I wonder if anyone can help me. Thank you in advance!
My goal is to improve my 400 meter freestyle. My time right now is 5:45. I am almost 44 years old.
Coming off six weeks of doing only long, slow swims (2-3 miles) at 125 HR or lower, I performed a 3000 meter freestyle at maximum in an effort to discover my lactate threshold. My time was 47:29.
Right afterwards my HR was 164, so I estimate it was probably around 170 during the actual swim. Average pace was as follows:
1:35 per 100
3:10 per 200
6:20 per 400
My first 400 was, to my surprise, a 6:02. So you can see I got slower later on.
Is this a reasonable approximation if my lactate threshold?
Should I start by training below this pace, say at 140 HR, then build to eventually holding 400 meter pace?
Thank you for any advice you care to give. God bless!
Well last weekend I swam the best 400 meters of my life. That isn’t saying much, but it was 5 seconds faster than last year. The only 400 pace work I have done since April, I did during warmup for this race. All my training has been very slow (HR 112-128) or moderate (HR 148-152 A personal best is nothing to scoff about. You’re saying prior to this meet you have not pushed beyond 152 bpm for a few months?:applaud:
Skeletal muscles undergo all kinds of adaptations from athletic training. One of the most important of these is increasing the number of mitochondria within each muscle cell. Mitochondria are the so-called "power houses" where oxygen and fuel are processed to fuel our swimming or other athletic pursuit.
Long hard distance training can help increase mitochondria, but researchers have recently learned that much shorter, extremely intense bursts of activity can accomplish the same thing.
Does this adaptation occur systematically, localized to working groups, or somewhat in between? What about buffering acidosis? For instance, if training on a treadmill a workout geared for lactate tolerance, would the buffering adaptation also be recognized for upper body muscle groups?
Perhaps I was a little overtrained going into this training cycle, but I am not sure. However, I do believe that this training is raising my lactate threshold, allowing me to swim faster, at a higher HR, without being forced to tap fully into the anaerobic system. In essence, more of my energy comes from the aerobic system than the anaerobic system. This cuts down on blood lactate and all the other things that slow you down.
It would probably be more illustrative to look at a swimmer much faster than me, lol. But hat is my theory for now as to what is happening.
A personal best is nothing to scoff about. You’re saying prior to this meet you have not pushed beyond 152 bpm for a few months?:applaud:
Does this adaptation occur systematically, localized to working groups, or somewhat in between? What about buffering acidosis? For instance, if training on a treadmill a workout geared for lactate tolerance, would the buffering adaptation also be recognized for upper body muscle groups?
Thank you very much Steve! That’s right, other than the 3000m for time to establish my lactate threshold, I have not gone above 150s HR in this training cycle. My theory is that I am training certain muscle fibers that are not as fully accessed by doing a set of 50s at 400m pace. Now that’s a great workout, but it may not provide everything you need.hank you very much Steve! That’s right, other than the 3000m for time to establish my lactate threshold, I have not gone above 150s HR in this training cycle. My theory is that I am training certain muscle fibers that are not as fully accessed by doing a set of 50s at 400m pace. Now that’s a great workout, but it may not provide everything you need all the time. During a race, as I understand it, we access different types of muscle fibers as we grow more tired. Thus the need to strengthen all of them from the slowest to the fastest.
The other thing I believe has happened is that I have raised my lactate threshold by training at slower paces, below my actual threshold. I could feel it at the end of the race. I never fell apart, and my last 100 was my fastest by six seconds.(Of course that means I should go out faster.)
Finally, I think swimming at very low heart rates (108 - 128 BPM) helps with mitochondria production, which provides more energy, and with capillarization, which enables more blood and nutrients to be pushed to the muscle.
These are qall only theories, love to hear anyone else’s thoughts. Sorry for the lengthy explanation, but perhaps this will give food for thought to others. God bless!
I see your theory: your anaerobic, lactate and fast twitch conditioning were already good to go, you just gave yourself an aerobic base a boost and allowed the former, possibly close to overtrained systems a needed rest?
