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?
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I'm also in the yes and no camp!
For me I like the yardage, I have always been better at distance. Even as a kid my 50s were relatively better than my 25s, then my 100s were better and now I'm at 200/500. Also swimming is my primary (err - only) cardio workout I do, therefore if I'm not gettng in at least 3000 yards an hour, I feel short-changed!
However, I know that those short, intense burst are good for us too, and that last year when I was racing 50s and 100s, training at speed was the right thing to be doing.
So comes down to what has been said before I guess - train like you want to race.
I'm also in the yes and no camp!
For me I like the yardage, I have always been better at distance. Even as a kid my 50s were relatively better than my 25s, then my 100s were better and now I'm at 200/500. Also swimming is my primary (err - only) cardio workout I do, therefore if I'm not gettng in at least 3000 yards an hour, I feel short-changed!
However, I know that those short, intense burst are good for us too, and that last year when I was racing 50s and 100s, training at speed was the right thing to be doing.
So comes down to what has been said before I guess - train like you want to race.
