Your opinion, would a Base building phase be required for these specialist, or are we looking at all year round anaerobic capacity focus?
The Base here is defined as this good old cliché pyramid analogy saying that if you want to grow higher peaks over shorter distances, you got to first build strong aerobic foundation.
What you are saying is you need to work on your aerobic capacity to become a faster sprinter correct?
It has been shown that after a point, increasing aerobic capacity is done at anaerobic capacity and force generation. If given that choice, I think I know which most sprinters would pick.
What you are saying is you need to work on your aerobic capacity to become a faster sprinter correct? Not quite I am sorry (for my English abilities).
What I said so far is that several studies showed that aerobic capacity contributes for 35% of the overall metabolic demand during a 100y/m. This is the running out of breath part. To be little more specific, anaerobic capacity creates accumulated o2 deficit. Aerobic capacity counterbalances this. Also, all lactic acid released in your blood would love to be oxidized later in the metabolic process. That too requires o2. That is probably the reason why a surprisingly high percentage of the overall metabolic demand for swimming a 100 goes to the aerobic component of it.
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Then I am asking about every one's opinion on the importance of building a training aerobic Base (which is certainly not limited to aerobic capacity work) prior committing to a serious anaerobic capacity development program.
In other words, does periodization still have a place in the season wide planning equation, if so, is there still a need for a Base Building phase?
I don't think my opinion is worth of a hill of beans, but I would say, no, someone concentrating solely on sprints doesn't need an aerobic phase. In fact, I'd say someone who's only interested in 50s probably doesn't need an aerobic training at all. Once you get to 100s, then some aerobic training would be worthwhile. I truly like to read anyone's opinion really. And my participation to this thread is related to 50/100 specialists. Plain 50m free specialists tend to be rare.
Doesn't make sense to you in other words? This concept that you need to build a strong Base to later build other fitness components on it?
The different systems are suited to different tasks. Sprinting is more anaerobic, and endurance is more aerobic. They overlap quite a bit, so energy system cross-training isn't necessarily useless. But nothing about these systems suggests that one is the "base", unless you happen to think that sprinting isn't real swimming because it's not painful enough or time-consuming enough. You could just as well say that nobody should attempt endurance events without first establishing a base of sprinting power. But that would be crazy sprinter talk.
In other words, the "aerobic base" concept of training is an artifact of old-school swimming culture.
In other words, the "aerobic base" concept of training is an artifact of old-school swimming culture. Well that was then. This is now:
home.trainingpeaks.com/.../the-science-of-the-performance-manager.aspx
In this long and hard (for a swimmer that doesn't know about cycling power measurement tools) article, Base is called CTL, which stands for Chronic Training Load.
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As for aerobic contribution to a 100, like shown previously, it's only 35%. However, this 35% is the top end of the aerobic metabolism. The max O2 intake, or vo2max, or aerobic capacity (all interchangeable). In order to develop one's vo2max to its full potential, there are significant swim volume done aerobically involved.
The Key vo2max event in swimming is the 400 free or IM, whatever. That event belongs 100% to the aerobic capacity spectrum. Can't this mean that a 100y/m specialist would also benefit from improving over 400?
Q, I just started skimming through this, and I must say it is excellent.
I agree. Most people would find several points of value in the article, as current swimming research has been summarized in a sentence or two per paper. I recommended it to Jazz because it is an excellent list of current research papers relevant to competitive swimming.
Perhaps it should be mandatory reading before any of us on these forums be allowed to bloviate on some tidbit of swimming minutiae of which be suspect we have inner wisdom!
I am a strong believer in empirical evidence. I am a student of the forumites who share their training experience, both positive and negative. I learn from them and compared to many I have very limited experience. My years as a competitive swimmer are very limited and thus I have little of my own experiences to draw conclusions on training methodology from. To fill these gaps, I read, and I share what I read. I try to limit my advice to matters where I might have more experience than the advised. This keeps me from advising The Fortress on kicking, Ande on tech suits and Chris Stevenson on chemistry.
You might have noticed that advice I give that comes from personal experience is limited to beginning swimmers and weight training? Other serious commentary is usually accompanied by references, not because I expect references from everyone else, but because I lack the background to make statements that researchers of the sport can.
Not sure if it covers the effect of land training and weight lifting on swimming performance, but I suspect it might provide a wee tincture of validation for those of us who hold despised views along these lines!
Yes, there are several references supporting that weight lifting does not aide swimming and one reference (Hsu), showing a benefit of weight lifting. The debate on the short term benefits of strength training is still open.
The long term benefits debate was closed at the end of April. I know you love videos, so here is video proof of the long term benefits of strength training.
YouTube- Rich Abrahams 65 years old 100 freestyle Atlanta 2010
Some examples of disproved facets of the physiological training emphases in swimming follow.
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Strength/land training is a false avenue for swimmer improvement (Bulgakova, Vorontsov, & Fomichenko, 1987; Breed, Young, & McElroy, 2000; Costill, King, Holdren, & Hargreaves, 1983; Crowe, Babington, Tanner, & Stager, 1999; Tanaka, Costill, D. Thomas, Fink, & Widrick, 1993). Occasionally, a report of the value of strength training emerges (e.g., Hsu, Hsu, & Hsieh, 1997).
THE FUTURE OF SWIMMING: “MYTHS AND SCIENCE”
Frankly I'm unsure how to parse that...
I do read blogs, including Aquageek's and Q's.
But I do learn from other sources though, including from my bunch of friends on Facebook (Coggan et al.), my bunch of books, the athletes which I coach etc...
Me too!
But 400s best average are decidedly not on my menu.
