This past weekend I did practice with the age groupers. 2 sets we did back to back were working on lung control. First set consisted of 16x25's with fins. First 8 were on 1:30 last 8 on 2. Not so bad huh? Here is the kicker. Before swimming the 25 (sprint no breath) you first went under water and held breath for 15 seconds then when time was up coach banged on gutter and u would take off and sprint the 25 no breath. There was no breath in between 15 seconds under water to when u pushed off either.
So, the first 4x25's u were under for 15, the next 4 u were under for 30 seconds, the next 4 under water for 45 seconds and last 4 where under for a minute. I was able to make the 15 and 30 ones and I made one of each in the 45 and minute. I was amazed that some of the kids actually made all of them!
After that set, we followed up with 20x25's on 30. This was not that big a deal but we had to get out at each end and dive in, which got tiresome near the end.
Ive never been a big fan of lung busters or anything, kinda like to breath!
I'd put extreme hypoxic sets in the same category as football practice without letting the players drink water,a wrong headed idea about what toughness means.I do think reasonable underwater work is useful like extra SDK off the wall or 2 pullout BR turns but anything past about 20 sec and you are asking for trouble.
The purpose is to increase oxygen debt before the 25, but I still don't understand why that would be beneficial.
Me neither, that's why I was puzzled and thought it was more of a game.
I think some hypoxic work/CO2 tolerance is necessary if you want to stay underwater and SDK on fly or back. But no need to torture yourself. And, as I said I don't see the benefit of breath control sets for freestyle (e.g., breathe 3-5-7-9) at all.
I have noticed that there seems to be a trend towards breath control sets among age-group and college coaches. I do have to wonder about the wisdom of some masters swimmers doing these sorts of things. For example, the other day, I was doing a workout a college kid had brought home. One of the sets was as follows:
12 x 50 free on :40 with every third 50 ONLY ONE BREATH ALLOWED
With my health issues - asthma and autonomic dysfunction, I wasn't even going to go there. I did the set on the interval, but on the 50s, I took at least two breaths per length.
Hypoxic sets were big back in the early 80s and then went away for awhile. I wonder why the return of such sets as above.
