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?
There is no avoiding it, in my opinion. Once you cross that lactate threshold line, your muscles can't maintain the same form as before. But if you don't practice sometimes in this state, your body won't be able to get used to this.
I don't believe this business of "ingraining bad form" into muscle memory unless you spend most of your practice time swimming with poor form. This doesn't appear to be the case with you. I think you just lose it when you're really tired and tight. But again, if you don't practice in this condition occasionally, you won't be able to swim races in this condition--and a good race, particularly 100 or more, always involves some discomfort of this type.
For what it's worth, one other consideration:
Sometimes your stroke feels horrible, but if you were to film it, you might be surprised how relatively unaffected it looks. I'm not saying it looks great, but it probably isn't nearly as ugly as it feels. Next time you swim a 100 in a meet, get somebody to film you. Chances are you will feel like the last 10-15 yards are really broken down--but it won't seem nearly as bad on the video.
There is no avoiding it, in my opinion. Once you cross that lactate threshold line, your muscles can't maintain the same form as before. But if you don't practice sometimes in this state, your body won't be able to get used to this.
I don't believe this business of "ingraining bad form" into muscle memory unless you spend most of your practice time swimming with poor form. This doesn't appear to be the case with you. I think you just lose it when you're really tired and tight. But again, if you don't practice in this condition occasionally, you won't be able to swim races in this condition--and a good race, particularly 100 or more, always involves some discomfort of this type.
For what it's worth, one other consideration:
Sometimes your stroke feels horrible, but if you were to film it, you might be surprised how relatively unaffected it looks. I'm not saying it looks great, but it probably isn't nearly as ugly as it feels. Next time you swim a 100 in a meet, get somebody to film you. Chances are you will feel like the last 10-15 yards are really broken down--but it won't seem nearly as bad on the video.
