Jason Lezak

I know I was a child of the mega distance, "No pain, No Gain" mentality of the late 70's - early 80's. I am a sprinter and swam ok but got burned out by the time I was 19. I was exhausted all the time and never saw the results I felt I should for all my hard work. I'd have to taper almost a month and a half to swim well at the end of the season. As a masters swimmer I don't workout nearly as much but do quality, not quantity. In 2005 I was only .5 second off my best time that I did at 18! I think "garbage yardage" doesn't help a sprinter at all. I do think distance swimmers have to train more distance to be successful.

That is exactly why there was such an outburst back in 1988/1989 when the articles about High Intensity Training appeared in Swimming World and then the book came out shortly after. I remember the outcry, but I don't remember who the key players were at the time. My recollection is reading a story in Swimming World about a coach who thought about 3,000 per workout was all that was needed and went on to describe how he trained his swimmers in this manner. Was this Salo or someone else?

I remember the outcry, but I don't remember who the key players were at the time. My recollection is reading a story in Swimming World about a coach who thought about 3,000 per workout was all that was needed and went on to describe how he trained his swimmers in this manner. Was this Salo or someone else? Yes it was David Salo. In the March 1989 edition of Swimming World on page 55 and 56 he has an article that he wrote called "Training Tenets Challenged" where he describes how a senior level swimmer training 3000 yards a day for 8 weeks had progressive improvements in every freestyle event from 50 to 800 meters and had lifetime bests in every event except the 800. He also talked about the comeback of Rowdy Gaines swimming in the 1988 Olympic Trials. He said that after a long layoff that Rowdy tried to make a comeback in 6 months and got pretty close to making the Olympic team. In fact, so close that his :50.2 time was only .04 from his Gold medal winning time in 1984 and got 7th place missing the team by one place. The point he was trying to make is that he did maybe one sixth of the training he did in the past for the 100 Free and pretty much had the same results. These articles started about November 1987 and if you are a premium member over at Swimming World you can access them on there website. This one I was referring to had Janet Evans on the cover so I found that pretty ironic with this type of training.

Yup. I've heard that.

Jesse: I would believe that he swims in the area of 4000 to 6000 and no more than that. This does not include dryland and weights in which he incorporates in his training. The reason I say this is because he swims for David Salo at Nova Aquatics and they train a little differently then say a club down the road called Mission Viejo. David Salo came out with a book that was titled "Sprint Salo" in 1989, detailing the type of high intensity workouts and why he feels a need to train swimmers this way in comparison to the traditional methods of the 1970's of more volume to build up the areobic base. Back in the late 1980's and early 1990's he was a guest coach a wrote a monthly piece for Swimming World magazine. A lot of his ideas were under fire because he wrote against traditional concepts of the day. Since then his ideas have been somewhat excepted but not by the traditionalists of say someone like Bob Bowman. I will provide a link with a story about this that I found called "Coaching To The Beat Of A Different Drummer". www.findarticles.com/.../ai_n14879156 Obviously there is more than one way to train for gold. Bob Bowman has certainly showed us that his methods are worthy of note. Similarly, Salo has turned our some champs as well..in this case, Jason Lezak.

Perhaps more accurately, formerly of NOVA. Salo now coaches at USC. It's been a tough year for Salo, especially with his women's team. Several Olympic caliber athletes have chosen to leave the program (Weir, Jeffrey, Keller). It must have been a very drastic change in coaching philosophy at USC going from Mark Schubert to Dave Salo. Didn't Sandeno come from there as well? How about Erik Vendt? That would make three that jumped ship for Club Wolverine. Edit: The third being Kailyn Keller.

Didn't Sandeno come from there as well? That sounds right.

One of the biggest factors you have to remember, is that we are all different. We all respond to different kinds of training and coaching. The most important thing we can do as a swimmer is to find the type of coach that works for us.

You will only succeed if you believe what you're doing is right. It doesn't mean you are either right or wrong, or that you cannot change your mind. IMHO.

On another note, I've talked many times with Jason about his training philosophy, and he's really on par, I think. With him it's all about quality, but he also derives much of his talent from what he does outside of the pool. He lives his training with everything he does throughout the day dedicated in some way toward making him a better athlete. I'm a big fan! This is a little obscure. What is he doing outside of the pool and how is he using his day? I bet he's getting a nap. I want one. :D I'm with my twin, Beth (well, except I'm nowhere near my times at 18). High quality speedwork is best, at least for us sprinters. So I'm happy to follow the Salo model. Whenever I ramp up the distance or yardage (like I did last week), my shoulder and I regret it and I'm not sure how much it helps. Are distance swimmers really only doing 3000 yards? That's hard to believe. How does Salo adapt his "high intensity" philosophy for them? I guess they just swim longer distances at race speed?