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?
Heart rate? Aerobic system? If you really want to swim the 50, swim the 50. Allow your body to figure what "systems" are needed for the task.
I won't make specific recommendations beyond the obvious. "Practice your races" is the obvious. Different people can handle different workloads.
Swimming injuries tend to be overuse injuries. You see them coming from a mile away, and if they get you, it's because you ignored the pain. So what's the problem with sprinting? It's a lot less reptetitive motion than distance training. If hurts, stop.
If you are saying that almost all swimming injuries tend to come from overuse, I may have to somewhat disagree. I agree that you need to train the 50. One of my swimmers who ended up swimming for Tennessee was a sprinter. I used to give him the following set twice a week -
4 x 50 free on 1.30 - starting in the water -no breathing on first length and only two breaths allowed coming back - all efforts had to be within 3 seconds of best 50.
Heart rate? Aerobic system? If you really want to swim the 50, swim the 50. Allow your body to figure what "systems" are needed for the task.
I won't make specific recommendations beyond the obvious. "Practice your races" is the obvious. Different people can handle different workloads.
Swimming injuries tend to be overuse injuries. You see them coming from a mile away, and if they get you, it's because you ignored the pain. So what's the problem with sprinting? It's a lot less reptetitive motion than distance training. If hurts, stop.
If you are saying that almost all swimming injuries tend to come from overuse, I may have to somewhat disagree. I agree that you need to train the 50. One of my swimmers who ended up swimming for Tennessee was a sprinter. I used to give him the following set twice a week -
4 x 50 free on 1.30 - starting in the water -no breathing on first length and only two breaths allowed coming back - all efforts had to be within 3 seconds of best 50.
