In my most recent blog entry, "One Man's Garbage..." forums.usms.org/blog.php , I asked my fellow swimmers their respective opinions on the impact long, slow, continuous swimming has on meet performance.
The expression "garbage yards" (and the pejorative overtones such a phrase conjurs) has become so embedded in the forum lexicon that many, I suspect, now consider as indisputable truth swimming this way is a waste of time for anyone with competitive ambitions.
Such a view appears particularly well-entrenched among the many non-credentialed exercise physiology pontificators here on the forums who also have a fondness for sprinting and dry land exercise.
But is the concept of garbage yards truly valid--or a kind of urban legend made up largely by sprinters who would rather be doing something other than spending 90 minutes without stopping in the pool?
I don't mean only practicing this way. But if you are, like me, inclined to enjoy swimming, once or twice a week, long, slow, relatively relaxing, continuous yards, do you believe (and more importantly, perhaps, have any evidence to bolster said belief) that so-called "garbage yards" can have some value for actual racing?
Or do these only teach your body to swim slow?
I invite you to read my recent blog forums.usms.org/blog.php and post your thoughts advice there or here.
At the risk of provoking censure by the forum authorities, I furthermore ask you to leave all civility by the wayside.
Feel free to trash talk and smack upside the head of any and every one who disagrees with your personal bias here!
It's been way too long since these forums have had a good, old-fashioned range war of opinions run amuk and ad hominem attacks!
Go at each other tooth and claw. It will only stir the blood of us all, I say--something we garbage yard enthusiasts probably need a bit more of, I will admit.
Usain's fast twitch muscles twitch magnificently, like a jaguar who has spotted a tapir.
Your muscle-like fat tissues simply twitch, like a tapir aware he has been spotted by a jaguar.
I think you may have just insulted tapirs!
Most scientific measures (max heart rate, blood lactate, etc.) would show that the 1:31 – 1:33 athlete is working significantly harder than your, say 2:00 200 swimmer. As for the less scientific measures (flopping and gasping on the deck like a landed carp) I’d probably give the nod to some of our more colorful Masters Swimmers.
Note –for most of us, getting our max heart rate in a race in the 190-210 range or a blood lactate level of 10-13 mmol/L would put us in the boneyard not just closer.
Rob, with all due respect to the Presidential Office that you hold, I must say you are incorrect here, sir!
Imagine, for the sake of explication, two athletes: Usain Boldt and a somewhat hypothetical version of yourself.
Imagine, moreover, that the demands of the USMS presidency have forced you to remain at your desk, toiling day after day, albeit in a sedentary fashion, to the point where your feet, well, atrophy altogether, along with what ever slight musculature has not entirely metamorphosed into adipose tissue in your lower extremities.
The two of you are summoned to a track, where Usain laces up his running shoes and does a bit of warm up. You, having made your way to the same track by the assistance of a Rascal mobility scooter, place some sort of rubberized booties over your leg stumps and attempt to stand upright.
The starter says, "Gentleman, take your marks."
Usain assumes the position, and you assume something that is a bit more idiosyncratic and too difficult to describe in words. But you assume it nevertheless.
The starter says, "Get set!"
Usain's fast twitch muscles twitch magnificently, like a jaguar who has spotted a tapir.
Your muscle-like fat tissues simply twitch, like a tapir aware he has been spotted by a jaguar.
The starter raises his gun and pulls the trigger. "Bang!" goes the blank round.
Approximately 9.58 seconds later, Usain crosses the finish line designating 100 meters splendidly run.
Sometime the following day, you cross the same finish line, your rubberized booties worn down, blood leaking so profusely that one of the major impediments to your finishing the race is that you keep slipping and falling down because of your own fluids.
I ask you: who has worked harder here--Usain in his 9.58 seconds of blazing glory, or this hypothetical version of yourself, in your 17 hours, 52 minutes, 12.22 seconds of extended Bataan-Death-March True Grit?
I think the answer is obvious. Our USMS president, hypotheticalized, in such a scenario is a much, much harder working athlete than the world record holder.
If you agree with my reasoning here, and frankly, it brooks no disagreement outside of the clinically brain dead or needlessly argumentative self-delusional type individual, neither of which I know you are not, sir!--if you agree, and of course you will, how much of a leap is it to suggest I swim much, much harder in the 200 than my lean and physiologically lucky whipper-snapper betters?
Q.E.D.
Rob, with all due respect to the Presidential Office that you hold, I must say you are incorrect here, sir!
Imagine, for the sake of explication, two athletes: Usain Boldt and a somewhat hypothetical version of yourself.
So who "works" harder, a masters or young stud swimmer? Interesting question. Rather than try to compare myself with some current elite athlete, maybe I can brave the waters of unreliable memory and compare myself as I am now to myself at 20. I was significantly faster then and tired much less quickly.
I have heard or read somewhere that there are two physiological changes with age that no amount of exercise or training will halt: decrease in max HR and decrease in lung capacity.
The HR I can (as much as my aging memory banks allow) attest to: I seem to remember hitting the 200+ bpm range routinely in practice in college and HS, and there is no way I can touch that now.
In races, I feel like when I was younger I had a 5th gear that I no longer possess; in fact, I'm not sure if I even have a 4th gear. By that I mean that my times in practice are now closer to my race times than I remember being the case when younger.
