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?
A great discussion we have going here...but so many of you keep going of track. My point in bringing Wariner up and the training article by his coach is that ALL distances fall back on the same basic principles for track...I did not intend this to be a discussion of "sprint" training but one of "speed" work for all distances.
So although the 400m in track is roughly the equivalent of the 100m in swimming, and the 1500m is akin to the 400/500....the basic plan includes 3 phases and far more emphasis on quality over quantity in mid-season.
Go back to my first post if your interested, read the article I linked and then adapt Wariner's weekly mid-season routine to your swimming....this is m question. Can ALL of us benefit from more focused, higher quality, lower volumne training?
I know the answer for myself...I train far less than the masters swimmers I know/train with. However I have never gone all the way so to speak to this level of "quality"...and the prospect of a 4 month test is very intriguing.
A great discussion we have going here...but so many of you keep going of track. My point in bringing Wariner up and the training article by his coach is that ALL distances fall back on the same basic principles for track...I did not intend this to be a discussion of "sprint" training but one of "speed" work for all distances.
So although the 400m in track is roughly the equivalent of the 100m in swimming, and the 1500m is akin to the 400/500....the basic plan includes 3 phases and far more emphasis on quality over quantity in mid-season.
Go back to my first post if your interested, read the article I linked and then adapt Wariner's weekly mid-season routine to your swimming....this is m question. Can ALL of us benefit from more focused, higher quality, lower volumne training?
I know the answer for myself...I train far less than the masters swimmers I know/train with. However I have never gone all the way so to speak to this level of "quality"...and the prospect of a 4 month test is very intriguing.
