I was reading up on training, and I came across a training methodology that goes like this.
Take your target event, for me the 200 free. Training speeds are dictated by your times two distances lower, for me the 50 and the 100, and two distances higher, 400/500 and the 800/1000. Warm up and cool down fall outside of this.
Compared to traditional training, this would be low yardage, high rest for most people.
Has anyone played around with this? Using my 100 split from my 1000 as my endurance pace would be much faster than what I am currently doing.
I like the concept because it gives so much guidance for training efforts, and retesting the levels is trivial.
That's it, I don't have much more detail than that. I can't find the article I read this in, but apparently this is a common training method for track.
It is more than 6-8 seconds
I'd say anything under 6 seconds is a pretty extreme distance swimmer. For me it's about a 6-7 second difference in pace. I'd imagine someone who considers themselves more of a middle-distance swimmer could easily be 8 seconds or more.
Sorry to pose a dumb question. But can you define T100 and T1000?
T1000 = timed 1000, in theory swum at the fastest pace you can hold for that distance.
Michael -- the concept related to what affects your speed makes some sense, though I doubt a 1000 pace has that much influence on your 200. My question, though, is how this concept translates into workouts / sets?
I think I did a poor job explaining it. The T1000 would be my basis pace for endurance like work. For me, LCM, that would be 1:24s, and I currently do my endurance pace (En-1/2) at a 1:30 pace, so that would be quite a bump in effort.
The way I see this translate into workouts: there are two over distance, two under distance and two target event times. The two target event times are your current time and your target time. Endurance work would be done at greater than target event distance on the T1000 pace. Threshold work would be done at the T500 pace at the target distance. Tolerance would be done at the target current pace at the target distance, or the goal pace at sub target distance. Sprint (theshold and tolerance) work would be done at the T100 and T50 pace for 50/25 or 25/12.5 distances respectively.
I think it is a step in the right direction ...it will teach you to swim closer to race pace AND become more aware of what that means. Depending on your endurance level 1000 pace will be about 6-8 sec slower than 200 pace. You will need to adjust your intervals (more rest) or swim more easy stuff in between.
It is more than 6-8 seconds, but this method would require a lot more rest than I am used to, and a lot more 200s and 50s/25s. Seems like my training is made up of mostly longer stuff and 100s.
Are you using the avg 100 from your 800/1000 as your threshold pace or as your "fast" training pace?
My A/T pace is usually pretty close to my in-season mile pace.
It would replace my endurance pace. My T3000 pace would obviously be slower which, according to Maglischo, is a good way to determine A/T without blood testing.
What it boils down to, is a lot more "fast" work and a lot less over distance endurance work. I think this just throws out En-1 and En-2 work for the most part. Slow stuff is recovery.
It is worth noting that this is for training one target event, not trying to be ready to swim 800 races in 3 days. If you are training for a 2 minute race, how much time do you need to spend swimming long slow sets.
I'd say anything under 6 seconds is a pretty extreme distance swimmer. For me it's about a 6-7 second difference in pace. I'd imagine someone who considers themselves more of a middle-distance swimmer could easily be 8 seconds or more.
I am about 15 seconds difference between my T100 and T1000.
Maybe I should focus on endurance :)
I am not sure if I'd use T1000 as a basis for establishing threshold swim pace. I might favor the good old Critical Swim Speed concept which has been tested quite a lot over years www.swimsmooth.com/training.html (locate *Lactate Threshold, Threshold and CSS* in the middle, there's even a handy calculator).
That being said, for a sprinter that doesn't matter very much. T1000 is still within the Threshold spectrum.
Now, as for your suggestion to increase rest time for sprint workouts :applaud: :applaud: :applaud:
If there's one thing with which master swimmer's coaches in general tend to have a lot of difficulty with, it's with Work/Rest calibration for sprint workouts. They never give you enough time to properly rest, and very often, what they which would be a sprint set turns out to be an other Vo2Max or Threshold set due to lack of rest.
Michael -- the concept related to what affects your speed makes some sense, though I doubt a 1000 pace has that much influence on your 200. My question, though, is how this concept translates into workouts / sets?
Are you using the avg 100 from your 800/1000 as your threshold pace or as your "fast" training pace?
My A/T pace is usually pretty close to my in-season mile pace.
I don't get it. Train faster and slower but not at race speed? Mixing up paces is a fine idea, but I wouldn't just skip the target. What's the rationale?
