How much aerobic work for sprinters?

I dunno, Paul, that sure seems like A LOT. Combine all that with your spinning workouts and I think you're in danger of being voted off the USMS island by that other Smith for excessive training. I cycle workouts 3 days on 1 off, never more than about 90 minutes a day total...love variety!

I vote that sprinters do not need aerobic training. Back in college, when I was way faster, we did a lot of race speed and a lot of lactate sets. Go sprinters, go! I have to agree with this comment. The best results I have had are a direct result of race paced training. I have managed to take 7 seconds off my 200 free time since January by swimming it just like I would in a race during practice. Going all out and getting my splits. Getting my body to get used to the lactic acid build up and learning to cope with the associated pain. Prior to this I was doing sets of 5 x 200m at 3:30 or 3:00 and my time just stayed the same. Now I will only do one 200 in a practice (and not everyday either) but I will do it FAST for time and good splits. Afterwards I might do 100's on 1:20 or even 200's on 3:00 but just cruising, concentrating on my stroke and not really exerting myself too much. Here's a bit of a digression. I have always had this sneaking suspicion that our current speeds are determined by how far we pushed ourselves in our youths. So if we raised out lactate threshold so that our body could accept the pain of doing a, say, 53 sec 100 when we were young it shouldn't be too difficult to get close to that again when we are older. It's like your body has memory of this pain and if you could cope with it before, you can probably cope with it now (as long as your heart doesn't pack up)! However, if you never crossed this threshold in your youth, and even though you may be just as physically gifted as the person in the lane next to you who did, it is going to be much more difficult to beat them. I am not saying that it is not possible. Just that it is going to be more difficult. In fact, I am hoping that I can do it myself. I was only really a useful swimmer when I was younger and stopped swimming at age 16 so I feel I never really developed my potential. I am hoping I can surpass some of those times this year.

This is an interesting thought... Hard to say for sure, but you'll get to your best, and that might not be for a few more years yet. Congratulations on your recent swimming performances... Have I helped you in that process? I have always had this sneaking suspicion that our current speeds are determined by how far we pushed ourselves in our youths. So if we raised out lactate threshold so that our body could accept the pain of doing a, say, 53 sec 100 when we were young it shouldn't be too difficult to get close to that again when we are older. It's like your body has memory of this pain and if you could cope with it before, you can probably cope with it now (as long as your heart doesn't pack up)! However, if you never crossed this threshold in your youth, and even though you may be just as physically gifted as the person in the lane next to you who did, it is going to be much more difficult to beat them. I am not saying that it is not possible. Just that it is going to be more difficult. In fact, I am hoping that I can do it myself. I was only really a useful swimmer when I was younger and stopped swimming at age 16 so I feel I never really developed my potential. I am hoping I can surpass some of those times this year.

I was faster at 31 than in college.I think one reason was in college in the late 60s we only swam 200s of the strokes in dual meets so my training didn't have enough sprint work. Also at 32 we had our 1st child and sleep deprivation slowed me down for a few years so I'm not sure if I might not have been even faster in my 30s than 20s(and yes I know being a mother is harder than being a father,but being a father seems plenty hard enough.)

You didn't do any aerobic training in college? I'm skeptical about this. And if you did do aerobic training in college perhaps that's why you were "way faster." We did SOME aerobic training, but minimal. The sprinters work more off strength, so with the combo of a lot of lifting and dryland, we did a lot of race-pace stuff. Minimal aerobic. The most aerobic I did was with my club team. Since I was in the sprint group in college, we did a lot of fast swims, but lots of rest. It's about training your body for speed. Fast twitch. You can't expect to swim 70-80% for most of practice and expect to swim fast in a meet. You body hasn't been training for that. A classic AM practice (after warmups, drills, minimal aerobic set (15x50 :50) or (8x100 1:15).... main set would be something like 6x50 5:00, from blocks, choice of stroke, racing speed. Our yardage was low (around 3-5k, depending on length of workout). But we were always swimming for time. Now, the mid-distance groups and distance groups did a lot more yardage than the sprinters. They would easily hit 5,000 in a short practice. They were doing LOTS of aerobic stuff all the time. But that's the difference. You can't take a person that has been training for distance to be thrown into a 50 or 100 event and expect to succeed. Or vice versa. Their muscles haven't been training for that. Thank goodness the school of thought on swim training has changed. "Garbage yardage" AKA swim yardage just to get yardage, is out the window. Why swim 8x200 or more with 15-20 rest? That's garbage! Especially if you're a sprinter. Now, if you're training for that, and descending the set, doing speed play, negative splitting, have a specific pace to hold, it's not AS much as garbage, but it still is a bit excessive. The reason I was "way faster" in college?? I lifted multiple times a week and swam 2x a day. Now I swim, at the most, 1-2 times a week, when I have the time to go. My philosophy of training: swim smarter, not farther. And I think that movement in coaching is really picking up.

To some people a warmump and cool down is aerobic swimming. Some one doing 200s can be aerobic or anerobic. Some of what people call sprints may only be aerobic or anerobic swims. My preference of course are Max Vo2 workouts.

You didn't do any aerobic training in college? I'm skeptical about this. And if you did do aerobic training in college perhaps that's why you were "way faster." I wish I had done that kind of training in college or when I was an age grouper, Stacy. I have no memory of anything except mega yards. But, Kirk, why would you think aerobic work would make you faster than race pace/lacate work? Certainly, on its own it wouldn't. Did you just mean in combination?

Like someone submitted earlier, i am really enjoying this thread's discussion. But after following the thread for the past couple days, I find myself doubting the workouts I have been doing. There really aren't too many master's programs here because most adult swimmers focus on open water swimming. But I swim with a crowd that still likes shorter races. Our unofficial credo is that "any race distance that includes a comma is banned." So we are sort of self-coached. I end up stealing most of the workouts I bring from www.swim.net. Have any of you looked at that web site? Can anyone provide commentary on them? Are they relics? Or is that how you folks are swimming? Chris

But, Kirk, why would you think aerobic work would make you faster than race pace/lacate work? Certainly, on its own it wouldn't. Did you just mean in combination? Right, a combination. It seems like the original question you posed was should you do zero aerobic work, or a small amount of aerobic work? My position is that even sprinters should do some aerobic work. I don't think there's any question you should be doing lots of race pace stuff, too. That's what I was asking Stacy. She says she did lots of race pace stuff in college and swam fast, but does this mean she did exclusively fast swimming without aerobic work? I just can't imagine there are many college programs out there that have their sprinters doing zero aerobic training. This reminds me, has anyone else gotten the latest issue of USMS Swimmer? I got mine yesterday and looked through it. In the "my favorite practice" segment the practice is by Darcy La Fountain. Ms. La Fountain is an open water specialist and says "my passion is training." She currently sits in third place in the Go The Distance challenge as of the end of April with 547 miles swum (I was at 175 miles, to put this in perspective. The leader is at a jaw-dropping 760 miles!). Anyway, here's the practice she submitted: warm-up: 1000 kick with fins, choice main set: swim/pull 20x100 free on 1:45 kick 1000 with fins, choice swim/pull 20x100 free, 10 swim, 10 pull on 1:45 kick 1000 with fins, choice swim 10x100 free on 1:45 swim, pull or swim with fins 8,000 total That's a lot of long kicking. I think kicking 200 at a time is boring, I can't imagine 1000s kicking!

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.