I am impressed That Guy. Flattening the aerobic/anaerobic balance in butterfly event is extremely hard, and it denotes that you seem to be committed to a sound program. 1.17 vs 1.16, wow!!
How does your balance compute when taking the 50m and 100m? And what about Phelps'?
Again, those hard to conceive sets that you sometimes post in the butterfly lane seem to pay off well for you. Phelps as we all know has a long sprinter/mid distance profile. So dragging behind him by .01 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
Thanks Solar! If nothing else, the stats confirm that I should keep swimming the 200. I don't have a tapered & shaved 50 fly time; I've only done the 50 fly in midseason meets. (went 29.55 last year, for what it's worth) And I don't think I've ever seen Phelps swim the 50 fly. I don't think my sets are hard to conceive; if you were to swim them freestyle then they'd be pretty easy, really... :)
My own personal aerobic/anaerobic balance for 100/200 butterfly is 1.38, but that's because I could qualify for being the top wuss on this forum. Well add to it that my aerobic base for the season 2009/2010 did not exceed 1000m/d (7000m/week iow). Way too low. 30.4 over 50, 3:17 over 200 :D
Based on my time over 50 (30.4), I know I'll need to bring my aerobic/anaerobic balance down to.... 1.17 (surprised?) to have a chance for a podium at the nationals since my goal would be to take the sucker down to 2:35.
I think you can get that 200 time down without much increase in your weekly volume. My typical volume is only 10000-12000 yards/week, which isn't much more than yours.
"my goal would be"
Do or do not! There is no try!
No not at all. I'll try it first for myself before issuing any recommendation. For what it's worth, I think Skiba's comment is partly aimed at boosting his sales. Because with a simple excel spreadsheet, these complex calculations are out of the way.
What is GTD?
The data collection for Skiba model is a pain as well. Regular T3000s, HR collection and time collections is a bit much, and you have already pointed out that HR collection during interval training is inaccurate.
I don't think his model is any better that simplified power, which just requires collecting times. Most people who are interested in quality work already collect their times.
My proposal isn't proprietary, it is just stripped down physics.
Energy point (E) = (100/t)^3*t for meters
or E = (91.44/t)^3*t for yards
All you need to do is collect your times. After workout, a lookup table can translate your times into points, or a spread sheet. 50s are half the points on the lookup table for half the time, and 200s are twice the points for twice the time on the look up table. A spreadsheet would do everything for you.
t is time. If I was doing 100 repeats on 1:20, and I was hold 1:10, t=70.
GTD is go the distance, a year long program where tracking your yardage goes into a central database to be compared to others in your age group. People have complained that it encourages garbage yardage. My team is attempting to swim to Rome with our combined GTD yardage. It does provide a nice team goal that all the swimmers can contribute to, but it doesn't do much to foster good preparation for competition. Of course, competition isn't my team's focus.
I don't see much value in comparable numbers (like Skiba's Swim Score). I have comparable numbers, they are my race times. Energy points should be a fair reflection of practice intensity on the individual level. If you are practicing at a 4000 points/hour, and then jump up a few hundred points, you have increased your intensity by stepping up your program somewhere.
The data collection for Skiba model is a pain as well. Regular T3000s, HR collection and time collections is a bit much, and you have already pointed out that HR collection during interval training is inaccurate. for the record, Skiba model doesn't require HR input at all. All threshold tests can be estimated using either Riegel's based DeKoninck's prediction formulas, or Monod's based CSS (critical swim speed).
I am an extremely pragmatic person. I am certainly going to give your model a try. If it can make you feel good about it, I'd say that increased simplicity would probably make it the best model available at this time for logging and tracking Base, or whatever the name you wish to give to work capacity.
Do you share an excel spreadsheet or something? Note that I can build my own too if you prefer.
15% with a squad.
15% with one training partner
70% alone, although some of this is one-on-one with a coach.
OK then. So your question was "Should I focus on pure speed development (anaerobic power) or speed endurance (anaerobic capacity) 1 component at the time or would a mix of both be better?"
The there aren't just one answer to this question.
First, I would isolate these components. Speed endurance, or race pace training, or anaerobic capacity, or lactate tolerance, or pain tolerance is very hard. When you design a set aimed at improving this, given the recovery periods involved, I would only target this component during the set.
Pure speed can definitely be coupled with something else within the same workout. Best fit I find is to couple this with some technical. You drill then sprint over 25 or 50 y or m, then drill then sprint again etc. You can finish such a workout with some longer steady lower intensity work.
