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?
Who says that swimming fast doesn't provide some aerobic benefits?
And using the above source, that leaves approximately 80% of the energy being generated anaerobically. So that does beg the question, why so much aerobic training for sprinters? Yes, maybe some aerobic work needs to be done but predominantly aerobic? Doesn't make sense to me.
I do agree with you that training should not be primarily aerobic insofar as sprinters are concerned. Speed should be the primary focus for all distances, but I'm not ready to throw out the long, slow swims yet. I am convinced that they are of value, even to the sprinter.
Also, I am a bit concerned that doing too much speed at our age can end up working against us. Seems like there should be a middle ground- days devoted to race pace efforts, days of easy recovery swimming, and days of hard efforts not quite up to race pace.
There are at least two ways to break a swimmer down - lots of yardage OR lots of intense efforts. There needs to be a balance - not just speed to build aerobic conditioning and not just lots of yardage to build aerobic conditioning.
Who says that swimming fast doesn't provide some aerobic benefits?
And using the above source, that leaves approximately 80% of the energy being generated anaerobically. So that does beg the question, why so much aerobic training for sprinters? Yes, maybe some aerobic work needs to be done but predominantly aerobic? Doesn't make sense to me.
I do agree with you that training should not be primarily aerobic insofar as sprinters are concerned. Speed should be the primary focus for all distances, but I'm not ready to throw out the long, slow swims yet. I am convinced that they are of value, even to the sprinter.
Also, I am a bit concerned that doing too much speed at our age can end up working against us. Seems like there should be a middle ground- days devoted to race pace efforts, days of easy recovery swimming, and days of hard efforts not quite up to race pace.
There are at least two ways to break a swimmer down - lots of yardage OR lots of intense efforts. There needs to be a balance - not just speed to build aerobic conditioning and not just lots of yardage to build aerobic conditioning.
