a flutter kick.
@Crosby
Wut.
At first, I thought that was your 50 time and all I could think was W. T. F! I’ll often swim one-arm for practice, but it’s often with a snorkel and/or fins. If I had to guess, without those, I’d be a solid 5-8 seconds slower per 25. Congrats on the hard work; it can’t be easy.
Not the same, but I think in my pool, the fastest swimmer only has one leg.
I never swim more than 50 meters as a one-arm drill, so I can only give a limited answer. I’m terrible at breathing on my left side, so my left arm only is ~110% of my time with both arms, but my right arm only is easily double. *edited to say that I’m a newer (less than 1 year) swimmer, but I swim every weekday for the past 6 months.
*para-olympics
Skylar said:
*para-olympics
*Paralympics