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 guess one thing I would ask is who's to say track is doing it right? If you look at the all-time top ten in the 400 in track Lee Evans and Larry James are both still in the list and they did their times at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City! Michael Johnson's WR of 43.18 is less than 0.7 seconds faster than what Evans ran and Johnson's record has held up for nearly a decade now.
The 100 meter in swimming is closest in time to the 400 in track. In 1968 the world record for the 100 free was a 52.2 set by Mike Wenden of Australia. That time is well outside the U.S. Olympic Trials cut in the 100 now.
I guess one thing I would ask is who's to say track is doing it right? If you look at the all-time top ten in the 400 in track Lee Evans and Larry James are both still in the list and they did their times at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City! Michael Johnson's WR of 43.18 is less than 0.7 seconds faster than what Evans ran and Johnson's record has held up for nearly a decade now.
The 100 meter in swimming is closest in time to the 400 in track. In 1968 the world record for the 100 free was a 52.2 set by Mike Wenden of Australia. That time is well outside the U.S. Olympic Trials cut in the 100 now.
