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 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.
I agree with Allison here. I think there is enormous variation between different swimmers, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to optimal training.
The expression "garbage yards" is used so often on these forums that the concept has more or less entered the Conventional Wisdom as an indisputable fact--along with now debunked notions such as "stretching is good for you" and "eating a box of powdered Jell-O before a race will help you swim faster."
When it comes to swim training, there is an awful lot of proof by anecdote. Hey, it works for Leslie, it will work for everybody!
Personally, I think the single most important factor in Leslie's world records was her relentless training pursuit of perfect SDKs. In many ways, SDK swimming really is a fifth stroke. Though most kids coming up now learn these as part of the sport, most of us semi-centenarians did not practice these at all in our formative years because they had not, in fact, been invented yet!
As Jazz points out, if you ever swim a practice with Leslie, you will be amazed at how much time she spends underwater--"shooting" off into the blue ether like a dolphin with her monofin or regular fins.
I agree with the general principle that you need to train the distance and intensity you want to swim in meets. And Leslie does, indeed, do a lot of extremely high intensity, long rest sets.
But it's the SDK component of this that I think accounts for the lion's share of her superiority over her competitors. Watch the video of her swimming her races, and you wonder where she has disappeared to for much of the time.
Getting back to garbage yards, I suffered from a detached retina in January, was out of the pool for a couple weeks as a consequence, and got 19 miles behind in my Go The Distance goal. When I was cleared to swim again, the only way I could catch up was long distance garbage yard swims.
I am no Leslie, but I nonetheless did in jammers at age FINA 59 a time in the SCM 100 that was .3 slower than what I swam at age FINA 56. I didn't do any weightlifting. I did a few sprints in our regular practices when we were called upon to do sprints. But mainly I swam "garbage yards."
For me, at least, they seem to work pretty well.
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.
I agree with Allison here. I think there is enormous variation between different swimmers, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach to optimal training.
The expression "garbage yards" is used so often on these forums that the concept has more or less entered the Conventional Wisdom as an indisputable fact--along with now debunked notions such as "stretching is good for you" and "eating a box of powdered Jell-O before a race will help you swim faster."
When it comes to swim training, there is an awful lot of proof by anecdote. Hey, it works for Leslie, it will work for everybody!
Personally, I think the single most important factor in Leslie's world records was her relentless training pursuit of perfect SDKs. In many ways, SDK swimming really is a fifth stroke. Though most kids coming up now learn these as part of the sport, most of us semi-centenarians did not practice these at all in our formative years because they had not, in fact, been invented yet!
As Jazz points out, if you ever swim a practice with Leslie, you will be amazed at how much time she spends underwater--"shooting" off into the blue ether like a dolphin with her monofin or regular fins.
I agree with the general principle that you need to train the distance and intensity you want to swim in meets. And Leslie does, indeed, do a lot of extremely high intensity, long rest sets.
But it's the SDK component of this that I think accounts for the lion's share of her superiority over her competitors. Watch the video of her swimming her races, and you wonder where she has disappeared to for much of the time.
Getting back to garbage yards, I suffered from a detached retina in January, was out of the pool for a couple weeks as a consequence, and got 19 miles behind in my Go The Distance goal. When I was cleared to swim again, the only way I could catch up was long distance garbage yard swims.
I am no Leslie, but I nonetheless did in jammers at age FINA 59 a time in the SCM 100 that was .3 slower than what I swam at age FINA 56. I didn't do any weightlifting. I did a few sprints in our regular practices when we were called upon to do sprints. But mainly I swam "garbage yards."
For me, at least, they seem to work pretty well.
