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.
And this is the reason why I don't think that kind of set may be ideal for lactate tolerance. I'm sure you are building up some lactate, but not enough for the jello feel. Mentally you know you've got a lot more set to go, so you don't put it on the line like you would in a one-off swim.
Maybe. It is very hard to work these sets as hard as you should. That's where the encouragement of a coach or teammates can really help. (I am a real wuss when I work out by myself.)
Perhaps doing "near all out" swims as repeats also tests/hones the ability to recover from hard swims, something that is important in any meet that is multiple days and multiple events per day.
And this is the reason why I don't think that kind of set may be ideal for lactate tolerance. I'm sure you are building up some lactate, but not enough for the jello feel. Mentally you know you've got a lot more set to go, so you don't put it on the line like you would in a one-off swim.
Maybe. It is very hard to work these sets as hard as you should. That's where the encouragement of a coach or teammates can really help. (I am a real wuss when I work out by myself.)
Perhaps doing "near all out" swims as repeats also tests/hones the ability to recover from hard swims, something that is important in any meet that is multiple days and multiple events per day.
