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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Hi all,
Let me first thank Dobbie for the curve -- Dobbie, where did you get this info-- intuition from coaching or data or somethign else? It is what I would expect.
Second, for all the people who say something to the effect of "the analysis you want is impossible", let me clarify a little:
First, a curve like Dobbie's would probably apply only to someone who is kind of slow; if you are fast already, a little bit of improvement takes a huge amount of work and such an analysis just doesn't apply (it is kind of like when your headache is already gone and you keep taking more aspirin).
Also, everyone who said that the type of workout make a huge difference -- usually either varying in intensity or in quality of coaching or innate talent -- I wholeheartedly agree; however I bet that the *shape* of the dose response curve over practice time remains the same, even though the magnitude might change. For example, with a bad coach and faulty technique and starting at a slow time, I might improve more at 6 hours/week than at 2 hours/week, even though I could never reach better than 1:20/100m no matter how much I worked out because the coach has me doing something stupid.
Hi all,
Let me first thank Dobbie for the curve -- Dobbie, where did you get this info-- intuition from coaching or data or somethign else? It is what I would expect.
Second, for all the people who say something to the effect of "the analysis you want is impossible", let me clarify a little:
First, a curve like Dobbie's would probably apply only to someone who is kind of slow; if you are fast already, a little bit of improvement takes a huge amount of work and such an analysis just doesn't apply (it is kind of like when your headache is already gone and you keep taking more aspirin).
Also, everyone who said that the type of workout make a huge difference -- usually either varying in intensity or in quality of coaching or innate talent -- I wholeheartedly agree; however I bet that the *shape* of the dose response curve over practice time remains the same, even though the magnitude might change. For example, with a bad coach and faulty technique and starting at a slow time, I might improve more at 6 hours/week than at 2 hours/week, even though I could never reach better than 1:20/100m no matter how much I worked out because the coach has me doing something stupid.
