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?
This is a fundamentally important topic.
After all the decades of swimming programs, why don't we know already what is best (for fitness, performance, health and shoulder safety)? Consider the time, financial and injury savings if we did know. Are thousands of us needlessly swimming hundreds of thousands of yards/meters a year? After one builds aerobic conditioning, would it be better to cut back on the yardage and focus on technique drills and videos? Are quality strokes better than just swimming back and forth thousands of yards a day? Does it take a million yards/meters a year to perform optimally? How many of us are needlessly worn out and/or doing possibly counterproductive workouts?
After researching and interviewing extensively since my first scientific research into neuromuscular physiology in the 1970s, I cannot find reliable answers or even consensus. I certainly wanted to include this kind of information in my Swimmer article a year ago for which I piled a 4-foot stack of scientific and training studies.
I think for some, the amount of yards and type of swimming depends on the person's body. For some, doing a lot of high intensity, low rest yards might be just what they need to go faster. For others, technique based swimming might be better for them.
I have found now that I'm a technique focused with a mix of lactic sets type of person. My sprinting is getting faster and I'm still able to hold my long distance times with this type of training.
This is a fundamentally important topic.
After all the decades of swimming programs, why don't we know already what is best (for fitness, performance, health and shoulder safety)? Consider the time, financial and injury savings if we did know. Are thousands of us needlessly swimming hundreds of thousands of yards/meters a year? After one builds aerobic conditioning, would it be better to cut back on the yardage and focus on technique drills and videos? Are quality strokes better than just swimming back and forth thousands of yards a day? Does it take a million yards/meters a year to perform optimally? How many of us are needlessly worn out and/or doing possibly counterproductive workouts?
After researching and interviewing extensively since my first scientific research into neuromuscular physiology in the 1970s, I cannot find reliable answers or even consensus. I certainly wanted to include this kind of information in my Swimmer article a year ago for which I piled a 4-foot stack of scientific and training studies.
I think for some, the amount of yards and type of swimming depends on the person's body. For some, doing a lot of high intensity, low rest yards might be just what they need to go faster. For others, technique based swimming might be better for them.
I have found now that I'm a technique focused with a mix of lactic sets type of person. My sprinting is getting faster and I'm still able to hold my long distance times with this type of training.
