Is my volume enough?

Great thread. I find consistency is the most important factor in my improvement. I only have had time to swim two days each week for the last 10 months or so. Swimming so infrequently has decreased my conditioning but more importantly has hurt the quality of my practice. I usually will spend the first half of the practice getting a feel for the water again. I find that when I have a vacation and can swim most days whether for 30 minutes or 90 minutes by the end of the week there is a great improvement for me. Bottom line, do what you can and have fun doing it. Paul Love that spell checker

I was at a seminar years ago where they said that although conditioning goes down very fast with inactivity,exercising once a week vastly slows the decline. You can't get in shape swimming once a week but if you are in shape and have to change your schedule for business,family,or illness if you can swim or cross train even a little it makes a difference.(Don't you just hate it when life interferes with swimming.)

Without sufficient training volume (including but not limited to race pace), I think your technique will break down in a race. If you're not interested in competing, 30-60 minutes/day of moderate aerobic exercise is sufficient. I've read that the minimum, at least for younger competitive swimmers, may be in the range of 8000m/day. I think it's a more difficult question for Masters, because you have to factor in goals, time constraints, and physical limitations. The minimum - for what? To improve? To make Nationals cuts? I have two teenage boys that compete and they swim between 6 and 9 times per week. My youngest (now 14) just recently stepped up to 8-9 times per week from 5 per week before that. He has consistently improved throughout and may be in an accelerating phase because he is growing. My boys daily volume is in the range of 9000 yds. But my point is that they have improved for years at less volume than that. They are solid swimmers (AA, occasional AAA times), but not elite.

Hoffman I made the Olympics and other games on technique only from 18 years of age til 28 years of age. I could not swim more than 800 yards a day. But as every one said George why don't you train more - if I had been able to would I have been faster???? My training was more reading newtons laws and watching the great swimmers of the day and applying what I saw to my stroke. I have stolen everthing I know or percieve to know about swimming from others. I am not an inventor of anything but may be called a modifier.

By "younger" I was referring to college age (ie younger than most of us). I know that this is a debated subject among coaches. How much is enough, assuming you want to achieve your full potential? It is also of interest to many Masters swimmers, particularly those of us not blessed with exceptional talent or willing to use performancing enhancing products (other than aleve). While I agree that we should try to maintain "perfect" form in practice, a physiological system has to be overloaded if we want to see training adaptations with the resultant increases in speed and/or strength (which, by the way, can occur at any age). Think of weight lifting--at some point, you've got to add more weight.

Gull if I did not practice perfect (although it may not be perfect form) with every stroke I take the pretty young things would not even look my way. It is the only way I can swim that is why when I swim butterfly it is only 25 meters, I do not want to feel uncoordinated. This is also the reason I never swim over 250m free without a rest after every 250. My volume is always done in sets of 25s, 50s, 75s, 100s, 200s or 250s,

I have heard that rope jumping is a great means of staying/getting in shape and it is incredibly inexpensive. I have been thinking of taking it up myself since my pool visits have been limited to 2 or 3 times a week recently.

I was at a seminar years ago where they said that although conditioning goes down very fast with inactivity,exercising once a week vastly slows the decline. You can't get in shape swimming once a week but if you are in shape and have to change your schedule for business,family,or illness if you can swim or cross train even a little it makes a difference.(Don't you just hate it when life interferes with swimming.) I agree with that. When we go to the beach for a week in the summer I try to do some ocean swimming two or three days as well as my dryland routine. Unfortunately, after my surgery I was not allowed in the water for two full weeks and was told not to lift weights. I decided to follow the doctor's orders so I wouldn't be out even longer.

I find this thread very interesting and would like to add my :2cents: on a few points: 1. It is very difficult to compare running to swimming since swimming is so much more skill oriented. Still, the basic 4-1 ratio applies i.e. 4 meters of running is comparable to 1 meter of swimming (freestyle). It really is interesting to compare times at different levels and see that this indeed holds up. So if one is coming from a running background and wants to compare volume, this is a reasonable measuring stick. 2. Volume: I didn't see the word intensity in this thread. I feel that swimmers do alot of garbage laps that up their total distance. Total distance does not always accurately sum up the w/o. I am more sprint oriented so I do alot of short distance repeats at over 85% intensity. One of my favorites is 10x50m. that I do with my 23 year old son. We alternate 50m. sprints (he swims, I rest until he returns and vice versa) for 10 sets. Now this is "only" 500m. but it is a real .... buster. My sessions are only about 1500m.-2000m. but I swim on the average 5 times per week. Since I am doing intensive sessions, I prefer more sessions with less volume per session. I also feel that it is counter productive to train sloppy, fatigued strokes. About a 30% of the session is w/u and c/d and another 20% - 30% skill drills. The rest is intensive swimming. 3. Skill training - I concentrate on working only one skill at any session. For example, right now I am working on my underwater fly off the wall. My goal is a fast, fluid movement for the legal limit (15m.) off the wall (I figure that way I'll have less to swim :D ).

Intensity, 85% are not what some believe are important. Some here believe, you only have to swim technique. I believe we are required to balance the work outs using technique in all workouts - Max V02 which is similar to your 85% workouts using Technique (but your rests are too long), Aerobic using Technique and Aenerobic - 2 x each a week using Technique and Lactic threshold once a month using Technique. Just because you swim hard you don't forget to use sound technique. Sorry did I use technique too often