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 can't just lurk any longer. I have been pissed for the last few days and this thread is the straw that breaks the camel's back.
In the last two days we swam 400s in different flavors as the main set and one day of last week we were given a wonderful set, 8x400 fr, I hate that stuff. When swimming such sets I couldn't be less focused, I just loaf through the practice.
I know for sure that this way I am not doing what I need to do in order to swim my events, this is very frustrating. I feel like I'm wasting my time, not to mention the thoughts that come across my mind when I think about the months I wasted swimming aerobic sets with no effect on my racing performance.
Another point is the following, which I'm not sure how valid is for Masters as they're kind of out of their teens. I swim with kids from age 13 to 20, I'm not a coach but I think that workouts should be differentiated and based on the stage of development of a kid's physique, which I never see happening where I swim at. Isn't it wrong that a 20-year-old male swims the same workout of a 13-year-old girl without any strength training, only with tighter intervals?
Anyway, I think I'm going to ask my coach if I can swim on my own from now on, cutting back on distance swum and doing 200 race pace sets and fast fly with lots of rest coupled with strength training. Not sure whether he will take it well.
If he accepts I'm going to use the immense knowledge of you USMS members to write my own workouts. This forum has already helped me learn a lot about swimming so thank you guys for being out there and sharing your experience with other swimmers who want to improve.
I can't just lurk any longer. I have been pissed for the last few days and this thread is the straw that breaks the camel's back.
In the last two days we swam 400s in different flavors as the main set and one day of last week we were given a wonderful set, 8x400 fr, I hate that stuff. When swimming such sets I couldn't be less focused, I just loaf through the practice.
I know for sure that this way I am not doing what I need to do in order to swim my events, this is very frustrating. I feel like I'm wasting my time, not to mention the thoughts that come across my mind when I think about the months I wasted swimming aerobic sets with no effect on my racing performance.
Another point is the following, which I'm not sure how valid is for Masters as they're kind of out of their teens. I swim with kids from age 13 to 20, I'm not a coach but I think that workouts should be differentiated and based on the stage of development of a kid's physique, which I never see happening where I swim at. Isn't it wrong that a 20-year-old male swims the same workout of a 13-year-old girl without any strength training, only with tighter intervals?
Anyway, I think I'm going to ask my coach if I can swim on my own from now on, cutting back on distance swum and doing 200 race pace sets and fast fly with lots of rest coupled with strength training. Not sure whether he will take it well.
If he accepts I'm going to use the immense knowledge of you USMS members to write my own workouts. This forum has already helped me learn a lot about swimming so thank you guys for being out there and sharing your experience with other swimmers who want to improve.
