Can speed practice alone help long distance endurance?
Former Member
If I only practice to improve the speed in short distance, will it help increase the endurance needed for long distance? In other words, say I have trained for several months for (only) speed, could I, one day, suddenly find myself swimming long distance without feeling tired?
(Obviously the opposite is not true: simply being able to swim slow long distance doesn't help improve the speed.)
To summarize the whole thread very rapidly. Take someone who's best 1500 is let's say... 24min flat. I do not care at this point about this guy's performance over the 100m.
Take the guy, put him on sole speed development until the 100m comes close to 1min flat. All 25/50/100/200m based training. Could take 2 or 3 years. No endurance work at all.
Your definition of "speed" and "endurance" work might differ from mine (granted, those are pretty vague terms).
For me, speedwork is basically all-out sprinting over very short distances (usually 12.5 or 25 yards) with a lot of rest.
I disagree strongly with the notion that "25/50/100/200m based training" is not "endurance work," though I guess maybe that's your point? Tons of studies out there show that interval-training, with distances short relative to the target race, will improve performance in that race. How "endurancey" it is depends on the number of reps and the rest interval.
I don't know of any swimmers who train primarily (or even very often) just by swimming straight for long periods of time, if that is how you are defining "endurance work."
To summarize the whole thread very rapidly. Take someone who's best 1500 is let's say... 24min flat. I do not care at this point about this guy's performance over the 100m.
Take the guy, put him on sole speed development until the 100m comes close to 1min flat. All 25/50/100/200m based training. Could take 2 or 3 years. No endurance work at all.
Your definition of "speed" and "endurance" work might differ from mine (granted, those are pretty vague terms).
For me, speedwork is basically all-out sprinting over very short distances (usually 12.5 or 25 yards) with a lot of rest.
I disagree strongly with the notion that "25/50/100/200m based training" is not "endurance work," though I guess maybe that's your point? Tons of studies out there show that interval-training, with distances short relative to the target race, will improve performance in that race. How "endurancey" it is depends on the number of reps and the rest interval.
I don't know of any swimmers who train primarily (or even very often) just by swimming straight for long periods of time, if that is how you are defining "endurance work."
