How much endurance training?

Hey there, Crusader, I'll give it a shot based on your reply (#117) to this thread. Well, I already found out that Terry may have accidentaly contradicted himself. In the post above yours (#116), he states that he was training for a 1650 and spent March through August training for it (that's 5 months), and then switched to wanting to do the 400 IM (3 months). This far exceeds the studies he quoted from Skinner and which he agreed, that 8 weeks was plenty for endurance. I have to imagine that he was working on something else than endurance. It just is not. A swimmer can never have enough endurance, even if the swim is a 200 free. Endurance allows a swimmer to develop pace, and without pace there can be no strategy; well, sound strategy, for the swimmer has to know that when the going gets tough, his conditioning will kick in. Endurance is built through interval sets with lots of rest; intensity sets with little rest, and long swims still on the clock. When I used to talk to Don Schollander, we had great talks about this in length, and the importance of how tremendous endurance helps everything else that may happen, or that it keeps a swimmer from dying at the end of an extremely fast race (best times). When the body does not have endurance, technique is of little importance at that particular time. An example, which may or may not be relevant to others here is this: how could I possibly try to swim 18 miles without doing a pile of yardage? I would absolutely croak at about the 4 or 6 or 8 mile mark. I have to have the endurance to sustain 18 miles. I'd better have a good engine to go along with my technique or I will fail, miserably. I can't be in condition for a 5 mile swim, it must be much further. Now, the question of today may be this: how to go about developing that endurance? Technique will only delay the inevitable: no engine-- if I have not endurance trained. For the 1650, I swim it as 4x400s with that little 50 left over and I train that way and I swim it that way. For 18 miles, I will add one mile a month throughout training and get accustomed to that, along with doing 2 to 3 mile test swims for time. The faster I can do them, the more endurance is built. I just don't believe that a swimmer can ever have too much endurance; for me, it is that magic bullet. And then if a swimmer has good technique, they will succeed with more ease than not. And I know that doing recovery swims regardless of the distance is not the answer; a swimmer has to push themselves (swim fast) to get fast. I honestly believe that Terry is wrong about this and even though he believes it strongly, he may be misleading people based on his opinion without foundation (experience). He even states that he did poorly as an early swimmer, and is even learning now. But I suppose people need to try it both ways and figure out what works best for them; after all, we are all different "vessels" but we have to have a pretty darn good engine to move our vessel forward quickly. I consider endurance as a good, solid baseline to which everything else is then built. Oh, so I don't get slammed here, I'd better put in that I am using these examples for a swimmer with some good technique. Donna

Hey there, Crusader, I'll give it a shot based on your reply (#117) to this thread. Well, I already found out that Terry may have accidentaly contradicted himself. In the post above yours (#116), he states that he was training for a 1650 and spent March through August training for it (that's 5 months), and then switched to wanting to do the 400 IM (3 months). This far exceeds the studies he quoted from Skinner and which he agreed, that 8 weeks was plenty for endurance. I have to imagine that he was working on something else than endurance. It just is not. A swimmer can never have enough endurance, even if the swim is a 200 free. Endurance allows a swimmer to develop pace, and without pace there can be no strategy; well, sound strategy, for the swimmer has to know that when the going gets tough, his conditioning will kick in. Endurance is built through interval sets with lots of rest; intensity sets with little rest, and long swims still on the clock. When I used to talk to Don Schollander, we had great talks about this in length, and the importance of how tremendous endurance helps everything else that may happen, or that it keeps a swimmer from dying at the end of an extremely fast race (best times). When the body does not have endurance, technique is of little importance at that particular time. An example, which may or may not be relevant to others here is this: how could I possibly try to swim 18 miles without doing a pile of yardage? I would absolutely croak at about the 4 or 6 or 8 mile mark. I have to have the endurance to sustain 18 miles. I'd better have a good engine to go along with my technique or I will fail, miserably. I can't be in condition for a 5 mile swim, it must be much further. Now, the question of today may be this: how to go about developing that endurance? Technique will only delay the inevitable: no engine-- if I have not endurance trained. For the 1650, I swim it as 4x400s with that little 50 left over and I train that way and I swim it that way. For 18 miles, I will add one mile a month throughout training and get accustomed to that, along with doing 2 to 3 mile test swims for time. The faster I can do them, the more endurance is built. I just don't believe that a swimmer can ever have too much endurance; for me, it is that magic bullet. And then if a swimmer has good technique, they will succeed with more ease than not. And I know that doing recovery swims regardless of the distance is not the answer; a swimmer has to push themselves (swim fast) to get fast. I honestly believe that Terry is wrong about this and even though he believes it strongly, he may be misleading people based on his opinion without foundation (experience). He even states that he did poorly as an early swimmer, and is even learning now. But I suppose people need to try it both ways and figure out what works best for them; after all, we are all different "vessels" but we have to have a pretty darn good engine to move our vessel forward quickly. I consider endurance as a good, solid baseline to which everything else is then built. Oh, so I don't get slammed here, I'd better put in that I am using these examples for a swimmer with some good technique. Donna