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?
Elise...but here's the interesting thing which was also in the last ASCA journal...this same training philosophy can/should apply to ALL distances. Sure a marathoner is going to have significantly more time training longer distances than a 50, 100 or 400 specialist...but the theory is training for "speed"...at all distances.
I'll repeat what Rich Abrahams has said so often "when masters swimmers swim slow they swim to fast and when they swim fast they swim to slow."
Paul - I agree with you on the speed issue. It seems for all distances whether in track or swimming, the fastest way to improve is to do intense, race-paced efforts in training. My only question would be is whether the body can handle the constant intensity.
Elise...but here's the interesting thing which was also in the last ASCA journal...this same training philosophy can/should apply to ALL distances. Sure a marathoner is going to have significantly more time training longer distances than a 50, 100 or 400 specialist...but the theory is training for "speed"...at all distances.
I'll repeat what Rich Abrahams has said so often "when masters swimmers swim slow they swim to fast and when they swim fast they swim to slow."
Paul - I agree with you on the speed issue. It seems for all distances whether in track or swimming, the fastest way to improve is to do intense, race-paced efforts in training. My only question would be is whether the body can handle the constant intensity.
