I'm absolutely amazed at the amount of misinformation on swimming, especially on the internet. One website I saw instructing the specifics of the backstroke advocated a completely illegal turn.
A bodybuilder site said that depleting your stores of Glycogen by starving your body of it actually helped the body move faster. I'm not buying that. You can't swim without it.
Other sites like USA Swimming, have a lot of kids with a lot of questions who for some reason don't ask their coaches or parents. Lots of ear infection questions - which are fairly preventable by wearing a swim cap.
Early on in my learning I suffered a severe injury by practicing a drill recommended by one of the so-called experts in swimming technique, who shall remain nameless. That's led me to pay closer attention to sports medicine specialists and surgeons who swim.
Everybody's body is different and has specific limitations. For example, the Neer Test for your shoulders. The entire approach to pitch, catch, pull, etc... is highly individual. I trust top athletic coaches and top swimmers and doctors.
One site on backstroke listed something very technical which actually made sense and works wonders but after running a search a dozen ways through Google I found no one knew of it or spoke of it other than that 1 site!
Who do you trust? What are your thoughts on this?
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Originally posted by gull80
There are two different arguments here. I don't think anyone questions the value of TI-like drills for the novice swimmer who needs to develop technique. The more interesting argument concerns the competitive Masters swimmer who has a limited amount of time to train. Granted, swimmers at even the elite level work on technique, but what proportion of their workout is comprised of drills? And why are the words "mindless" and "yardage" always linked on this forum? A set of 10x100s @ En2 or En3 pace has a purpose.
My coach suggests, you can always drill when I call for an easy or moderate pace. Drill on warmups and warmdowns. Really, you can incorporate various drills any time youl're not doing 70%+ effort sets. He handed us a pamphlet with 101 kicking drills and said, get familiar with them, any time I call for 200 kick (or similar) I expect you will be incorporating some sort of a drill into it (unless I call for something specific). Each swimmer after a while learns what little things they need to work on, and can pick a drill that targets development in that area.
For example, I love to warm down with a nice elongating catchup, fingertip drag or a salute drill.
On a warmup I start with elongating drills, then go into some more difficult technique drills, while I have the energy. One armed fly and various undulation drills get my rhythm going.
Also, throughout the week, our workouts are structured to have emphasis on different things, day one may be some emphasis on kicking, day 2 technique, day three aerobic conditioning etc....
You don't do the same target workout every day.
It;s really hard to quantify in a single number answer how much drilling to do vs other things. In a well rounded training program it varies on daily basis.
If one has limited time, then they do less of everything, rather than emphasize one thing at the cost of something else.
One really can't take something as complex as swimming and try to boil it down to one magic formula of what to do.
Originally posted by gull80
There are two different arguments here. I don't think anyone questions the value of TI-like drills for the novice swimmer who needs to develop technique. The more interesting argument concerns the competitive Masters swimmer who has a limited amount of time to train. Granted, swimmers at even the elite level work on technique, but what proportion of their workout is comprised of drills? And why are the words "mindless" and "yardage" always linked on this forum? A set of 10x100s @ En2 or En3 pace has a purpose.
My coach suggests, you can always drill when I call for an easy or moderate pace. Drill on warmups and warmdowns. Really, you can incorporate various drills any time youl're not doing 70%+ effort sets. He handed us a pamphlet with 101 kicking drills and said, get familiar with them, any time I call for 200 kick (or similar) I expect you will be incorporating some sort of a drill into it (unless I call for something specific). Each swimmer after a while learns what little things they need to work on, and can pick a drill that targets development in that area.
For example, I love to warm down with a nice elongating catchup, fingertip drag or a salute drill.
On a warmup I start with elongating drills, then go into some more difficult technique drills, while I have the energy. One armed fly and various undulation drills get my rhythm going.
Also, throughout the week, our workouts are structured to have emphasis on different things, day one may be some emphasis on kicking, day 2 technique, day three aerobic conditioning etc....
You don't do the same target workout every day.
It;s really hard to quantify in a single number answer how much drilling to do vs other things. In a well rounded training program it varies on daily basis.
If one has limited time, then they do less of everything, rather than emphasize one thing at the cost of something else.
One really can't take something as complex as swimming and try to boil it down to one magic formula of what to do.
