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?
If you want to race, you need to do race pace work. And that is not limited to us sprinters.
Completely agree.
Upon further thought, I also think that another reason that many masters don't, won't, or can't train to race is that some of the physiologic stress from athletic training is cumulative with other stress. If you are working a demanding or unrewarding job, and a relative is old or ill, and your kids are acting up or out, it's easy to become overtrained even if your workout regimen builds in what should be adequate recovery, just because the other stress in your life is not letting up when you are supposed to be recovering. If stress relief is a major reason for swimming, keeping to the low-intensity aerobic work is probably exactly right, not wrong at all.
If you want to race, you need to do race pace work. And that is not limited to us sprinters.
Completely agree.
Upon further thought, I also think that another reason that many masters don't, won't, or can't train to race is that some of the physiologic stress from athletic training is cumulative with other stress. If you are working a demanding or unrewarding job, and a relative is old or ill, and your kids are acting up or out, it's easy to become overtrained even if your workout regimen builds in what should be adequate recovery, just because the other stress in your life is not letting up when you are supposed to be recovering. If stress relief is a major reason for swimming, keeping to the low-intensity aerobic work is probably exactly right, not wrong at all.
