Do distance swimmers spend less time w/kicking workouts

Michelle, you've summed up masters swimming very well to me. Training principles designed for and tested on elite and aspiring elite swimmers are interesting but don't equally apply to us. I've been told, for example, that we shoudl be doing 30% of our work on kick. Whether you agree with that number or not, if you're training 4 hours + per day, then you can afford to to everything that might help your performance (as long as you get the rest and nutrition part right too). If you train for 3 hours a week, spending chunks of time on kick means spending less on something else so we need to make our own judgements about the relative value of all possible choices.

Michelle, you've summed up masters swimming very well to me. Training principles designed for and tested on elite and aspiring elite swimmers are interesting but don't equally apply to us. I've been told, for example, that we shoudl be doing 30% of our work on kick. Whether you agree with that number or not, if you're training 4 hours + per day, then you can afford to to everything that might help your performance (as long as you get the rest and nutrition part right too). If you train for 3 hours a week, spending chunks of time on kick means spending less on something else so we need to make our own judgements about the relative value of all possible choices.