How do I train 400 IM without losing sprint speed?

How do I train 400 IM without losing sprint speed? Recently, you attempted an easy 400 IM in workout to see if you could swim a 100 fly without pausing at the walls. you went 7:24 you did a 400 Im in a meet & went 7:16 you swim 6x per wk & 3 to 3.8k per practice Train with a team & coach as often as you can don't train in that HOT pool If you only trained for the 400 IM, you wouldn't lose speed. Your BR would be fine. Bump up your daily yardage to 4, 4.5 or even 5k per practice. but do some speed training in every practice. Train for the 200 & 400 free plus Br & IM follow my tips in the Last 150 of my 500 falls off Train Free: 3 or 4 x/wk Train BR/IM 2 or 3 x/wk, but kick 400 BR in every practice. but not 400 straight, do 8 x 50 or 16 x 25 Train for longer stuff until you are 1.5 to 2 weeks away from your big meet then switch to sprints. Get a tech suit for big meet and you will BE AMAZED at your time improvements. Consider my 400 IM race strategy as described in my Thu Jul 21st, 2011 blog Ande's 400 IM Race Strategy FL fast start, a few small easy SDKs, cruise it, breathe every stroke, barely kick, do small amplitude kicks with less effort, think about keeping your body flat, smooth & easy speed, not many SDKs off your turn, SAVE your legs, FEEL like you could go much faster BK cruise it, easy speed, small steady kick, great technique & body position, pick up the pace on your 2nd 50, not many SDKs, take extra breaths as you approach your BK to Br turn, you want to feel fairly decent at the 200 FAST BK to BR turn Flip it push off hard and glide FAR BR fast hands on your insweep and thrust, kick HARD and glide far after each kick Great DPS, go fast don't spin, Ride the Glide after each kick, Br is where you catch and pass people who went out too hard. FR bring it home strong, give it all you got, Breathe every stroke except from the flags in on your 2nd 50, 6 beat kick the WHOLE 100

Worst idea ever for sprinters. I would suggest the reverse if you're going to do both (ugh) in the same workout. Sprint first; otherwise, you'll be too tired for real AFAP work. Your AFAP after doing a distance set might not be as fast as your AFAP when you're fresh, but does it matter? You're still going as fast as you can at the time. I know as a sprinter you want to swim at race pace a lot, but I don't know if going a few % slower is going to adversely affect your sprinting. If you want to swim sprints AND the 400 IM there's got to be a compromise somewhere.

Your AFAP after doing a distance set might not be as fast as your AFAP when you're fresh, but does it matter? You're still going as fast as you can at the time. I know as a sprinter you want to swim at race pace a lot, but I don't know if going a few % slower is going to adversely affect your sprinting. If you want to swim sprints AND the 400 IM there's got to be a compromise somewhere. Yes, it does matter and will effect your sprinting IMO. Sprinting is neural and you have to do it in an unfatigued state. "As fast as you can go at that time" is death for sprinting unless you're doing a lactate set. You need to get your body accustomed to going at real race pace (or above with fins). If you're fatigued, you're not training the ATP-CP energy system. I used to train as you suggest years ago. I'm much faster now training exclusively HIT. I agree, though, that a compromise is necessary if the 400 IM is important to Elaine. It depends how important and whether she's willing to compromise her other events. If she's willing to compromise, then what you suggest makes more good sense. But I don't agree with Ande that you can train for the 400 IM without compromising speed. And sprinters cannot expect to excel in sprints by switching to sprints right during taper. (where's the bang the head against the wall icon?)