Now your next question might be: Should I address both of these within a training week? I'd say if you want to keep your schedule simple, periodization free, the answer is Yes.
Only when you reach what appears as being a hard to overcome plateau, then you may need to start periodizing your schedule to spend say, x number of weeks focusing on 1, then x number of weeks focusing on the other.
We all swim to improve (hopefully). So as long as you improve, I'd favor the simplest approaches.
Over the years, I have found that pure sprinting abilities are better developed very early in a season, even before serious aerobic development. Rational for this is that sprinting over short distances doesn't require a strong aerobic base (no prerequisite in other words). The benefit for this approach is that it allows you to increase the training speed at which all other fitness component development to take place later in the season.
I am impressed That Guy. Flattening the aerobic/anaerobic balance in butterfly event is extremely hard, and it denotes that you seem to be committed to a sound program. 1.17 vs 1.16, wow!!
How does your balance compute when taking the 50m and 100m? And what about Phelps'?
Again, those hard to conceive sets that you sometimes post in the butterfly lane seem to pay off well for you. Phelps as we all know has a long sprinter/mid distance profile. So dragging behind him by .01 is certainly nothing to be ashamed of.
My own personal aerobic/anaerobic balance for 100/200 butterfly is 1.38, but that's because I could qualify for being the top wuss on this forum. Well add to it that my aerobic base for the season 2009/2010 did not exceed 1000m/d (7000m/week iow). Way too low. 30.4 over 50, 3:17 over 200 :D
Based on my time over 50 (30.4), I know I'll need to bring my aerobic/anaerobic balance down to.... 1.17 (surprised?) to have a chance for a podium at the nationals since my goal would be to take the sucker down to 2:35.
@Q
I forgot to mention in my earlier response to your proposed model that in order to be a very good model, the numbers would have to be "compatible" for being used in an impulse-response model though. This allows for not only tracking the good (work capacity) but also the bad (fatigue).
I think you can get that 200 time down without much increase in your weekly volume. My typical volume is only 10000-12000 yards/week, which isn't much more than yours.
"my goal would be"
Do or do not! There is no try! Thanks mate, you're very right about it. I said *try* because I sometimes have a hard time not following my passions. And they bring me to do other sort of training than swimming. That is not to mention coaching which takes me at least 7hours per week (at the very least).
As for your volume, I am sure it once used to be much higher than that. And as I probably failed to explain earlier in the discussion, Base gained at earlier age leaves a footprint that never goes away. You'd just be yet another example of this.
Besides, I am 42yo. With no real training legacy. So I need to build something that will top 15k /w. Also let us not forget that my best chance for a podium is probably over 1500.
While this may make some energy sense it doesn't seem like a good set for 100 swimmers because it doesn't spend enough time at 100 pace.Since want to race the 50,100,and 200 BR I need to train all 3 at race pace which i do on different days.My favorite set on my 100 race pace days is 10X200 on about 4 min.The first 50 is at my 100 goal time(my planned 2nd 50 split) and 150 recovery.The reason it is "about" 4 min. is that I want to allow enough rest to make the goal time so some days I rest more some less.I assume that doing race pace work taxes the proper energy systems.
I don't think it makes any sense for 50/100 swimmers. 5 x 200, 300s, 400s, 500s "blasting away" at "best average" with the 50 for "dessert"? I don't see how that's particularly useful for 50/100 specialists training mostly in short course. That looks more like a garden variety mid D workout. Swimming is specialized too -- 50/100 specialists need to specialize in 50s/100s in training and sprint at race pace with ample recovery swimming. The proposed kind of aerobic work would detract from that goal. Rich Abrahams stated that he improved after taking Erich Hochstein's challenge to do more race pace work. That's not to say he did no aerobic work, as I understand his workouts, but not this set certainly. Masters swimmers only have so much time and energy. Better for sprinters to do targeted race pace work, which also will, as Allen notes, tax the energy systems. Allen's set is more typical of how I train, though even 10 x 50s @ 100 race pace is a lot.
I used the Cameron van der Burge example above because, as I understand it, when he was focusing on the 50 ***, he was doing around 4 50s off the blocks AFAP during the course of the week and the rest of his practice consisted of speed drills, technique work, recovery swimming, etc.
A couple years ago Paul Smith started a thread right on point: Do we have it (training) all wrong? - U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums. In it, he queries whether swimmers train all wrong and should do more race pace work like track athletes.
Solar Energy -- I don't do "no" aerobic capacity work. I just would never do the set you posited and I believe it would be counter productive to emphasize it. So this is sort of my response to Lindsay's question about whether it is really necessary for training sprinters.
