In this thread Fortress said:
Interesting Race Club thread. There was one post concluding that lactate tolerance was the key for the last 15 meters of a 100, not aerobic capacity.
Which leads to something I've been thinking about lately. I'm sure we've all had races where you try to give it everything you've got at the end and you absolutely turn to jello. I assume this is the lactic acid kicking in. When it hits you slow down very quickly. So how can we train to improve that tolerance?
Here's an article by Genadijus Sokolovas on the USA Swimming website: www.usaswimming.org/.../ViewMiscArticle.aspx
In it he talks about lactate tolerance type sets:
Anaerobic Metabolism (Anaerobic-Glycolitic) is the non-oxidative process of recycling of ATP from glycogen. Glycogen is stored in the muscle cells. Glycogen fairly rapidly recycles ATP, but it is slower than from CP. Anaerobic metabolism produces lactate. It is the main energy system for exercise bouts of 30 sec until 3 min. When distances are longer, aerobic metabolism predominates. Anaerobic metabolism has high power, middle capacity, and low efficiency.
Examples of swimming sets and distances that develop anaerobic metabolism: distances of 50 to 300 M/Y, high intensity swimming sets with a short rest interval (i.e., 6-16 x 25 M/Y, 4-8 x 50 M/Y, 2-4 x 100 M/Y, 2 x 200 M/Y with rest interval 20-30 sec etc.).
Anyway, I'm finally getting to my point here. The standard way to do this is using fixed sets like this, but has anyone tried something like swimming absolutely all-out until you hit that lactate "jello" feel where you feel yourself slowing down? At that point maybe do some very slow "active rest" swimming then repeat, etc. The goal being to build up the time/distance you can keep up that all-out speed. It seems like actually confronting that lactate wall like this would be a great way to help with lactate tolerance in races.
Parents
Former Member
Kirk,
Another possibility is to use "active rest" more, and this might be appropriate for you as more of a distance type. Here is one set that we did where my lactate levels were pretty darn high by the end. All intervals were 2:15 in my lane; other lanes adjusted as necessary. Everthing was from a push. The idea was not to spend very much time on the wall, to recover while swimming.
4 x 150 cruise: feel stroke, get ready to swim fast
1 x 200 FAST
3 x 150 recover, just make interval
1 x 200 FAST
2 x 150 recover
1 x 200 FAST
1 x 150 recover
1 x 200 FAST
Ideally, the last and first 200 are not that different (much easier said than done) and are within about 10 seconds of your best (rested) 200 time. It kiind of reproduces what a longer race feels like.
I tried this set on Sunday. I train SCM so I set 2:30 intervals for myself. I think I went out a bit hard in the first set of 4x150. It resulted in a not-so-fast first 200, but I slowed down a lot on the recovery after that and my times picked up.
Anyway, I managed the intervals quite comfortably but never got to feel that 'jello' feeling in my muscles. I pushed the third 200 particularly hard and came within a hair's breadth of vomiting but, still , no sore muscles. My fourth 200 was 5 seconds slower than my third and it took all my willpower not to bail after at the 100m mark!
So I am wondering if I did it wrong. Why didn't I get that jello feeling in my muscles and rather got the puking sensation? It seems that it was more of an aerobic than a lactate set for me.
Today I did a 200 all out for time and on the final 25 my arms 'went jello' but the time I did today was much faster than anything I did on Sunday.
Kirk,
Another possibility is to use "active rest" more, and this might be appropriate for you as more of a distance type. Here is one set that we did where my lactate levels were pretty darn high by the end. All intervals were 2:15 in my lane; other lanes adjusted as necessary. Everthing was from a push. The idea was not to spend very much time on the wall, to recover while swimming.
4 x 150 cruise: feel stroke, get ready to swim fast
1 x 200 FAST
3 x 150 recover, just make interval
1 x 200 FAST
2 x 150 recover
1 x 200 FAST
1 x 150 recover
1 x 200 FAST
Ideally, the last and first 200 are not that different (much easier said than done) and are within about 10 seconds of your best (rested) 200 time. It kiind of reproduces what a longer race feels like.
I tried this set on Sunday. I train SCM so I set 2:30 intervals for myself. I think I went out a bit hard in the first set of 4x150. It resulted in a not-so-fast first 200, but I slowed down a lot on the recovery after that and my times picked up.
Anyway, I managed the intervals quite comfortably but never got to feel that 'jello' feeling in my muscles. I pushed the third 200 particularly hard and came within a hair's breadth of vomiting but, still , no sore muscles. My fourth 200 was 5 seconds slower than my third and it took all my willpower not to bail after at the 100m mark!
So I am wondering if I did it wrong. Why didn't I get that jello feeling in my muscles and rather got the puking sensation? It seems that it was more of an aerobic than a lactate set for me.
Today I did a 200 all out for time and on the final 25 my arms 'went jello' but the time I did today was much faster than anything I did on Sunday.
