I found myself wondering the other day if anyone has ever tried "non-stop meet-simulated-style training"?
The idea would be to take your typical taper meet, say, a 3-4 day thing where you swim a couple events all out each day plus relays and warm up and cool down.
You do this, say, from Thursday to Sunday, then drive home.
On Monday, you repeat the exact same 3-4 day sequence, with the exact same excruciating effort interspersed with warm up and cool down.
This would bring you to Thursday or Friday (depending on whether you are on the 3-day or 4-day taper meet schedule.)
You begin the meet over again, no rest.
And so on throughout the entire next four months.
The benefits of such training would be:
* You are swimming only the events that really mean much too you, and you are practicing these events, over and over again, at full meet speed/effort
* The other swimming you are doing is warm up and cool down, where presumably you can throw in some drills and kicking, etc. if you want to.
* Fatiguing and difficult as this might prove to sustain, you will almost certainly derive the Nietzscheian strengthening promised to those who avoid being killed in the process.
The drawbacks of such training would be:
* Monotony
* Possible orthopedic catastrophe
* Inability to lollygag around in the hot tub and/or swimming desultory garbage yards for the next few months out of a sense of entitlement and putative need for rest.
* The lack of a nonswimming life.
One reason why I have been wondering about this approach to training is that I have been, in a modified way, living it out.
I went to the Albatross meet on March 17th, swimming the 100, 200, 400 SCM freestyles plus 2 x 50 SCM freestyles in relays
This past weekend, March 31-April 1, I swam our Y championships at Clarion U.--the 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, and 25 freestyles, and a 25 fly.
On April 10th, I go to Florida where I will try to stay even with Ryan Lochte for 3 or 4 feet of what will be a cool down for him, and all out sprint for me.
From April 13-15th, I will swim the 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50 freestyles and bunch of relays at Colony Zones.
Then, I will be swimming at Nationals April 27-29th.
Granted, these meet experiences include 11-12 days between the end of one and the start of the next (leaving out the Lochte thrashing), which is a lot more "recovery" than my proposed "non-stop meet-simulated-style training" allows.
But I am thinking that by the end of Nationals, I will have habituated my body a bit towards this new approach, at which point I will be able to begin whittling down the "regular swimming practice" interludes from 11-12 days down to, say, 5-7 days, then after a month, 2-3 days, then finally, all meet training, no days off, all the time.
Who's with me?
I found myself wondering the other day if anyone has ever tried "non-stop meet-simulated-style training"?
The idea would be to take your typical taper meet, say, a 3-4 day thing where you swim a couple events all out each day plus relays and warm up and cool down.
You do this, say, from Thursday to Sunday, then drive home.
On Monday, you repeat the exact same 3-4 day sequence, with the exact same excruciating effort interspersed with warm up and cool down.
This would bring you to Thursday or Friday (depending on whether you are on the 3-day or 4-day taper meet schedule.)
You begin the meet over again, no rest.
And so on throughout the entire next four months.
The benefits of such training would be:
* You are swimming only the events that really mean much too you, and you are practicing these events, over and over again, at full meet speed/effort
* The other swimming you are doing is warm up and cool down, where presumably you can throw in some drills and kicking, etc. if you want to.
* Fatiguing and difficult as this might prove to sustain, you will almost certainly derive the Nietzscheian strengthening promised to those who avoid being killed in the process.
The drawbacks of such training would be:
* Monotony
* Possible orthopedic catastrophe
* Inability to lollygag around in the hot tub and/or swimming desultory garbage yards for the next few months out of a sense of entitlement and putative need for rest.
* The lack of a nonswimming life.
One reason why I have been wondering about this approach to training is that I have been, in a modified way, living it out.
I went to the Albatross meet on March 17th, swimming the 100, 200, 400 SCM freestyles plus 2 x 50 SCM freestyles in relays
This past weekend, March 31-April 1, I swam our Y championships at Clarion U.--the 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50, and 25 freestyles, and a 25 fly.
On April 10th, I go to Florida where I will try to stay even with Ryan Lochte for 3 or 4 feet of what will be a cool down for him, and all out sprint for me.
From April 13-15th, I will swim the 1000, 500, 200, 100, 50 freestyles and bunch of relays at Colony Zones.
Then, I will be swimming at Nationals April 27-29th.
Granted, these meet experiences include 11-12 days between the end of one and the start of the next (leaving out the Lochte thrashing), which is a lot more "recovery" than my proposed "non-stop meet-simulated-style training" allows.
But I am thinking that by the end of Nationals, I will have habituated my body a bit towards this new approach, at which point I will be able to begin whittling down the "regular swimming practice" interludes from 11-12 days down to, say, 5-7 days, then after a month, 2-3 days, then finally, all meet training, no days off, all the time.
Who's with me?
