By viewing "base" as the capacity to do work, you're saying only the aerobic component is relevant. Hmmmm, that was not my intention. Because that would imply that I know with accuracy where aerobic ends, and anaerobic begins (impossible). It would also imply that I know up to which point anaerobic work helps aerobic, and vice versa(Also Impossible).
That said I agree that the Base is always mostly aerobic. Weight lifters, and to a large extent 100m sprinters (running) could not probably care less about this data. throughout history, I think it is fair to state that TRIMP failed to impose itself to, for instance, among body builders. That, despite several attempts.
But that doesn't mean the same score will tell you the status (fatigue, fitness, performance potential) of your anaerobic energy pathways, or that doing LSD is good training for a 50. No. It will tell you the status of your overall system (glyco availability, muscle freshness, nervous system recovery status etc....). That's enough for most coaches.
That way, a rider specializing over the Kilo could analyze the data as follow: "For this season I built a base up to 60tss/d, took me 24weeks, then spent 12weeks targeting anaerobic capacity work, did cost me 15tss/d (base is now down to 45tss/d) then I tapered for the World Championship, my Base felt down to 30tss/d and yet I achieve my personal best and won a medal."
Base per metabolic system is often referred to as training distribution. That portion of my Base is made of 85% of mostly aerobic work / 15% of mostly anaerobic work. We constantly keep an eye on it. Very useful, but that alone doesn't make overall ability to perform work useless, even for sprinters.
Of course, it's all semantic. If you guys are not comfortable with the idea of considering your CTL (Chronic Training Load) as your Base, it's really up to you. CTL though is there to stay. And it will always include all your work, obviously. Your proposal of splitting this in 2 chunks would involved, in terms you could easily relate to, creating and maintaining two Excel TRIMP application, logging all your aerobic in the Aerobic Trimp sheet, all your anaerobic in your Anaerobic Trimp sheet. I really see no use of doing this but you may see one use. It's fine.
Maybe it's what you already do?
This concept dates back to 35 years ago, and has been submitted to *massive* pair review.
I can not think of a exercise training specific proposal that received more *heat* than Canadian Banister's TRIMP.
I'll dispute the claim of "massive" peer review. Banister's 1990 article (probably the most cited) has only 79 citations, not many of which can be interpreted as validating the model.
Not that I have a problem with the validity of the dose-response model. I think it's good and I use it myself. The question of interest in this thread is whether it works for sprints.
Find me any study where any of these dose-response models have been validated for any event lasting less than a minute (in any sport). If it exists, I'd be very interested to read it.
On the contrary, the Helgerud paper linked to earlier in this thread provides evidence that just weighting harder work by its higher intensity does NOT do a sufficient job. I.e. one variable is too few.
I'll dispute the claim of "massive" peer review. Banister's 1990 article (probably the most cited) has only 79 citations, not many of which can be interpreted as validating the model. Would you happen to know of any other similar training specific proposal topic having been exposed to heat more than this one? I may be wrong of course.
I'll ask James Carter, one of Banister collaborator and friends over the course of Trimp development. He should be able to clarify. Sorry if I mislead you.
Not that I have a problem with the validity of the dose-response model. I think it's good and I use it myself. The question of interest in this thread is whether it works for sprints. As far as I am concerned, I don't think that Trimp suits sprinters needs better than a power based or even an RPE based impulse-response model, for the reason mentioned earlier. HR response it way too slow to react to short and intense bouts.
Find me any study where any of these dose-response models have been validated for any event lasting less than a minute (in any sport). If it exists, I'd be very interested to read it. You may want to address such a question on the google wattage group. You'll probably get an answer within 48 hours.
Specify that you're interested in Coggan's TSS model. The Father himself will probably answer it. In fact, I will ask the question on this group immediately and report back.
** edit **
Done! My nick there, as well as on all sports related forums is SolarEnergy.
In the meantime, why don't you give this guy here, a serious look... It marks the beginning. The first big step.
www.midweekclub.ca/articles/coggan.pdf
Would you happen to know of any other similar training specific proposal topic having been exposed to heat more than this one?
I don't know what falls under similar training specific proposal topics. But it's actually not important whether 79 citations is "massive" or not. That was actually a pretty petty nit to pick. I just wanted to keep you honest, and not let you bully people into believing that TRIMPS or TSS is a good model for anaerobic training, just because lots people use them for modeling aerobic training.
As far as I am concerned, I don't think that Trimp suits sprinters needs better than a power based or even an RPE based impulse-response model, for the reason mentioned earlier. HR response it way too slow to react to short and intense bouts.
I'd agree, but that's not my point. I'm not concerned about HR vs power, but whether any of these models (including power-based TSS) are good for modeling training for sprints.
I just looked over your previous posts in the thread to make sure I wasn't misreading them, and perhaps I was. Let me try to summarize.
