Race Club Article

Sam, I'm down with you on this one. I don't endorse everything Gary does or says, but he is a terrific and constructive provocateur. Towards the end of his article, he made an observation that really turned my assumptions on their side and got me thinking: "I'm not railing against being in shape or working hard, a positive side effect from distance swimming. I do a lot of aerobic work. I just don't do it in the pool. Define aerobic work. Is it keeping your heart rate up near 200 for over twenty minutes? We do exercise that maintains a heart rate between 150 and 200 for a lot longer than that. "It takes a lot of laps to accomplish aerobic threshold if you only seek aerobic threshold through swimming. If you don't go insane first from all those laps then your shoulder will explode eventually. All those laps hurt your stroke technique, which is absolutely necessary in the 50 free. Your heart is too busy pounding away to know what exercise is making it work so hard. And it doesn't matter! You accomplish the same objective and save yourself from burnout and shoulder surgery. At the end of the season in those last 15 meters of the 100 free you'll have the finish your coach is looking for." WOW! I'm aware of some of the new thinking on dry land exercises; however, my understanding is that they target muscle strength, and not aerobic capacity. I know in my college program (a very modest Div III program 25 years or so ago), we experimented with group runs as supplementary training. However, we abandoned this experiment when it appear that developing the leg muscles for running was antagonistic to developing a strong kick. I would be interested in knowing what dry land, aerobic regime they are using. They certainly produced results in 2004. Matt

Sam, I'm down with you on this one. I don't endorse everything Gary does or says, but he is a terrific and constructive provocateur. Towards the end of his article, he made an observation that really turned my assumptions on their side and got me thinking: "I'm not railing against being in shape or working hard, a positive side effect from distance swimming. I do a lot of aerobic work. I just don't do it in the pool. Define aerobic work. Is it keeping your heart rate up near 200 for over twenty minutes? We do exercise that maintains a heart rate between 150 and 200 for a lot longer than that. "It takes a lot of laps to accomplish aerobic threshold if you only seek aerobic threshold through swimming. If you don't go insane first from all those laps then your shoulder will explode eventually. All those laps hurt your stroke technique, which is absolutely necessary in the 50 free. Your heart is too busy pounding away to know what exercise is making it work so hard. And it doesn't matter! You accomplish the same objective and save yourself from burnout and shoulder surgery. At the end of the season in those last 15 meters of the 100 free you'll have the finish your coach is looking for." WOW! I'm aware of some of the new thinking on dry land exercises; however, my understanding is that they target muscle strength, and not aerobic capacity. I know in my college program (a very modest Div III program 25 years or so ago), we experimented with group runs as supplementary training. However, we abandoned this experiment when it appear that developing the leg muscles for running was antagonistic to developing a strong kick. I would be interested in knowing what dry land, aerobic regime they are using. They certainly produced results in 2004. Matt