I want to say thank you to the USMS forum for allowing me to read all of the nice information about swimming. It has taught me a great deal more swimming then I had anticipated.
I have a few questions that I have read from past threads that deal with recovery after successive workouts over a extended period of time.
Over the past three and half months I have accumulated many yards and only missed 6 days during that time frame. My recovery days are normally Thursday and Sunday where I do low key swimming and no hard stuff. I sprint 50's, 100's, and 200's once a week to try and improve my endurance speed level.
My question is that should I take a recovery week or two to work on stroke technique and just swim easy during this time. I know that when I was younger I had about 1-2 months off from age group swimming per year normally after the Fall/Winter and Summer seasons. Should I be worried about burnout if I continue swimming 7 days a week? Or should I separate my training into periods during the year? I swim alone like some people on this forum and read about one person who had swam for almost a year 6 times a week and was almost burned out.
Thank You for your time and expertise in this area.
Parents
Former Member
You can gauge over training by your times in practice. If you are getting slower on similar sets, you are over training. Taking your pulse first thing in the morning can also be used as a gauge if sets are repeated rarely.
Burnout is a psychological question and seems to be a rare problem with masters. Real life gets in the way of training enough to keep burnout at bay.
I don't know how many Masters swimmers there are but you are correct and may only apply to only a small percentage of swimmers in Masters. If you look at the Go The Distance Program, there are more than 50 people over the 350 mile mark as of today. I don't understand how they can keep going with out some form of extended break. Do all of these people swim slow sets in practice or do any of them do interval training? I think interval training would lead to burnout first before swimming more than 500 miles slowly over the course of 6 months.
You can gauge over training by your times in practice. If you are getting slower on similar sets, you are over training. Taking your pulse first thing in the morning can also be used as a gauge if sets are repeated rarely.
Burnout is a psychological question and seems to be a rare problem with masters. Real life gets in the way of training enough to keep burnout at bay.
I don't know how many Masters swimmers there are but you are correct and may only apply to only a small percentage of swimmers in Masters. If you look at the Go The Distance Program, there are more than 50 people over the 350 mile mark as of today. I don't understand how they can keep going with out some form of extended break. Do all of these people swim slow sets in practice or do any of them do interval training? I think interval training would lead to burnout first before swimming more than 500 miles slowly over the course of 6 months.
