Saw this article today on The Race Club website. Since we have so many Texas Exes (GO HORNS beat SC!) on here, I was wondering what the opinions were on his comments.
64.70.236.56/.../index.html
At least good for some gripping discussion, Lord knows we need a good "spirited" discussion on here...
Parents
Former Member
I was taught that aerobic conditioning involved three things:
1) volume of blood circulated (heart)
2) ability to add oxygen and remove CO2 (lungs)
3) ability to metabolize O2 in the muscles and remove metabolic byproducts (muscles)
With this model cross training would develop the first two but might not develop the third if it didn't work the specific muscles used in swimming.
That said, it's unclear to me how relevant aerobic conditioning is to a 50. It might be interesting to examine the times for the 50 and the two splits in the 100 for swimmers with different training approaches to see if there is a correlation.
When discussing Thorpe's move from the middle distances into the sprints it was asserted that distance training killed sprinting speed. Is there any controversy about that?
My personal experience is that I have never been able to add muscle mass during periods where I was doing heavy aerobic training, so I can imagine that such training would be detrimental to building the strength needed for sprinting.
I was taught that aerobic conditioning involved three things:
1) volume of blood circulated (heart)
2) ability to add oxygen and remove CO2 (lungs)
3) ability to metabolize O2 in the muscles and remove metabolic byproducts (muscles)
With this model cross training would develop the first two but might not develop the third if it didn't work the specific muscles used in swimming.
That said, it's unclear to me how relevant aerobic conditioning is to a 50. It might be interesting to examine the times for the 50 and the two splits in the 100 for swimmers with different training approaches to see if there is a correlation.
When discussing Thorpe's move from the middle distances into the sprints it was asserted that distance training killed sprinting speed. Is there any controversy about that?
My personal experience is that I have never been able to add muscle mass during periods where I was doing heavy aerobic training, so I can imagine that such training would be detrimental to building the strength needed for sprinting.
