Dara Torres-Amazing

Regardless of wether you are a fitness swimmer who will never compete, an occasional competitor or a fully dedicated racer training needs to be cycled (periodization). Each swimmer should set up either a real or "imaginary" event to focus towards and run through the basic cycles associated with base training, hard interval base training, speed work, rest. Its only through these cycles that you will continue to see improvement vs, simply working out for working outs sake. So you are saying that periodisation is one of the keys to improvement? What other advantages are there to this kind of periodisation? I could think of a few reasons off the top of my head: boredom avoidance and repetitive injury avoidance to name just two. But I think it requires a real faith in the process to do something like this. Somehow large doses of aerobic training are ingrained in most swimmers minds. A session without decent yardage feels like a 'goof off'. Perhaps we need to change our mindsets. Nine months ago when I started training again for the first time in 24 years, all I did every practice was a 500m warm up followed by 10 X 50m free with plenty of rest in between and ALL OUT. Now I am averaging 3000m a practice, doing a lot more aerobic stuff, drills and other strokes and my 50m freestyle time has hardly improved at all. My 200m free time has come down significantly, though. Would you say low yardage, stretching, strength work and race paced training are more beneficial to sprinters? Would someone like Dara being doing drill work, other strokes, aerobic sets or would she just be focussed entilrely on her main events: the 50m and 100m free? What about the person who still has stroke issues to iron out? For example; recently I have changed from a two beat to a six beat kick and am also trying to incorporate bilateral breathing into my training. All of this takes time and needs to be done slowly at first before tried at race pace. I am assuming that periodisation of training and more specific race oriented training is only for those who have sorted most of these issues out? Syd

Regardless of wether you are a fitness swimmer who will never compete, an occasional competitor or a fully dedicated racer training needs to be cycled (periodization). Each swimmer should set up either a real or "imaginary" event to focus towards and run through the basic cycles associated with base training, hard interval base training, speed work, rest. Its only through these cycles that you will continue to see improvement vs, simply working out for working outs sake. So you are saying that periodisation is one of the keys to improvement? What other advantages are there to this kind of periodisation? I could think of a few reasons off the top of my head: boredom avoidance and repetitive injury avoidance to name just two. But I think it requires a real faith in the process to do something like this. Somehow large doses of aerobic training are ingrained in most swimmers minds. A session without decent yardage feels like a 'goof off'. Perhaps we need to change our mindsets. Nine months ago when I started training again for the first time in 24 years, all I did every practice was a 500m warm up followed by 10 X 50m free with plenty of rest in between and ALL OUT. Now I am averaging 3000m a practice, doing a lot more aerobic stuff, drills and other strokes and my 50m freestyle time has hardly improved at all. My 200m free time has come down significantly, though. Would you say low yardage, stretching, strength work and race paced training are more beneficial to sprinters? Would someone like Dara being doing drill work, other strokes, aerobic sets or would she just be focussed entilrely on her main events: the 50m and 100m free? What about the person who still has stroke issues to iron out? For example; recently I have changed from a two beat to a six beat kick and am also trying to incorporate bilateral breathing into my training. All of this takes time and needs to be done slowly at first before tried at race pace. I am assuming that periodisation of training and more specific race oriented training is only for those who have sorted most of these issues out? Syd