Have You Seen Ruta’s Newest Twitter Profile Picture? Wow.

Have you seen Ruta Meilutyte’s new Twitter profile picture?

Ruta Meilutyte Twitter Picture

Can you train this? Is this sort of explosiveness off of the blocks and reaction time just a natural ability? If it’s teachable, we should all be teaching it. It’s hard to make out exactly who else is in this picture, but this is Meilutyte against a world class field. She’s already got half-a-body length lead about half-a-second after the buzzer was sounded to start the race.

This is an incredible visual representation of just how great her starts are. In Barcelona, she was off the blocks on average a tenth of a second faster than her closest competitors, Yulia Efimova and Jessica Hardy, and even more against the rest of the field. And she’s not exactly getting off the block fast just for the sake of getting off the block fast – she has a ton of power and momentum as she enters her underwater.

This is why Meilutyte, despite how good she is at such a young age, might not even be done crushing World Records yet. This start is what separates her from the rest of the world, and she can probably get even a little better. If you’ve ever wondered why her 100 breaststroke splits seem so wonky – out at World Record pace when she turns – this start is why.

Incredible.

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deu
10 years ago

This picture from the London final is also a good illustration.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67307569@N00/9458013321/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Its not just the speed of the start but how far she travels before entering the water.

DanishSwimFan
Reply to  deu
10 years ago

Great picture.

Luigi
10 years ago

I know this is a bit off-topic, but can any of you guys tell where one of the two commentators is from? I mean the one speaking first after the dive. Australia, maybe?

DanishSwimFan
Reply to  Luigi
10 years ago

That is Drew Gordon and he is Scottish.

Luigi
Reply to  DanishSwimFan
10 years ago

Thanks. I should have known. I don’t know why I wrote “Australian” 🙂

mcgillrocks
10 years ago

Tyler Mcgill had the best reaction time of anyone at the 2012 Olympic trials

SwimFanFinland
10 years ago

The picture must be taken at the start of Women’s 100m breastroke final:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd2WLNZ4bzg

Coach
10 years ago

That’s an awesome shot. Just wondering 2 things:
Are they all doing rear-loaded starts, or are they doing different?
Who is above her a few lanes away? She seems to be almost with her

DanishSwimFan
Reply to  Coach
10 years ago

Looks like Jennie Johansson from Sweden to me.

deu
10 years ago

This is the 100m final, infront of her are Hardy and then Efimova closest to her, behind are Pedersen, Larson and a blurred Johansson. Not a bad collection of breaststrokers, even if their starts are all rather poor by comparison.

tomr
10 years ago

Not sure you can train reaction time but you can definitely train explosiveness which might counter the lack of great reaction time.

Shoulder of fortune
10 years ago

For swimmers with shoulder problems, doing lots of starts can hurt. Especially if you are trying out different approaches, you’re not going to enter flawlessly every time.
Also, all that getting out of the water takes a lot of practice time. For coaches who are strictly limited to 2 hours (I assume ruta is not limited this way), there are usually better ways to spend practice time than working on starts.

Ben
Reply to  Shoulder of fortune
10 years ago

How would you qualify better? Off the blocks swimmers average between 4 & 5 m/s velocity…in the water they might get 1-2? And for the swimmers with shoulder issues, does it hurt them any more than swimming? If you go to any typical state-championship level meet, you’ll see maybe 20% of the starts be somewhat explosive. I fully agree that coaches should spend more time on training their athletes to have the explosive, athletic hip extension that is needed for starts/turns.

Kirk Nelson
Reply to  Shoulder of fortune
10 years ago

“there are usually better ways to spend practice time than working on starts.”

Possibly, but the problem is this translates into NEVER working on starts for many coaches. I have a feeling even with very limited training time starts are something worth working on consistently.

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Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

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