What stroke do you personally train the most?

Originally posted by knelson I don't personally swim events that last approximately ten seconds so this is completely irrelevant to me. The point of this analogy is NOT about how long your race is. It is about the DIFFERENCE between your race and your training. A sprint runner of 100 meters will probably run no more than 1000 meters at moderate pace to warm up just before the race. Keep in mind in swimming you are against more resistance than in running. Therefore the difference between your warmup and your race should be smaller. So if you race is 200 meters (swim), I can't imagine that you will need more than 400 meters to warmup. Plus, there is plenty of other things such as stretching to help you get loosened up. I guess you just have to ask yourself: what is the point of warming up? If the point of is to get yourself warm and loosend up, then wouldn't it be better to be able to achieve that goal in the shortest amount time possible and with the greatest amount of energy conservation possible? why would you want to waste your energy in warmup that you could have otherwise spend in the race? If you feel you are warm enough, then don't waste any more time and energy in warming up. On the other hand, if you just can't get loosened up and get yourself into the race mode unless you must go 30-40 minutes first, then I'd say go for it. To me, that just doens't sound like the most efficient way to use your energy. I personally don't need that much time. A few laps where I focus really hard on rotation and streamlining will get me there, but again my interest is no in long distance swims. Kirk, I think your profile says your speciality is distance free, so it makes sense that your warmup and training will be longer than average. In your case, your race is probably just as long as your warmup and training sets. But for people who are only going to swim 50-200m races, it is the pace of training not the volume of training that will improve your speed.

Originally posted by knelson I don't personally swim events that last approximately ten seconds so this is completely irrelevant to me. The point of this analogy is NOT about how long your race is. It is about the DIFFERENCE between your race and your training. A sprint runner of 100 meters will probably run no more than 1000 meters at moderate pace to warm up just before the race. Keep in mind in swimming you are against more resistance than in running. Therefore the difference between your warmup and your race should be smaller. So if you race is 200 meters (swim), I can't imagine that you will need more than 400 meters to warmup. Plus, there is plenty of other things such as stretching to help you get loosened up. I guess you just have to ask yourself: what is the point of warming up? If the point of is to get yourself warm and loosend up, then wouldn't it be better to be able to achieve that goal in the shortest amount time possible and with the greatest amount of energy conservation possible? why would you want to waste your energy in warmup that you could have otherwise spend in the race? If you feel you are warm enough, then don't waste any more time and energy in warming up. On the other hand, if you just can't get loosened up and get yourself into the race mode unless you must go 30-40 minutes first, then I'd say go for it. To me, that just doens't sound like the most efficient way to use your energy. I personally don't need that much time. A few laps where I focus really hard on rotation and streamlining will get me there, but again my interest is no in long distance swims. Kirk, I think your profile says your speciality is distance free, so it makes sense that your warmup and training will be longer than average. In your case, your race is probably just as long as your warmup and training sets. But for people who are only going to swim 50-200m races, it is the pace of training not the volume of training that will improve your speed.