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:
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.
Here is my point and I think Terry's too (though I would never claim to speak for him). The elevated heart rate that endurance athletes and long distance swimmers desire is easily achieved during a practice thats main focus is "stroke efficiency improvement" or vessel shaping.Wheras when the focus is on heartrate, lactose etc. technique is more often than not neglected.
Noone ever said anything about trying to look pretty.
Dave:
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.
Here is my point and I think Terry's too (though I would never claim to speak for him). The elevated heart rate that endurance athletes and long distance swimmers desire is easily achieved during a practice thats main focus is "stroke efficiency improvement" or vessel shaping.Wheras when the focus is on heartrate, lactose etc. technique is more often than not neglected.
Noone ever said anything about trying to look pretty.
