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.
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I don't really understand the "puking" vs "jello" descriptions. If you felt like vomiting and died to the point where the last 200 was 5 seconds slower than the previous one, I'd say you were well above your lactate threshold so this was in no way an "aerobic" set. Probably your lactate did not spike to the same degree as it did in the 200 all out.
Were you within 10 seconds of your best recent rested swim? What was the time difference between your "all out" 200 and your repeats? There should not be much difference between the two, the 200s in the set should be close to all out.
I do think of this set as training more for the 500 than the 200, if that helps at all.
Sorry, I should have explained that better. I usually get the puking sensation when (I assume) I am oxygen starved. It seems to me to be more of a fitness issue that arises when I do fast repeats with very little rest in between. I don't necessarily associate it with aching muscles (or perhaps I am just too nauseous to notice).
The jello sensation (someone elses term earlier in this thread...or perhaps in another:o) refers to that feeling of muscle failure in the final stages of extreme exertion: the last 15m of a 100 or the final 50 of a 200. I can have this feeling without necessarily feeling like I want to puke.
The 200's I did on Sunday (with the exception of the last one) were all within 10 seconds of my recent best time. The 200 I did today was only half a second off my recent best time. But today I did a 500 warm up, 12 x 25's kick, two medium-fast 200's to get into fast mode, and then rested for about 4 minutes before I went for that time.
So the levels of exertion were different. And so was the focus. Sunday was all about completing the entire set whereas today was a once off for time.
I don't really understand the "puking" vs "jello" descriptions. If you felt like vomiting and died to the point where the last 200 was 5 seconds slower than the previous one, I'd say you were well above your lactate threshold so this was in no way an "aerobic" set. Probably your lactate did not spike to the same degree as it did in the 200 all out.
Were you within 10 seconds of your best recent rested swim? What was the time difference between your "all out" 200 and your repeats? There should not be much difference between the two, the 200s in the set should be close to all out.
I do think of this set as training more for the 500 than the 200, if that helps at all.
Sorry, I should have explained that better. I usually get the puking sensation when (I assume) I am oxygen starved. It seems to me to be more of a fitness issue that arises when I do fast repeats with very little rest in between. I don't necessarily associate it with aching muscles (or perhaps I am just too nauseous to notice).
The jello sensation (someone elses term earlier in this thread...or perhaps in another:o) refers to that feeling of muscle failure in the final stages of extreme exertion: the last 15m of a 100 or the final 50 of a 200. I can have this feeling without necessarily feeling like I want to puke.
The 200's I did on Sunday (with the exception of the last one) were all within 10 seconds of my recent best time. The 200 I did today was only half a second off my recent best time. But today I did a 500 warm up, 12 x 25's kick, two medium-fast 200's to get into fast mode, and then rested for about 4 minutes before I went for that time.
So the levels of exertion were different. And so was the focus. Sunday was all about completing the entire set whereas today was a once off for time.