I don't think I work harder in practice now than I did. But -- much like a new car -- I could really rev the engine up when younger and push myself to limits that I simply cannot match right now.
So maybe that means I was working harder in races then. But races nowadays are definitely not less painful now than they were.
I guess the basic question that is emerging at this point is this: if you do, say, 1 or--at the most--2 pure slow distance swims per week, but you do this against a background of other practices of reasonably high and challenging quality, will the garbage yards help at all? Or would you be better off just resting those days?
My $0.02: I believe high quality/intensity sets help aerobic endurance -- and can also help add a valuable "kick" to finish a race -- but I don't think they are sufficient training for the distance swimmer. I think some long aerobic swims, and some long/low-rest sets that are right up against the lactate threshold, are important too.
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I guess the basic question that is emerging at this point is this: if you do, say, 1 or--at the most--2 pure slow distance swims per week, but you do this against a background of other practices of reasonably high and challenging quality, will the garbage yards help at all? Or would you be better off just resting those days?
I suppose time will tell. As of now, I am betting they will help me. But who knows?
I do feel I am creeping slowly but surely in a positive endurance direction. On the other hand, a tweaked shoulder and general feeling of being run down argues that maybe I am deluding myself.
More as the data filters in...
I think everyone has their own definition of what garbage yardage is. Mine is that it is yardage only for the sake of yardage AND at the expense of technique AND without regard to a prudent recovery element. That said, if one doesn't care about form, recovery, and the main goal is to get in x amount of yardage per day over x period of time, then that is a fine goal, albeit not mine! There is no requirement that there be any improvement in technique, form, or speed in masters. I can completely see the point in making a yardage goal, in itself, the only goal. Perhaps one day I will attempt to swim 100 days in a row or an endurance swim and at that point, I wouldn't be paying attention to my form or having a cohernent thought anyway by the end of that race! And for me to make it to 100 days in a row, maybe not for you or another other forum reader, but for ME to make it there, i'll be slopping my body up and down the pool with whatever body parts are still working to just wheeze in to my 100th day.
But back to your original (rhetorical? were you expected an answer? well, here's mine, anyway) question - it is not whether the "garbage" yardage will help or not, but whether I want to go to the club and take a shower. I might as well get something in while i'm there. In fact, today I did about 500, nothing hard and random stops along the way. I think it was helpful - not only did I get squeeky clean with awesome water pressure shower and free toilettries and hot towels that I don't have to launder, but I also relieved the stresses of stupid idiots doing stupid things in my bankruptcy cases!
I'm a little late to the party on joining this discussion, but I've just had some recent conversations along these lines that crystallized my thoughts on this.
My constant battle in practices is to be able to push myself far enough into the "discomfort" zone. It takes physical energy and emotional energy. It's much easier to do something that pushes me a little, but doesn't take intense concentration. This can be a long slow/med swim, or it can be 100's on 1:40 at 20% to 25% slower than my fastest. On the surface it looks like I'm working, but the real work is how hard I have to dig, and how much discomfort I have to push through. Unfortunately the rest of my life (work, children, etc.) often requires that energy so I settle for leaving a little in the tank and not pushing to a highly uncomfortable stage of swimming. When I do have the luxury of pushing that hard (and most likely napping a couple of hours after the workout), and can summon the focus.....well, that is when I have seen my biggest gains in my times.
I push about as hard in every race I do. The difference in my race times is more often about how hard I worked on the preparation in practice (I keep meticulous records of every single practice I do). A set of 3 100's on 1:30 at 10% slower than my fastest takes concentration and putting up with a lot of discomfort (I'm 55... Make the interval shorter for you younger folks). When I can do this regularly, as part of a serious and well-structured sequence of workouts, my times drop. Or it might be a long swim(for me 500 to 1000) at 5% to 8% slower than my best, where I am in a high state of discomfort toward the end, again as a part of a well-structured sequence of workouts. When I can only do the regular serious workout without pushing into that zone of high discomfort,my times stay the same or even slide back a bit.
So I think there are all kinds of "garbage yards". The hardest thing for me to do is to have enough focus and drive to push into that high discomfort zone in practice. It's easy to do it in a meet, since it is episodic. But for me the gains come from going there as part of my workout regimen. When I need to shock myself out of complacency I go to a lot of meets to remind myself what that discomfort feels like. It's hard to do, and I can't always do it. So I guess for me the focus is not on what "garbage yards" are, but how to get their opposite in my workouts --- pushing to high levels of discomfort. (Note that I never used the word pain --- for me pain is a signal something is starting to go wrong, but serious discomfort is where my gains are made.)
My 2¥ worth!
Back on topic: gotta throw the sprinters a bone.
www.drmirkin.com/.../ezine112909.html
"You cannot gain maximum endurance just with continuous exercise...All competitive athletes should do some sort of 30-second interval ...A sound endurance program should include a lot of slow miles, one or two workouts with many short intervals, and probably at least one workout that includes a few long intervals each week."
...A sound endurance program should include a lot of slow miles, one or two workouts with many short intervals, and probably at least one workout that includes a few long intervals each week."
Did my coach write that? :)
