For those short of time (I know I am terribly long winded): two questions:
1. anyone here use heartrate as a major training aid or guide?
2. how do you monitor it if you do.
2a. if you use an electronic monitor, which one do you like?
The reason I ask this is because I am attempting to go scientific on my training. Since I have started with "race pace" training, where nearly 25 to 30 % of my training time is dedicated to swimming fast, I have become progressively more interested/ concerned about how hard I am actually pushing myself. The crux of the matter came one day when I actually had to back off due to an impending loss of consciousness (at least I assume that is what it was: black spots in front of my eyes and an overall foggy thought pattern that centered on "STOP" and not much else).
I have looked into heart monitors. I actually have one of the wrist-watch-only modules. It works poorly and unpredictably (and not at all right now with a presumably dead battery). My problem is that I have an abnormally slow heart rate at the best of times (bradycardia is what my insurance company likes to call it: 36 to 40 sitting still and I have no idea what it might be first thing in the morning). My blood preassure is borderline rediculously low most of the time (another issue with my insurance company). On the other hand, when I exercise my pulse can easily go to 200 or more, which is not likely to be too healthy at my 48 years of age. I don't worry too much about that; it drops practically instantaneously once I stop moving. Unfortunately that drop occurs so quickly that my wrist watch monitor never actually catches the real post repetition pulse; it takes 20 seconds to equilibrate and by that time my pulse is back down to 100 to 120. The other issue is that when I am really busting my gut I have trouble focussing my eyes so the reading on the pulsimeter is just a blur. I have used the old fashioned fingers and pace clock system, but when I am fighting for every breath, counting pulses is often more than I can manage.
BTW: my huge variance in heart rates is more of a symptom of how inefficent a swimmer I really am rather than my fitness level.
I would really like to get a top quality pulsimeter and see if I could use it for training. Any comments on how those units with the chest strap work? Is the chest strap hopelessly irritating, especially if you are really giving it your maximum effort?
If I could get a really good pulsimeter at a reasonable price (cheap enough that my wife would not need a complimentary piece of jewelry to keep her happy) my coach has all sorts of drills based on heart rate and rest times I would love to try for a while. Or I could just manage not to blow a valve out of my heart by training more intelligently.
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Former Member
For those short of time (I know I am terribly long winded): two questions:
1. anyone here use heartrate as a major training aid or guide?
2. how do you monitor it if you do.
2a. if you use an electronic monitor, which one do you like?
The reason I ask this is because I am attempting to go scientific on my training. Since I have started with "race pace" training, where nearly 25 to 30 % of my training time is dedicated to swimming fast, I have become progressively more interested/ concerned about how hard I am actually pushing myself. Several things could be said concerning this topic. I'll try to limit myself to few thoughts. Feel free to ask questions about any of these thoughts.
HR Based Training
The best way to quantify training using HR is through the TRIMP concept. It allows for quantifying a set, a workout and a full season.
Limitations
Clearly, HR Based Training is generally perfectly suitable for monitoring longer endurance based efforts. However, it's very inefficient at monitoring shorter intense work.
Monitoring or tracking or quantifying the effort requires that the measurement be suitable enough for recognizing the effort. If you swim a fast 50m interval, well you probably left a significant amount of sugar behind but your heart rate doesn't go high enough to recognize the effort.
Cardiac Drift
One limitation of HR Based training in regard to longer endurance efforts is that we now know that during prolonged endurance effort, the HR goes up and up even if the power generated remains the same. That's not good.
Power based training
There's an other approach for quantifying swim training/racing. It involves translating swim velocity into power numbers. These numbers can then be used in some algorithms to achieve pretty much the same results as if you were using TRIMP
Skiba Swim Score
www.physfarm.com/swimscore.pdf
This document explains how to turn velocity into power, and then compute these numbers to model performance.
I am desperately trying to make an Excel Spreadsheet to use this concept, but I am not good enough at maths. So if anyone is interested in swimming "by power", I'd appreciate a hand.
The Race Day
I must mention Skiba's software, Race Day, which computes all this and allows for generating graphs and stuff. With such a software, I truly believe that HR Based Training becomes a bit irrelevant.
You can download a demo and see for yourself. It's quite easy to figure the first steps out. You have an interface to input interval based sets etc, and you get a "score" for each workout. These scores get computed in a certain way, pretty much the same way as TRIMP get computed, for performance modeling.
I gave such a model a serious try last year. I could log cross-training, cycling and swim data into an application (wko). I could then follow the evolution of my fitness level. It is a great tool for assistance in how to taper.
For those short of time (I know I am terribly long winded): two questions:
1. anyone here use heartrate as a major training aid or guide?
2. how do you monitor it if you do.
2a. if you use an electronic monitor, which one do you like?
The reason I ask this is because I am attempting to go scientific on my training. Since I have started with "race pace" training, where nearly 25 to 30 % of my training time is dedicated to swimming fast, I have become progressively more interested/ concerned about how hard I am actually pushing myself. Several things could be said concerning this topic. I'll try to limit myself to few thoughts. Feel free to ask questions about any of these thoughts.
HR Based Training
The best way to quantify training using HR is through the TRIMP concept. It allows for quantifying a set, a workout and a full season.
Limitations
Clearly, HR Based Training is generally perfectly suitable for monitoring longer endurance based efforts. However, it's very inefficient at monitoring shorter intense work.
Monitoring or tracking or quantifying the effort requires that the measurement be suitable enough for recognizing the effort. If you swim a fast 50m interval, well you probably left a significant amount of sugar behind but your heart rate doesn't go high enough to recognize the effort.
Cardiac Drift
One limitation of HR Based training in regard to longer endurance efforts is that we now know that during prolonged endurance effort, the HR goes up and up even if the power generated remains the same. That's not good.
Power based training
There's an other approach for quantifying swim training/racing. It involves translating swim velocity into power numbers. These numbers can then be used in some algorithms to achieve pretty much the same results as if you were using TRIMP
Skiba Swim Score
www.physfarm.com/swimscore.pdf
This document explains how to turn velocity into power, and then compute these numbers to model performance.
I am desperately trying to make an Excel Spreadsheet to use this concept, but I am not good enough at maths. So if anyone is interested in swimming "by power", I'd appreciate a hand.
The Race Day
I must mention Skiba's software, Race Day, which computes all this and allows for generating graphs and stuff. With such a software, I truly believe that HR Based Training becomes a bit irrelevant.
You can download a demo and see for yourself. It's quite easy to figure the first steps out. You have an interface to input interval based sets etc, and you get a "score" for each workout. These scores get computed in a certain way, pretty much the same way as TRIMP get computed, for performance modeling.
I gave such a model a serious try last year. I could log cross-training, cycling and swim data into an application (wko). I could then follow the evolution of my fitness level. It is a great tool for assistance in how to taper.
