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?
I'm reading a book right now by Roy Benson called The Runner's Coach . It is aimed at training foks in distances of 800 meters to the 5k which is equivalent to the 200 to the 1500 in swimming. What I like is that he divides the season into four training phases to allow the body to make "physiological adaptations" - endurance training, stamina, economy, and speed.
Even in the endurance phase, on the hard days he has you doing "aerobic speed work." These efforts are capped at 80% effort. When you move up to phase II, stamina, you go to longer 85% efforts. Phase III, economy, on the hard days, you do things like 12 x 400 meter runs at 90-95% effort with a 200 meter recovery jog between each 400. In the the last phase, speed, he has you doing 100% efforts that are capped at 30 seconds. An example might be 4 x 150M, 6 x 100M, then 8 x 50M runs.
In general, he has you going 3 easy days and 3 hard days a week. I would guess that if you only had time to train 4 days a week, you would go 2 hard and 2 easy. The easy days are all at 60% while the hard days are just HARD! I like the idea in swimming because you can go hard for one practice and then use the next one just to recover. I think particularly for masters, this would be best to allow a full day to recover from a hard day of going all-out. Seems like then recovery days could be drills aimed at working on technique.
I'm reading a book right now by Roy Benson called The Runner's Coach . It is aimed at training foks in distances of 800 meters to the 5k which is equivalent to the 200 to the 1500 in swimming. What I like is that he divides the season into four training phases to allow the body to make "physiological adaptations" - endurance training, stamina, economy, and speed.
Even in the endurance phase, on the hard days he has you doing "aerobic speed work." These efforts are capped at 80% effort. When you move up to phase II, stamina, you go to longer 85% efforts. Phase III, economy, on the hard days, you do things like 12 x 400 meter runs at 90-95% effort with a 200 meter recovery jog between each 400. In the the last phase, speed, he has you doing 100% efforts that are capped at 30 seconds. An example might be 4 x 150M, 6 x 100M, then 8 x 50M runs.
In general, he has you going 3 easy days and 3 hard days a week. I would guess that if you only had time to train 4 days a week, you would go 2 hard and 2 easy. The easy days are all at 60% while the hard days are just HARD! I like the idea in swimming because you can go hard for one practice and then use the next one just to recover. I think particularly for masters, this would be best to allow a full day to recover from a hard day of going all-out. Seems like then recovery days could be drills aimed at working on technique.
