Quantifying training

This doesn't make sense. If you are traveling the same distance in the same time with the same stroke, why would energy be different? The problem I have with fly is that it becomes harder to maintain stoke mechanics as you tire. Slowing down really does not help me. So, the more I swim, the more energy it takes to swim. I realize this could be different for others (like the guy who swam the 1000 all fly at Zones last year) but I do not have a gear that would allow me to swim fly with minimal effort.

Q. Would the energy expenditure for swimming a 400 back be the same as for swimming a 400 fly? Since my 400 fly time would undoubtedly be slower than 400 back, there would be more "energy points" for the 400 back. This system does not reward kick sets, drills, warm up or cool down. Swimming efficiency is plainly not within the scope of the system; it is aimed at tracking adaptations like lactate tolerance. So it is probably appropriate that drills, wu and wd not be rewarded much. I think that is an improvement over the "a yard is a yard" approach, myself. Kick sets, not so much. Oh well, nothing is perfect. An appropriate multiplier might help but would be hard to find. (I notice that most people don't work kick sets as hard as swim sets, at least in practices I frequent.) The second purpose is to contribute towards training cycle planning (for injury prevention, peaking, taper, etc). I don't know enough yet to compare them to other alternatives for this purpose. Some thoughts... -- Q-points are not all that transferable between people of differing abilities. 1000 points for me will probably not represent the same amount of training as 1000 points for someone else. That might be okay if the time constants associated with the impulse response are a little more uniform. (They probably are, but I'm sure not everyone has the same time constants.) -- Q-points are, obviously, for swimming only. Personally, I get a pretty substantial taper effect when I curtail cross-training activities, particularly weights. -- It might not be all that difficult to set up comparable systems for other activities. For example, I usually do something like weight-lifting and cycling as my cross-training. If you had a power meter on your bike, cycling would be easy: integrate power output. (Without a power meter, a little more difficult: how incorporate the effects of hills or wind? I can see the value in a HR monitor here.) Weights might be something like total weight lifted or a similar proxy. But regardless of any method used to quantify cross-training activities, I suspect the greatest uncertainty (by far) would be in quantifying the "cross-training effect" on swimming. A given energy expenditure on the bike will not yield the same effect on swimming performance as that energy expended in the water.

Does the guy who swam the 1,000 fly swim on your team? I think his name is Rodney and I have not seen him since 2009 SC Zones. No, I don't know him. I only saw him because I didn't have a lot of options to swim on that Sunday and I decided I could swim the 1000 as a warm-up.

This doesn't make sense. If you are traveling the same distance in the same time with the same stroke, why would energy be different? Spoken like someone who must swim fly either well, or not at all! The energy is different for the back half of a fly swim because he is (I am) "going vertical" and unable to maintain good form. The swimmer-dependent constants don't just change from stroke to stroke... in butterfly they change from lap to lap!

Are you sure? Both increased efficiency and increased lactate tolerance will result in more points if either adaption is used to swim faster in future workouts. +1 That's why, in the same time, waste of energy that occurs during fly training, that results in less points compared to back stroke is kind of bugging me a little. Not much though. It's secondary. True. I wouldn't have bothered if I could strap a data acquisition computer to me like cyclists and runners can do. At that point, the data is available for better analysis. The number of times I can keep in my head during practice to later put in the computer is limited. Cyclists and runners face similar issues. Data acquisition is relatively simple on the Bike, but for running it's a different story. Big debates exist as to if we should try and input Weight Lifting equivalent scoring data. No conscientious. I personally do not log weight lifting data at all. However I do log my aerobic based cross training data. The biggest taper effect from weights comes from decreased tissue damage I would guess, not decreased energy usage. Let us not forget glycogen related adaptation here, since it's probably one of the thing that is common to both weight lifting and swimming. Glycogen probably depletes at a rate that is fairly similar to that of swim sprinting. My point being, I think tissue damage and recovery from that is not easily modeled and is critical to taper. Well put. I think that muscle tissue damage recovery time goes parallel to time to replenish glycogen levels. So it ain't a bad thing to completely forget one in favor of the other. That said though, I do not (and probably never will) log any weight resistance data, probably because it occupies a ridiculously low portion of my total weekly training time.

Spoken like someone who must swim fly either well, or not at all! The energy is different for the back half of a fly swim because he is (I am) "going vertical" and unable to maintain good form. The swimmer-dependent constants don't just change from stroke to stroke... in butterfly they change from lap to lap! :) That might prove difficult to model accurately. Would you really want more points as form falls apart? There is a local Masters coach, who happens to also be an Olympic level flyer, that advocates a little fly done well is much better than a lot of fly done poorly. Steve, I think I like your idea behind the ratios better than using a standard (world records, time standards) method. No reason to punish working on weaknesses.

I realize this could be different for others (like the guy who swam the 1000 all fly at Zones last year) but I do not have a gear that would allow me to swim fly with minimal effort. I do have this gear. It brings my fly time very close to, if not little slower than my breaststroke work. Like Q mentioned though, what makes all this difficult to model is that the fatigue rate (duration/speed) whilst swimming the Fly isn't parallel to that of Backstroke or BreastStroke. A 400 fly in 7min30sec will cost me pretty much the same energy as a 400 *** done in 7min30sec, but a 50 fly done in 38sec will cost me less than a 50 *** done in 38sec.

I think that muscle tissue damage recovery time goes parallel to time to replenish glycogen levels. A paper cut takes a couple days to heal. A good elbow scrape takes two weeks. Muscles restore glycogen at a rate of 5% an hour. Based on this, I don't think tapering for 2 to 3 weeks is really to restore glycogen.

The problem I have with fly is that it becomes harder to maintain stoke mechanics as you tire. Slowing down really does not help me. So, the more I swim, the more energy it takes to swim. I realize this could be different for others (like the guy who swam the 1000 all fly at Zones last year) but I do not have a gear that would allow me to swim fly with minimal effort. I will admit that one of the assumptions I made for energy points was that the stroke was consistent, and I agree that is not a good assumption for fly. The other strokes degrade a little more gracefully :) Does the guy who swam the 1,000 fly swim on your team? I think his name is Rodney and I have not seen him since 2009 SC Zones.

A paper cut takes a couple days to heal. A good elbow scrape takes two weeks. Muscles restore glycogen at a rate of 5% an hour. Based on this, I don't think tapering for 2 to 3 weeks is really to restore glycogen. For example, muscle strength of the trained group recovered to the baseline by 3 days after exercise, where the untrained group showed approximately 40% lower strength than baseline. These results suggest that resistance-trained men are less susceptible to muscle damage induced by maximal eccentric exercise than untrained subjects. 3 days for returning back to baseline level (using plasma creatine kinase activity as an indicator, which is often the case in these sort of less invasive studies) is consistent with what I learned when I was trained in my exercise physiology classes, as part of the coaching certification. Full glycogen replenishment can take up to 72 hours, so all in all, fairly close. Over the years, it's been generally accepted that the acute fatigue caused by training takes 7 days to fade out. Since we can not afford to cut training by 100% (to let 100% of the fatigue to fade out in 7 days), that may explain why an effective taper spans over more than 7 days. In other words, you are causing more tissue damage and glyco depletion and NS fatigue during this tapering phase, hence the fact that it takes more time that it would normally take to get rid of this overreaching. If you would cut your training by 100%, all fatigue related markers would probably go back to baseline within this 7 day time frame. Muscle tissue damage can not be compared to scraping an elbow. The trauma is not the same, exposure to several components which slow down the healing process probably play a big role in your scraped elbow recovery time.