There was some confusion over the previous poll "What is your favorite stroke?", as the word "favorite" can be interpreted many different ways. For example, someone may think it's his/her favorite because it's most graceful and likes to watch this stroke the most, but he/she may not necessarily swim this stroke.
So this is the new poll.
Please only select the stroke you PERSONALLY train and spend most time swimming (and thinking about).
Former Member
Originally posted by swiminton
I posed my question because others suggested that one should do 1200 and sometimes over 2000 just for warmup, at a meet or a workout.
Is that the right way to warmup?
I don't know and I know a lot of people have been doing it that way for years. However, I am not convinced simply because it doens't sound very energy efficient.
I think a lot of people let their yardage determine whether they have done enough warmup. Why don't you let your body tell you when you are ready? As soon as you feel you are ready, begin real training.
I suspect that many people go beyond what is necessary for warmup. That takes away their energy for doing more intense sets during a workout, or better time during a race.
If you had spent 10 minutes instead of 20 warming up at a moderate pace, you could have done 5 more intense sets later on.
Our warmup sometimes also consists of nearly 1800m and we ARE a sprinters group. Sure this is much and we don't do such a warm up every work out but we at least spent some 15 minutes on warm up. If you focus on already going fast in warm-up in relativity to your training pace you won't get in too much yardage but still getting your body ready to tackle even faster paces. And I don't think that we would be much faster if we cut off some warm up and added this to our main set.
In warmup the longest "leg" we swim straight are 300m at the beginning, the rest is made up of 25, 50 and some 100's focusing on perfect form and even already pushing ourselves with some kind of "fartlek" games. So we have a really fast warm up and don't spent "Much miles on 10k pace" ;) Because warm up doesn't necessarily mean that you will swim it straigt and slow.
And this kind of warmup gives me a really good feedback of what I am able to do in the main set and what not. If I don't feel too energized after the warmup, I know that today I won't become a world class swimmer and can therefor modify my workout and don't have to give up during the main set.
Nevertheless it IS important to focus on quality rather than quantity first, there you are right, but usually you have the best opportunities to focus on quality of your swimming in warm up and cool down. I personaly think that cutting off the warm up and adding it to the main set to do "more sprints" is a bit focusing on quanity (in this case of intensity) rather then on the quality. In the end you will more from a better technique than from high volume intensity training. Remember that too much intensity can even be bad for you and slow you down.
Brgds
Matthias
A guy I've never seen before was at the pool the other day and he must have been an IMer. The entire hour he sprinted and did equal sets of each stroke. Wonderful to watch.
Originally posted by swiminton
No offense to anyone, but just because you have the longer swim history doesn't automatically make you a better faster swimmer. If that were the case, you would never see this many 15-year-old world class swimmers.
Very very true. Like I always say, you take and use whatever advice works for you. What works for one person will not automatically work for another.
- Shorter swimmer
Originally posted by Jeff Commings
Even non-freestylers will tell you they do mostly freestyle. It's the stroke you do the most in warmup, it's the stroke most used in cooldowns, and the stroke most used on off-stroke days.
As a back swimmer, most of my time is spent on my back or on techniques relating to back. Very little of my time is devoted to freestyle. Many pro coaches recommend variety and I don't disagree.
Originally posted by swiminton
So, thank you and good luck with your ego.
Whatever.
OK, so to clear the air here, here's my position on warmups. During traning distance swimmers and sprinters typically do somewhere around 2000 yards or meters of warmup. A variety of distances, strokes, and equipment is used. There may be some differences in how things are divided up between sprinters and distance swimmers, but not huge. At meets most swimmers warmup between 20 and 40 minutes. In this case sprinters will want to get in some speed work so they get the feel for swimming fast prior to their events. Distance swimmers will want to do some pace work so they get the feel for the speed they need to maintain in their events.
This is just what I've observed over many years. I'm sure there are variations on this, but I think this is fairly typical.
I'm in no way trying to brag about how many yards I swim. That would be pretty ridiculous because there are people out there swimming many, many times the distances I do. I'm only saying what is typical for competitive swimmers. Your original statement that 100 yards or so should be a sufficient warmup is what I objected to.
Originally posted by swiminton
nice attitude. my point exactly. ;)
How about you reread my post. Also go back and reread all your posts. You're as guilty of stirring the pot as anyone else in this thread.
Originally posted by knelson
This is a ridiculous and offensive statment. What makes you think we don't know how sprinters train? It's not like we're cloistered off in some separate pool where only distance swimmers are allowed.
For some reason it seems like you think that a 2000 yard warmup means a straight 2000 at a slow pace, and this isn't what any of us (or at least me) is advocating. As both Matthias and the workouts I linked from Bob Bowman suggest warmups can and do include some longer swimming, shorter swimming including limited amounts of faster swimming, pulling, kicking, etc.
I'll also point out that the section of Breakthrough Swimming you reference is discussing warmup before a meet, not necessarily in a training session. Also, Colwin does advocate a 20-45 minute warmup which would be around 1300-3000 yards for a typical swimmer. You poo-pooed the notion of doing 20 minutes of warmup earlier in the thread, now all of a sudden you're quoting Colwin who suggests 20 minutes as a minimum!
This is because when I pointed out that warmup for sprinters must be somewhat different from warmup for distance swimmers, you explicitly said sprinters and distance swimmers warmup the same way. Never in any place previously (until NOW we are talking about sets) did you mention that the warm up should be done in sets and sprinters do shorter sets even in warmup. You insisted that although sprinters do shorter sets in real training, they warmup the same way as distance swimmers. Now we know that is not true.
In any case, I have had enough with this discussion. If you had truly wanted to be helpful and if you had truly been knowledgeble about how sprinters warmup, you would have pointed out how it's done the moment the question was raised. But all you did was bragging about how many yards you can swim and getting pissed when others suggested it is POSSIBLE (just POSSIBLE) that you could be wrong about sprint warmup.
The good thing is, if you hadn't been so busy asserting that you are right and any different opinions are wrong, I probably wouldn't have been motivated to look things up. Others that had given useful information in this discussion might not have felt motivated to respond. So, thank you and good luck with your ego.
Let's not forget about the return to civility thread.
Anyhow, if one person chooses to swim a 3000 yard workout and call 1200 of it warmup and another person swims the same distance but calls 500 of it a warmup, what is the difference between the two workouts? Most likely nothing aside from the identification of the yardage.
Originally posted by PeirsolFan
In various interviews with Olympic swimmers, the average is around 10 thousand a day. Their schedules often include: a double session (morning and late afternoons) 6 days a week with 3 days of weight and cardio and 1 recovery day.
Suddenly I feel very old...
That's probably about right. Some elite swimmers will swim significantly more yardage than that. I think the six hours a day would include any dryland or weights. I can't imagine more than five hours a day actually in the water.
Of course college athletes are limited to twenty hours of training per week by the NCAA. This seems like quite a bit until you compare it to the numbers you quoted! For this reason some college swimmers will choose to red shirt the season preceding the Olympics.
