As I crawled back into the pool today fat and out of shape, I wondered: Don't sprinters need some minimal aerobic work? I see that Ande is doing none whatsoever and Paul advises not "fighting fat" in the pool. I do a lot of race pace training and cross training. But still, is just a little aerobic work called for? I can tell I don't need any for 50s, but my 100s could use a little something. I don't think I have the substantial swimming aerobic base that people like Ande have because I was out of the pool for so many years .. So I'm either taking my 100s out too slow for fear of dying or actually dying. Does aerobic work help counter this? Or do I need more lactate work such as doing 100s with huge amounts of rest?
I believe you are all chasing a dream which will never come if you are dwelling on
Max Vo2
Aerobic
Aenerobic
Lactic Theshold
and so on
Get in and swim, do some easy swimming, some medium speed repeats, some fast hard sprint repeats, and some all out sprints. Work on your dives, turns and your streamline. Guess what you will be doing all of the above without thinking about it.
Way too much to think about...
George, I find it somewhat amusing that you advise not worrying about all those things...and then proceed to provide your own numbers! (I don't know my own numbers for ANY of those things, not even my resting HR.)
Your point is well taken, though. I would only disagree with you that working on "fast hard sprint repeats" and "all out sprints" comes naturally and will "just happen" in masters swimming.
At the masters level I do not believe that is true at all. I think the majority of practices at teams arouund the country are predominantly "medium speed" without too much rest...basically, what I would call "fitness swimming" rather than preparing to race.
Now, of course, the majority of USMS members have no interest in racing so maybe that is okay. It is maybe hard to convince those people to really push themselves to the edge.
Still, I swim with a small masters group with a very wide range of abilities, including triathletes and latecomers (ie those who have picked up swimming late in life). Many have little interest in competing -- they'll swim in our home pool meet (maybe), they are mostly interested in swimming for fitness.
Nevertheless, they completely buy into our coach's philosophy of race pace training in addition to aerobic work, etc, and are fitter and faster as a result. Even for fitness, I think training all the energy systems is important, regardless of whether you use the fancy names or not.
I believe you are all chasing a dream which will never come if you are dwelling on
Max Vo2
Aerobic
Aenerobic
Lactic Theshold
and so on
Get in and swim, do some easy swimming, some medium speed repeats, some fast hard sprint repeats, and some all out sprints. Work on your dives, turns and your streamline. Guess what you will be doing all of the above without thinking about it.
Way too much to think about...
George, I find it somewhat amusing that you advise not worrying about all those things...and then proceed to provide your own numbers! (I don't know my own numbers for ANY of those things, not even my resting HR.)
Your point is well taken, though. I would only disagree with you that working on "fast hard sprint repeats" and "all out sprints" comes naturally and will "just happen" in masters swimming.
At the masters level I do not believe that is true at all. I think the majority of practices at teams arouund the country are predominantly "medium speed" without too much rest...basically, what I would call "fitness swimming" rather than preparing to race.
Now, of course, the majority of USMS members have no interest in racing so maybe that is okay. It is maybe hard to convince those people to really push themselves to the edge.
Still, I swim with a small masters group with a very wide range of abilities, including triathletes and latecomers (ie those who have picked up swimming late in life). Many have little interest in competing -- they'll swim in our home pool meet (maybe), they are mostly interested in swimming for fitness.
Nevertheless, they completely buy into our coach's philosophy of race pace training in addition to aerobic work, etc, and are fitter and faster as a result. Even for fitness, I think training all the energy systems is important, regardless of whether you use the fancy names or not.
