Sorry about the geeky title, but I think it is the best description. My question is: How much of an improvement per month will one get for some number of workout hours per week? That sounds confusing, maybe, so here is an example:
If you average three hours of workout per week, for each month practicing you will probably see one second off your 100m time. However, if you average eight hours, you might see five seconds of improvement per month on your 100m time. Imagine a graph with "Improvement per month" on the y-axis (the left side), and "Hours working out per week" on the x-axis (the bottom).
I know there is no way to get an exact number, but maybe the experienced coaches out there might have an estimate with a certain amount of "slop". I also know that you hit a point at which your improvement goes to nothing per month (if you are swimming 0:58/100m say), so, for the sake of argument, lets talk about us slowpokes :) (1:50/100m cruise). Also maybe there are better ways to measure it--improvement per week, day, year, whatever, for example, or times on a 1500m. Finally, it depends on intensity of workout and quality of coaching--what can I say, I still want to know.
I would love if Masters would collect data on average number of workouts/week, 100m times, years practicing, and age; then I could just derive the answer to my question. Seems like this could be part of the yearly dues mailing (hint to any Masters powers-that-be that might be reading this), and that there are enough public health types that swim and care about fitness to analyze the data. And I could find the coach that has a five second/month improvement with only one workout per week ;)
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Former Member
You clearly cannot link improvement with quantity of training. If we could say that you will improve your 100m time by 1 sec per month if you train 3 hours a week, then you would eventually break the world record!
What is more reasonable is to talk about the equilibrium point that you will reach - e.g. if you train 3 hours per week you might reach a limit of 60 secs for 100m freestyle, say, but perhaps if you increase to 5 hours per week you might manage to get down to 57 secs for 100m freestyle.
In my experience it takes 1-3 months of training at a particular level to adapt to it and reach a fairly stable level of performance. After that you may continue to improve at a slower rate, but to get rapid improvement again you need to increase the level of training.
Different people can achieve different things with the same amount of training. E.g. I've been told that Fred Clatworthy trains less than 20km per week and last year he swam SCM 1500 free in 16:55 at age 35. I've been training 15-20km per week for the last year and would be pleased to break 19 mins, so clearly there's a talent difference!
You clearly cannot link improvement with quantity of training. If we could say that you will improve your 100m time by 1 sec per month if you train 3 hours a week, then you would eventually break the world record!
What is more reasonable is to talk about the equilibrium point that you will reach - e.g. if you train 3 hours per week you might reach a limit of 60 secs for 100m freestyle, say, but perhaps if you increase to 5 hours per week you might manage to get down to 57 secs for 100m freestyle.
In my experience it takes 1-3 months of training at a particular level to adapt to it and reach a fairly stable level of performance. After that you may continue to improve at a slower rate, but to get rapid improvement again you need to increase the level of training.
Different people can achieve different things with the same amount of training. E.g. I've been told that Fred Clatworthy trains less than 20km per week and last year he swam SCM 1500 free in 16:55 at age 35. I've been training 15-20km per week for the last year and would be pleased to break 19 mins, so clearly there's a talent difference!
