What's more important: striving for maximal health/fitness and a long life or setting WRs or national records or team records in swimming?
I think the latter is overrated. I'm all for improving one's stroke and striving for PBs. Who isn't? PBs produce euphoria and pride and keep you on the path to improvement. But I wonder if restorative, technique based workouts that might help you improve in swimming and/or achieve world or local fame really help make one extremely fit or improve one's health? I think someone referred to Gary Hall as doing "sprinter" type high intensity training and doing his aerobic/strength training outside the pool, which seems perfectly sound. He's getting it all in. I think you need to get it all in and work hard. You gotta break a sweat. A lot. Frequently.
So will TI-ing your life away and looking pretty make you as fit as you can be? Isn't there something to be said for hard training? Not necessarily because it will improve your 50 free (everyone seems to agree it won't), but just to improve health, mental outlook, physical well being and keep the bod hot and the spouse interested? Plus, if you're a distance swimmer you gotta have some endurance. Talent and technique only get you so far, at least IMHO.
I just thought we were supposed to exercise more, and more intensely for optimal health.
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Dave:
What're you doing here? Stalking me from thread to thread?
I believe that if you do endurance workouts while concentrating on technique, you will become fit. I said that in the "Vessel" thread. I clearly stated that you need to do both. I said both several times.
If you're fit, which I have no doubt you are, then I believe the "TI" workouts you do must have a serious endurance component. I believe you are a distance/open water ace from what I've read. So I have to believe your heartrate is elevated for sustained periods of time. If you're doing technique work on top of that, you're obviously devoting a lot of time to training and I applaud that. I see that you're using a monofin and I bet you're doing weights too.
The point of this thread, as opposed to the vessel thread, was to question whether focusing primarily on technique as opposed to focusing on training hard would make you healthier. And whether, in training, one should focus on maximum health or record breaking. Theoretically, one could focus only on technique and break some 50 records and not be very fit. I questioned whether that was a good thing. These points were the starting premise of this thread. So you have done the same thing you accused others of doing on the "vessel" thread. You attacked the premise rather than answering the question. So feel free to pony up on that topic.
Dave:
What're you doing here? Stalking me from thread to thread?
I believe that if you do endurance workouts while concentrating on technique, you will become fit. I said that in the "Vessel" thread. I clearly stated that you need to do both. I said both several times.
If you're fit, which I have no doubt you are, then I believe the "TI" workouts you do must have a serious endurance component. I believe you are a distance/open water ace from what I've read. So I have to believe your heartrate is elevated for sustained periods of time. If you're doing technique work on top of that, you're obviously devoting a lot of time to training and I applaud that. I see that you're using a monofin and I bet you're doing weights too.
The point of this thread, as opposed to the vessel thread, was to question whether focusing primarily on technique as opposed to focusing on training hard would make you healthier. And whether, in training, one should focus on maximum health or record breaking. Theoretically, one could focus only on technique and break some 50 records and not be very fit. I questioned whether that was a good thing. These points were the starting premise of this thread. So you have done the same thing you accused others of doing on the "vessel" thread. You attacked the premise rather than answering the question. So feel free to pony up on that topic.