distance, which is the most pure form of swimming. Apparently we are all, evolutionally speaking, endurance athletes by nature. www.slate.com/.../long_distance_running_and_evolution_why_humans_can_outrun_horses_but_can_t_jump_higher_than_cats_.html I also think that it is fairly hard to be really good at both sprinting and distance. I don't know many 50 swimmers who are also great d swimmers, and vice versa. It is true that it is almost impossible to simultaneously optimize both endurance and speed, but you can get pretty good at both. Witness Sun Yang's blazing last 50 in his 1500 WR effort. But the 400 IM, especially short course, is not a true distance effort in the same sense as the mile (or the longer OW swims). Middle-distance training that emphasizes both aerobic and speed training can get you pretty good at both. And there is one indisputable truth in masters swimming: there are far fewer people willing to do the 400 IM than any 50. Willingness to swim it, much less train for it, puts you in rarified territory! Worst idea ever for sprinters. I would suggest the reverse if you're going to do both (ugh) in the same workout. Sprint first; otherwise, you'll be too tired for real AFAP work. Allen may have the best idea. Work on 400 IM technique and longer slower swimming on your aerobic/recovery days from HIT. You definitely can't do HIT 6x a week. 6x is already a lot of swimming. And if you already tend toward injury, combining HIT and HV could be tricky. I think Kirk was simply saying that you don't have to designate every day as a pure aerobic or pure anaerobic day, that you can do both on the same day. I do it all the time. I agree with you that you shouldn't always do the same thing first, because whatever you do second will suffer a little bit. One day you can do speedwork first, the next you can do distance first. I think sprint training is as much neurological as physical, too. Just doing AFAP work while keeping your technique together helps. It is okay if you are a LITTLE tired going into it, but you can't be so tired that you don't truly hit the high intensities. (It works the other way too: if you are tired from AFAP efforts, it is harder to do aerobic swims at a decent pace.) Many here seem to be classifing training days or sets as either wholly aerobic or completely speed-focused. You can have sets that are a mix of the two, not to mention lactate-tolerance sets. If you do (say) a 2000-yd set of any kind with a modest amount of rest (say, a 2:1 or 3:1 swim:rest ratio) you'll get a mix of aerobic and anaerobic training as long as you work the swims pretty hard. Since the 400IM itself is neither fully aerobic or anaerobic, it isn't a bad thing to do. Another piece of advice: work on fly technique do that your efficiency is good enough that you can do a decent 100 fly with a minimum of effort. If you have to work too hard on that first 100, the last 150 yards of the 400 IM is never very fun.

Your AFAP after doing a distance set might not be as fast as your AFAP when you're fresh, but does it matter? You're still going as fast as you can at the time. The danger is if you get locked into a distance mentality and cannot break out of it to hit those higher intensities. I see it all the time in the age-group workouts, they switch to "survival mode" to make the (very hard) intervals, and then when they are given a little extra rest they really don't go much faster. And it's a vicious cycle, the coaches then reason "well, they aren't really going faster when I give them more rest, so why should I give it to them?" I don't agree with Fortress that all (non-lactate) sprint training must be unfatigued to be useful. But I agree with her that there is a problem in always putting speed work at the end of practice. Sometimes it needs to be the focus set of the day. (Kicking sets too, for that matter; they are usually given the status of "recovery sets" instead of being important in their own right.)

I used to train as you suggest years ago. I'm much faster now training exclusively HIT. Sounds good to me. I'm certainly not going to weigh in on how to best train for sprinting. Not really my bailiwick! :)

Many here seem to be classifying training days or sets as either wholly aerobic or completely speed-focused. Really? I thought most masters workouts featured a combo of both. And of course you can do both in a single workout. It works well for many, and you can probably do a range of events that way. But if the vast majority of your events are 100 & 't think this is the best way to train. Specialists, either sprint or distance, thrive with workouts geared to their particular focus. I didn't mean that literally all sprinting has to be in a completely unfatigued state. Sprint conditioning is important as well. But it's extremely important to do work on explosive speed when you're not tired from other sets. This is easier to accomplish on dedicated speed days.

Elaine, Congrats on looking to expand your swimming repertoire. :applaud: I did the same this year, starting with a 400im on practice with the same goal of surviving it. :D I did it again, once a month or so, altering strategies on the different strokes and distances within the swim. You'll learn when and where you can push, and where to hold back as you gain more confidence through swimming it. :bump: I'm not an expert, but my breaststroke has improved as I work to better the im (and dropped over 40 seconds from that first try in three months time). :banana: We'll be here for you as you rock it out! :cheerleader:

The danger is if you get locked into a distance mentality and cannot break out of it to hit those higher intensities. I really like this statement and it is very true. The hardest thing to do is get a group of adult swimmers to do true sprint sets because they feel time is money and sitting on the wall recovering or even recovery swimming is a waste, especially at early A.M swims. It is much easier to give the group a long set than a sprint set when at the end half of them want to know the yardage, which is why I also refuse to put yardage on workouts. I am a big believer in descending intervals and strong effort at the end of workouts and know this pays off big in the 500+. If we are going distance, they know to expect the end-of-set carnage.

Of course for a sprinter, the mental fortitude to expend effort when tired is a foreign concept. :duel: One summer the club I was with had us do some HIT at the end of almost every workout. At the end of that season, my 400 time held up OK (comparable to my 500 that year). My 1500 sucked, but my 100 LCM dropped from 59.3 to 55.8. This only proves that you mid-D types benefit from some quality work. Conversely, sprinters will not benefit from heavy aerobic work thrown into their practices. And HIT is not what you do at the end of practice; it's a method of training. Sprinters do tend to the diva side. But unless it's a lactate set, what is the value to us in consistently "expending effort when tired"? So we can thump our chest and say we're tough? I'd rather be fast. Besides, as Geek noted above, sprint workouts can be exhausting and difficult. And you should not underestimate the amount of mental focus that is required to really bring it on all out efforts. Much easier to revert to Il Garbagio and let the mind wander. :)