Fortress' impressive three world record performance over the weekend made me think of this topic. Obviously the things she's doing are working well for the events she likes to swim. She concentrates on SDKs, fast swimming with lots of rest and drylands to aid in explosiveness. Long aerobic sets just aren't a part of her training regime, from what I've seen.
Almost every organized training group I've swum with, on the other hand, focuses on long aerobic sets, short rest, not a whole lot of fast stuff, etc. Basically the polar opposite of how Fortress trains. In my opinion this probably works pretty well for those who swim longer events, but really does very little for sprinters. The sprint events are almost always the most popular events at meets, so why do people choose to train aerobically? I think there are a number of factors at play. There's the much maligned triathletes. There's those who don't compete and "just want to get their yardage in." There's a historical precedent of lots of yardage being the way to go.
So what do you all think? How does you or your team train? I know lots of regular bloggers here DO train differently than my perception of the norm. Examples include Ande, Chris S. and Speedo. Are too many masters teams stuck in a training regime that is not at all what many of their swimmers need to get faster?
I'm one of those mostly non-competitive swimmers. What competing I've done the past few years has mostly been postal swims. (There is also GTD.) The team I currently swim with has 75-minute workouts, of which I can generally make two, maybe three, per week. I can make it to a one-hour lap swim on Saturday as well. From my perspective, most of the practices seem more "sprinty" to me than I would like. My shoulder definitely doesn't like sprinting. I lost my paddles a couple years ago and don't plan to ever buy another pair.
Hopefully, my next events will be the 5k & 10k postal swims. It's rare when any set at practice includes an individual element of more than 150-200 yards. During lap swim Saturday, my "main set" was 3x500, done mostly to test my shoulder. I quoted "main set" because my total distance was a whopping 2700 yards.
I can understand that sprinters will want higher intensity and more rest than the typical club practice provides, but there are those of us who sit on the other side and wish for somewhat more distance-focused workouts.
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I'm one of those mostly non-competitive swimmers. What competing I've done the past few years has mostly been postal swims. (There is also GTD.) The team I currently swim with has 75-minute workouts, of which I can generally make two, maybe three, per week. I can make it to a one-hour lap swim on Saturday as well. From my perspective, most of the practices seem more "sprinty" to me than I would like. My shoulder definitely doesn't like sprinting. I lost my paddles a couple years ago and don't plan to ever buy another pair.
Hopefully, my next events will be the 5k & 10k postal swims. It's rare when any set at practice includes an individual element of more than 150-200 yards. During lap swim Saturday, my "main set" was 3x500, done mostly to test my shoulder. I quoted "main set" because my total distance was a whopping 2700 yards.
I can understand that sprinters will want higher intensity and more rest than the typical club practice provides, but there are those of us who sit on the other side and wish for somewhat more distance-focused workouts.
Skip
