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 many of the above reason are why I train with a team setting, but do a solo workout as much as possible. The team group is good for atmosphere...but in my group, a lot of talking about fishing and gas prices, and how cold the 81-82 degree water is (:cane:). I just get in my lane and go...knowing I have 1 hour before work to get it done. I just try to get as much accomplished as possible before I get bombarded by others in the lane.
We have a very informal team practice...which is both good, and bad for all the reasons you can think of. It's open from 5:00am to 7:00am, and people arrive and leave during all hours. It's more or less an open lap swim period, where the "coach" has a set workout at the ends of the lanes in a ziploc bag to follow if you choose to. She is in the water too...after complaining about how cold it always is. But the workouts are tailored more to the majority of the group which are the elderly/moderate swimmers.
So, I guess, most of my workouts would be considered "solo".
I think many of the above reason are why I train with a team setting, but do a solo workout as much as possible. The team group is good for atmosphere...but in my group, a lot of talking about fishing and gas prices, and how cold the 81-82 degree water is (:cane:). I just get in my lane and go...knowing I have 1 hour before work to get it done. I just try to get as much accomplished as possible before I get bombarded by others in the lane.
We have a very informal team practice...which is both good, and bad for all the reasons you can think of. It's open from 5:00am to 7:00am, and people arrive and leave during all hours. It's more or less an open lap swim period, where the "coach" has a set workout at the ends of the lanes in a ziploc bag to follow if you choose to. She is in the water too...after complaining about how cold it always is. But the workouts are tailored more to the majority of the group which are the elderly/moderate swimmers.
So, I guess, most of my workouts would be considered "solo".
