On frequent occasions, I feel my form fall apart on tougher sets, but I finish regardless of my form. I feel it is more important to force my body to undergo the physiological adaptation resulting from these "near death" sets than to worry about maintaining form.
As long as I imprint the correct form in less strenuous sets I feel it is OK to gut tougher sets out when my form is falling apart. Many times I finish my workout with some shorter repeats to finish and leave the pool with the correct form imprinted in my mind.
This post is as a result of one of today's sets where I simply did not want to "give up" and switch from fly to free. I felt it was important to finish it the way I intended to give me a metal boost that I can do it as well as force the body to adapt. Is this mentality towards training wrong?
I think this is something of a chicken-egg question.
My $0.02: "Muscling through" practices is not a good thing to be doing, but it happens, just as other bad habits do (like breathing off the walls). One thing I have found in my brief life as a Masters swimmer is that I am much less likely to fall into this sort of behavior than I was as a high schooler, probably because there's less pressure to perform at practice, but also because I'm much mentally stronger that I was 20 years ago.
I think this is something of a chicken-egg question.
My $0.02: "Muscling through" practices is not a good thing to be doing, but it happens, just as other bad habits do (like breathing off the walls). One thing I have found in my brief life as a Masters swimmer is that I am much less likely to fall into this sort of behavior than I was as a high schooler, probably because there's less pressure to perform at practice, but also because I'm much mentally stronger that I was 20 years ago.
