Why Elite Swimmer Cam McEvoy Stopped Doing Traditional Swimming Workouts

Cam McEvoy won Olympic gold in the 50 freestyle in Paris and now holds the world record, but the approach that got him there started with a session that looked like almost nothing. Katie Hoff Anderson asks him what day one was like when he began training this way at the end of 2022, and how he kept believing in it.

In October 2022, after more than a year out of the water, his first session back was six parachute sprints of 12 strokes each. It felt easy. Within about two hours of getting home he was fried, with brain fog and a thousand-yard stare on the couch. Cam had never napped between sessions, even through 50, 60 and 70K weeks, and this time he slept for two hours. In his words, he was "out like a baby." He explains the novelty of sessions where he would not even touch the wall at the other end of the pool, and the trust he borrowed from the strength and track worlds, where these ideas had decades of results behind them.

The results came fast. Within eight weeks of coming back, he beat his Tokyo Olympic time in the 50 free, and within nine months of doing no swimming at all, he was world champion. He also shares the one time his confidence wavered, in May 2023, when he pushed the new training too hard because he could not feel it working, fell into what he calls an absolute hole, and was told by his coach Tim Lane not to swim again until his warm-up at the meet. Five days later he went 21.8, the quickest swim of his season to that point.

Where the idea came from, including what he saw in a bouldering gym after Tokyo, is in the full conversation with Cam, on the Unfiltered Waters channel and wherever you listen to podcasts.

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