How Amanda Lim Is Rewriting the Sprint Freestyle Playbook

At 32, Singapore sprint star Amanda Lim is swimming faster by doing less junk volume, lifting heavier and learning how to race with more precision.

Amanda has spent more than a decade as one of Singapore’s most decorated swimmers. A 50m freestyle specialist, relay stalwart and major-meet performer, she has lived the traditional high-volume swimming life.

But at 32, Lim is not fading quietly out of elite sport.

She is getting faster.

Her recent progression has come through a major shift in thinking: less automatic volume, more individualised programming, a greater emphasis on strength, mobility and race-specific speed, and a willingness to step away from the comfort of team-based training.

“It’s still a very big question mark as to what kind of program suits each of us,” Lim said on Torpedo Swimtalk. “Only the individual knows what suits them, but with that you have to be very aware of your own body.”

That awareness has become central to her current training model.

After a disappointing World Championships preparation, Lim and coach Bobby Hurley made a clear decision: rebuild strength first.

Lim describes herself as a strength-based athlete — someone who feels better in the water when she is powerful in the gym. The change paid off quickly. After swimming 25.5 for the 50m freestyle at World Championships, she dropped around half a second within three months and returned to win SEA Games gold.

The interesting part? That improvement came before she had fully shifted into power or speed-endurance work.

For Lim, the gym was not an accessory. It became the engine room.

She moved from two gym sessions per week to three, while often swimming only three to four sessions depending on how her body felt. In Brisbane, where she spent a training block under Tim Lane’s environment, she increased to five swim sessions and three gym sessions, but the principle stayed the same: quality over volume.

“There wasn’t any garbage yardage,” she said.

Her pool work became highly specific: resistance work, bodyweight sprinting, short maximal efforts, technical work, and enough aerobic swimming to maintain feel without draining the system.

One of her biggest mental hurdles was accepting that less swimming did not mean less preparation.

Lim admitted that early in the shift she often felt as though she “hadn’t done enough” after sessions built around only a handful of fast efforts. That mindset will sound familiar to many swimmers raised in traditional high-volume systems.

The old logic says more metres equals more fitness.

The new sprint model asks a harder question: are those metres making you faster?

Lim also discovered that pushing at 100% every session was not sustainable. Repeated maximal stroke-rate work left her mentally and neurally drained. The lesson was blunt: not every fast session needs to be a war.

Sometimes 98% is better than 100.

That idea showed up clearly in her testing. In one suited 25m session, Lim found she was actually faster when swimming sub-maximally than when trying to force maximum effort. The cleaner swim produced the better result.

For a 50m freestyler, that difference matters. One tense stroke, one rushed breakout, one poorly timed breath can cost the race.

Lim has also rethought breathing. For much of her career, she raced the 50m freestyle with no breath. But after being encouraged to try one controlled breath, she broke 25 seconds for the first time. The point was not simply oxygen; it was reducing panic, preserving stroke rhythm, and holding the final 15 metres together.

“The last 15 and the last five are the most important part of the race,” she said.

Her current goal is to hold stroke rate above 60 strokes per minute all the way through the race. At her best, she has maintained that rhythm deep into the final metres. When she fades, the rate drops — and so does the race.

Mobility has been another major part of the rebuild. Lim has worked on improving her high-elbow catch, scapular control, body line and ability to transfer force from the gym into the water. She is not just trying to become stronger. She is trying to become stronger in positions that matter for sprint freestyle.

That distinction is everything.

“You can be very strong, but if you have no control over your strokes, you’re not strong at all,” she said.

The result has been a more athletic start, better connection into the catch and improved “first-15-metre performance” historically one of Lim’s weaker areas. At the SEA Games, video analysis showed she was no longer giving away early metres and chasing the field. She was in the race immediately.

That gave her confidence.

So did objective testing. Lim saw major improvements in gym strength and force-plate jump testing, including a jump height improvement of around 20 centimetres across one block. For an older elite swimmer balancing training, work and life stress, those data points mattered.

They were proof the work was moving in the right direction.

For Masters swimmers, Lim’s story is especially relevant. She is not advocating that everyone copies her program. In fact, her biggest message is the opposite: individualisation matters.

But the themes translate beautifully:

• more quality, less junk

• strength that transfers

• mobility with control

• honest timing and testing

• recovery as training

• enough confidence to stop doing what no longer works

Lim’s recovery non-negotiable is simple: sleep. Eight to ten hours is ideal for her, and she is direct about younger swimmers often underestimating it.

Her broader message is also bigger than one 50m freestyle.

She sees the current sprint movement — led in part by Cam McEvoy and coaches experimenting with power first models - as a new frontier. For women, especially, the model still needs refining. Female athletes may not respond exactly like male athletes and Lim is clear that she is still learning what works for her own body.

That openness is refreshing.

She is not presenting herself as someone who has solved sprinting. She is showing what it looks like to keep asking better questions.

For Masters swimmers, that may be the most important takeaway of all.

There is not one way to train. There is not one path to speed. And age does not automatically mean decline.

Sometimes getting faster means stepping away from old habits, trusting the data, lifting with intent, swimming with precision, and having the courage to do less — but do it better.

Originally featured on Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast