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?
It wasn't all mega yardage in the 70s - a lot depended on the coaching. Our little swim team in Midland, Texas had some very good coaching. We had 4 groups in the practice, each with separate workouts: Sprinters, Stroke, Mid-distance, and the animal lanes. AM workouts were more aerobic, long slow distance, and then the evenings were much more focused on intervals and there were the dreaded stress days.
Yes the animals did get a few 20 K days during the long course season, they grooved on demont series and other demented swims, but there were other torture sets as well. I seem to remember 3 x 300m br decend by 100's desend the set, with 400 IM chasers.
We probably did more damage to ourselves from the high school dryland exercise program. Most swam AAU and the High School Coaches waived their work outs if we swam for the club. They did require us to do the dry land work and carrying a swimmer piggy back up stadium stairs probably did more damage to my knees than all the years of *** stroke.
In the early 90s, I was on one masters team that had switched to a sprint philosphy and focused on the 50s and 100s. This was frustrating for my 200 *** & 200 IM. Workouts were in the 2500 yard range.
Now this older fat man is just now back into the pool (7/2) after many years of sloth and glad to be able to drag myself through the warm, country club pool (no lane lines, but very few swimmers) while I work on rebuilding a base to 2500 yards per workout 4x. Adapting Paul's work outs have almost got me there. Unfortunately, I have log books and a memory of what times and distance used to be (last competed in the 30-35 bracket many years and several speedo sizes ago).
I don't forsee ever going back to 2 x days or swimming more than 4 x per week. The goal is to a build to 3500 yard workouts perhaps find a team, and get well adjusted to current times before I consider competing in the 50 -55 bracket that I just aged into.
Don
It wasn't all mega yardage in the 70s - a lot depended on the coaching. Our little swim team in Midland, Texas had some very good coaching. We had 4 groups in the practice, each with separate workouts: Sprinters, Stroke, Mid-distance, and the animal lanes. AM workouts were more aerobic, long slow distance, and then the evenings were much more focused on intervals and there were the dreaded stress days.
Yes the animals did get a few 20 K days during the long course season, they grooved on demont series and other demented swims, but there were other torture sets as well. I seem to remember 3 x 300m br decend by 100's desend the set, with 400 IM chasers.
We probably did more damage to ourselves from the high school dryland exercise program. Most swam AAU and the High School Coaches waived their work outs if we swam for the club. They did require us to do the dry land work and carrying a swimmer piggy back up stadium stairs probably did more damage to my knees than all the years of *** stroke.
In the early 90s, I was on one masters team that had switched to a sprint philosphy and focused on the 50s and 100s. This was frustrating for my 200 *** & 200 IM. Workouts were in the 2500 yard range.
Now this older fat man is just now back into the pool (7/2) after many years of sloth and glad to be able to drag myself through the warm, country club pool (no lane lines, but very few swimmers) while I work on rebuilding a base to 2500 yards per workout 4x. Adapting Paul's work outs have almost got me there. Unfortunately, I have log books and a memory of what times and distance used to be (last competed in the 30-35 bracket many years and several speedo sizes ago).
I don't forsee ever going back to 2 x days or swimming more than 4 x per week. The goal is to a build to 3500 yard workouts perhaps find a team, and get well adjusted to current times before I consider competing in the 50 -55 bracket that I just aged into.
Don
