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?
The problem I see in training swimming like you train track is that while both use legs and arms, swimming uses a lot of arms - which are smaller muscle groups. That would seem to be a big difference.
I do think a lot of swimmers over train but due to water temps we probably aren't burning quite as many calories so I'm willing to be a large part of the training is too look good. It's also mental.
I also like the taper effect (though not a huge fan of tapering itself) so I know to feel good at my big meets I need to feel beat-up prior to the taper.
There are a lot of swimmers that train both ways - low yardarage swimmers include: Natalie Coughlin, Emily Silver, and Gary Hall Jr - McKeever, Salo, and Bottom all favor lower yardage/higher intensity workouts.
High yardage coaches: Reese, Bowman, Troy - athletes include Peirsol, Crocker, Hansen, Weber-Gale, Phelps, Vendt, Vanderkkay, Lochte, Burckle, Schmitt ...
Just naming the Olympians ...
The problem I see in training swimming like you train track is that while both use legs and arms, swimming uses a lot of arms - which are smaller muscle groups. That would seem to be a big difference.
I do think a lot of swimmers over train but due to water temps we probably aren't burning quite as many calories so I'm willing to be a large part of the training is too look good. It's also mental.
I also like the taper effect (though not a huge fan of tapering itself) so I know to feel good at my big meets I need to feel beat-up prior to the taper.
There are a lot of swimmers that train both ways - low yardarage swimmers include: Natalie Coughlin, Emily Silver, and Gary Hall Jr - McKeever, Salo, and Bottom all favor lower yardage/higher intensity workouts.
High yardage coaches: Reese, Bowman, Troy - athletes include Peirsol, Crocker, Hansen, Weber-Gale, Phelps, Vendt, Vanderkkay, Lochte, Burckle, Schmitt ...
Just naming the Olympians ...
