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?
Some more thoughts:
- Nothing in this would be revolutionary by any means, in fact its not to different in many was as th Race Club trains (from what I understand).
- There was no discussion of weight training, I plan on looking into it a bit more but this echoes what Hoch has said in the past about weight training not being proven as effective for swimming. I've never "not" lifted during a swimming season and will look at maybe going without once...given the state of my shoulder the last 4 months it might not be a bad idea.
- Fort, not sure about any cross training. Doc Chris has pointed out that things like cycling may help in base level conditioning but are not directly applicable to swimming. Think about it...when have you ever set aside 4 months to do something radically different and 100% focused on the end result? I love to cross train as well...and the social side of being on a team (although I'm sure the coaches and swimmers would enjoy seeing less of me!)...so this would be VERY had.
-Hoch, regarding the 400 guys never doing the 800...for one, that is my point in harassing Hulk about using a "400" as a warm up for his sprints. You would never see a track sprinter running 1500m as a "warm up". But what the article says is it didn't matter if you were a 400 specialist or something different or longer...the training distances change relative to the race being prepared for.
Some more thoughts:
- Nothing in this would be revolutionary by any means, in fact its not to different in many was as th Race Club trains (from what I understand).
- There was no discussion of weight training, I plan on looking into it a bit more but this echoes what Hoch has said in the past about weight training not being proven as effective for swimming. I've never "not" lifted during a swimming season and will look at maybe going without once...given the state of my shoulder the last 4 months it might not be a bad idea.
- Fort, not sure about any cross training. Doc Chris has pointed out that things like cycling may help in base level conditioning but are not directly applicable to swimming. Think about it...when have you ever set aside 4 months to do something radically different and 100% focused on the end result? I love to cross train as well...and the social side of being on a team (although I'm sure the coaches and swimmers would enjoy seeing less of me!)...so this would be VERY had.
-Hoch, regarding the 400 guys never doing the 800...for one, that is my point in harassing Hulk about using a "400" as a warm up for his sprints. You would never see a track sprinter running 1500m as a "warm up". But what the article says is it didn't matter if you were a 400 specialist or something different or longer...the training distances change relative to the race being prepared for.
