Rich Abrahams- Atlanta

My championship prep phase of training was pretty typical with one major exception. In January, a bunch of masters swimmers were tested at Mike Mann’s Swim Labs by the head of the University of Colorado’s performance physiology program. Our first test was to swim 4 minutes very easy and then progressively increase resistance/effort. While the accuracy of the resistance in the flume was a total guess, the most revealing result for me was that when I thought I was going very easy, I was going too hard (based on blood lactate and HR). This from the guy (me) who preaches that when masters swimmers swim slowly, they swim too fast. Perceived effort can be very misleading. Anyway, he convinced me that at least one day a week I had to go very easy and preferably non-stop. For me that was keeping my HR below 120 for around 30 minutes total swim time. His proposition was that while it would not directly improve my racing conditioning, it would enhance my lactate workouts, enabling me to work harder and recover better (I won’t get into the scientific explanation he gave). Well, it seemed to work. My lactate workouts were not as devastating physically and I was able to do higher quality work at a lower cost. It may be coincidental, but I could recover from my races at nationals better than previously, and my best effort was my 10th swim at the end of the third day. However, actual sprint times in practice leading up to nationals were not better than in previous years. Rich If you have not seen it, there is an interesting power point presentation by Genadijus Sololovas on lactate clearance at www.nisd.net/.../UnderstandingLactateClearance.ppt . You will see that his tests suggest that sprinters should warm down at 50-55% max velocity for 25 - 30 minutes after a race. How does that fit in with Mann's suggestions?

My championship prep phase of training was pretty typical with one major exception. In January, a bunch of masters swimmers were tested at Mike Mann’s Swim Labs by the head of the University of Colorado’s performance physiology program. Our first test was to swim 4 minutes very easy and then progressively increase resistance/effort. While the accuracy of the resistance in the flume was a total guess, the most revealing result for me was that when I thought I was going very easy, I was going too hard (based on blood lactate and HR). This from the guy (me) who preaches that when masters swimmers swim slowly, they swim too fast. Perceived effort can be very misleading. Anyway, he convinced me that at least one day a week I had to go very easy and preferably non-stop. For me that was keeping my HR below 120 for around 30 minutes total swim time. His proposition was that while it would not directly improve my racing conditioning, it would enhance my lactate workouts, enabling me to work harder and recover better (I won’t get into the scientific explanation he gave). Well, it seemed to work. My lactate workouts were not as devastating physically and I was able to do higher quality work at a lower cost. It may be coincidental, but I could recover from my races at nationals better than previously, and my best effort was my 10th swim at the end of the third day. However, actual sprint times in practice leading up to nationals were not better than in previous years. Rich If you have not seen it, there is an interesting power point presentation by Genadijus Sololovas on lactate clearance at www.nisd.net/.../UnderstandingLactateClearance.ppt . You will see that his tests suggest that sprinters should warm down at 50-55% max velocity for 25 - 30 minutes after a race. How does that fit in with Mann's suggestions?