In threads where training philosophy comes up, discussions of TRIMPS and TSS and other training models occasionally intrude. These models are not very well known, and even more poorly understood, so probably SolarEnergy, qbrain and I are just talking to each other and killing threads in those conversations. In any case, I figured I would present a brief overview of what it is that we're talking about when this terminology starts showing up.
Best case, this will introduce these models to the subset of swimmers (or coaches) who would be interested enough to use them, but didn't previously know enough to do so.
Plus, even if you're not the type to be interested in quantifying your training, it can be useful to think about workouts in this general framework.
And, at the very least, this might serve as a place to discuss some of the details without worrying about driving those other threads too far off-topic.
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I was thinking about getting multipliers the same way, qbrain. I think that makes perfect sense. I'm presumably expending about the same amount of total effort/energy in an all-out 200 of any stroke; BR is slower just because it's a less efficient stroke.
I might prefer to get the mulitpliers from my own PRs, though, because these are swimmer-dependent constants I'm not willing to sweep under the rug. I'm a much better breaststroker than freestyler, relatively speaking. Which means my breaststroke is less imperfect -- compared to the WR ideal -- than my freestyle is. My own personal multiplier for BR would be 1.35.
I'm a pretty lousy butterflier (especially over 200) so I get a multiplier of 1.6 there.
I kind of like the self-correcting nature of this approach. I get more points for swimming the strokes at which I suck the worst. Which is where I have the most room for improvement.
This turns qbrain's formula into
points = d^3 t*^2 / (t^2 d*^3)
where
d = distance swum
t = time taken
t* = PR time
d* = distance of PR
This completely renorms the point scale. (1 point is now equivalent in effort to swimming a PR for a 200 m race.) You can multiply by 100 or 1000 or whatever you like to make the point scale sufficiently impressive looking.
I was thinking about getting multipliers the same way, qbrain. I think that makes perfect sense. I'm presumably expending about the same amount of total effort/energy in an all-out 200 of any stroke; BR is slower just because it's a less efficient stroke.
I might prefer to get the mulitpliers from my own PRs, though, because these are swimmer-dependent constants I'm not willing to sweep under the rug. I'm a much better breaststroker than freestyler, relatively speaking. Which means my breaststroke is less imperfect -- compared to the WR ideal -- than my freestyle is. My own personal multiplier for BR would be 1.35.
I'm a pretty lousy butterflier (especially over 200) so I get a multiplier of 1.6 there.
I kind of like the self-correcting nature of this approach. I get more points for swimming the strokes at which I suck the worst. Which is where I have the most room for improvement.
This turns qbrain's formula into
points = d^3 t*^2 / (t^2 d*^3)
where
d = distance swum
t = time taken
t* = PR time
d* = distance of PR
This completely renorms the point scale. (1 point is now equivalent in effort to swimming a PR for a 200 m race.) You can multiply by 100 or 1000 or whatever you like to make the point scale sufficiently impressive looking.