The thread started off with a discussion of the claim that mega-yardage doesn't help, and grew to include the claim that "less is more" in the sense that fewer high-intensity yards can be better than more low-intensity yards.
Some people like this philosophy, and do mostly high-intensity stuff and very little aerobic work (depending on how they count).
Your principal claim, as I see it (now), is that there is still a place for some early-season LSD training in order to build an aerobic base.
In my own head, as the thread went on, I came to overgeneralize your position as being that aerobic training can substitute for high-intensity work. I see now that's not what you have said (in fact, you have said the opposite). I guess I made that mistake because (1) you appear to be trying to talk Fortress and others into doing more aerobic work and (2) all of these models do treat 50 m of hard work as fully equivalent to 150 m of lazy stuff.
If what you're saying is this...
...that in order to race a fast 100, you do have to swim lots of fast 100s in practice
... in order to swim lots of fast 100s in practice you have to think about how to train yourself to handle the training load
... for the purpose of such preparation, base is base, and it doesn't matter too much whether it comes from LSD or sprints
... then I agree, with only minor caveats.
Hopefully that's closer to your point of view, and sorry for any misinterpretation.
Hopefully that's closer to your point of view, and sorry for any misinterpretation. Oh please. I am surprised that after >100 posts already, the thread is still going in the right direction.
You've pretty much summarized my position.
1. The article
2. Me asking the OP to put numbers on those *darn* number-less statements
3. Me presenting to the swimming community the current state about how these matters are being handle by the community which I believe perform the most in this area: the cycling community
4. Me proposing to any reader a simple approach to determine if their aerobic/anaerobic balance is inline with that of their idols
And this is where things become very interesting. For example, the balance achieved when using both Allen's 100/200 breaststroke events is perfectly inline with two aforementioned world class breaststroke events. However, the same calculation done with his 50/100 reveals lots of room for improvement. IOW, his 50 suggests that his aerobic/anaerobic balance is lacking on the higher end of the aerobic spectrum.
It's up to Fortress to perform the same exercise and see. It's certainly not up to me to issue any judgment on her position in regards to the importance of training aerobic capacity.
I assume from your examples that if you maintained 1:01's on 10 100s on a 3 minute interval, you would gain the same amount of energy points as if you had a 2 minute or even 1:10 interval - the difference would be that you had less time for the rest of your workout?
Correct. If you workouts are always about the same length, energy points would be a good indication to how hard your workouts were relative to each other. The more rest you take without actually swimming faster the easier the workout is and the energy points for that workout would drop to reflect that.
40-50k / w for sprinters
Does anyone think Lezak/Adrian/Bousquet, etc. do this kind of yardage or a workout that includes 5 x 500, 5 x 400, 5 x 300 etc. at "best average"? Maglischo doesn't seem to agree with that workout for sprinters much.
And are the above averages really even feasible for most masters swimmers, who cannot typically train like age groupers for various reasons? And shouldn't they perhaps vary from short course to long course?
You didn't like that one. You get it wrong though, which doesn't help. In essence, the workout is 400 on 6min, 6min active recovery then 300 on 6min then 6min active recovery then 200 on 6min etc....
And yes he definitely agrees with this set, at page 430 of the book, the section that deals with how to build a productive aerobic capacity set. In fact Fortress, training for developing aerobic capacity is extremely simple. Takes two minutes to get to your max o2 consumption, then you'll have a lot of difficulty staying there for more than 3-4 minutes.
Nope, don't like that workout (for me personally). I haven't checked, but I'm not sure you mentioned all the active recovery before. Still, aren't you repeating that set 5x? And the 50 was "dessert"? Seems like an odd sprinter set to me. And I'm just wondering if elite sprint specialists really do it ...
4. Me proposing to any reader a simple approach to determine if their aerobic/anaerobic balance is inline with that of their idols
I had evaluated such an exponent for cycling and running, but never for swimming.
If I do the calculation for my 50/100/200 BR at Nationals (all PRs), I get
50/100 gives 1.135
100/200 gives 1.18
Using Allen as my idol, with his ~1.11 ratio, says that I'm falling off faster than I should. It also confirms that I paced the 200 poorly. It also confirms that I place better at longer races not because I'm better at them, but because others are more scared of them than I am.
Here's a interesting question: how much individual variation is there in this coefficient? Does everyone approach ~1.12 if well prepared at both distances, or will it be individual-specific, differing for those that are fast- or slow-twitched?
I believe that all Lindsay is saying is that base alone is not a good predictor of performance. More variables are needed.
This echoes the oft-heard argument that weekly yardage alone is not a sufficiently nuanced metric for training quality. That's why I hate it when these discussions get reduced to "but how many yards a week should I train?" The brief dust-up over Maglischo's numbers is a good example.
Saying that "sprinters should train X per week" (no matter value you assign X) is silly, IMO. Just because you train 15k per week doesn't mean you'll have results like Lezak, for example (and that is certainly not ALL he did). What you do matters as much as (maybe more than) how much you do.
