Much has been discussed on this topic but i wanted to revisit it after watching the track & field championships and remembering debates about how much pool training time swimmers put in relative to a runner competing in the equivalent event (a 400m runner to 100m swimmer).
What got my attention on this again was a recent article in Men's Fitness about Jeremy Wariner, specifically his training week during mid-season:
M= 200's: 8 x 200's two minutes followed by 40 yd sprints w/20 seconds rest
T= 350m: 2 x 350's followed by 1 x 300, one minute rest then a 100m to simulate the end of the race
W= 450m: 2 x 450's each under 1:00 with 9 minutes rest between each
Th= 90m: Recovery day each run in an "X" pattern
F= 100m: last run of the week is multiple 100m sprints
That's an insanely lower amount of training time than even i put in....Ande & Jazz come to mind.
More of this in an excellent article:
"Elite coaching special - Clyde Hart coach to Michael Johnson and Jeremy Wariner"
Here's are a couple of excerpt:
Clyde believes the principles of training are the same for many events: "I trained Michael Johnson like I trained a four minute miler. A four minute miler was doing a lot of the same things Michael Johnson was - a lot of the same things in training but more of them.
"The longest workout we have ever done - not counting warm up and warm down - would be under 20min, I think we have never worked more than 20min. That's not counting the Fall phase.”
So here's my challenge...I'm going to pick one of the next seasons (either SCM this fall or SCY in the spring) and try and adapt to this regime...anyone else game?
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So much of what swimmers do is just superstition. Yes, we must train twice a day for several hours!
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../2020277
I'll offer some of the workouts I've done this summer in the style Paul is talking about.
8x25 free with fins @ 1:00
48 strokes free from a dive with board shorts (open water)
3x25 fly with fins @ 3:00
Are there some additional examples of swimmers who do well with this kind of training?
Jazz, thanks for letting us know you did the 500. Out in :54 and back in 1:05+?
FYI...I had some swimmers from Sun Devil stay after workout the other day to do some bungee work...all were mainly 50-200 folks and I thought we might have a heart attack they were so 'blown up".
Paul brings up an interesting point here. Are we all in agreement that it's a safe practice physiologically to shoot for as little yardage at the highest intensity possible? Or is it more prudent to build up an aerobic base first and then do some speed work - an everything in moderation so to speak. I ask b/c I'm sometimes next to masters swimmers whose breathing sounds very irregular if not totally abnormal (and not in a good way) after they give 100% in speed sets. I worry about them. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I've never witnessed a heart attack occur after a masters practice.
So much of what swimmers do is just superstition. Yes, we must train twice a day for several hours!
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../2020277
I'll offer some of the workouts I've done this summer in the style Paul is talking about.
8x25 free with fins @ 1:00
48 strokes free from a dive with board shorts (open water)
3x25 fly with fins @ 3:00
Are there some additional examples of swimmers who do well with this kind of training?
Jazz, thanks for letting us know you did the 500. Out in :54 and back in 1:05+?
FYI...I had some swimmers from Sun Devil stay after workout the other day to do some bungee work...all were mainly 50-200 folks and I thought we might have a heart attack they were so 'blown up".
Paul brings up an interesting point here. Are we all in agreement that it's a safe practice physiologically to shoot for as little yardage at the highest intensity possible? Or is it more prudent to build up an aerobic base first and then do some speed work - an everything in moderation so to speak. I ask b/c I'm sometimes next to masters swimmers whose breathing sounds very irregular if not totally abnormal (and not in a good way) after they give 100% in speed sets. I worry about them. Unfortunately, I cannot say that I've never witnessed a heart attack occur after a masters practice.
