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?
Parents
Former Member
You descend 1-5 and 6-10. In addition, 6 is faster than 1, 7 is faster than 2, on down the line. It's what Q refers to as teaching yourself to swim slowly, but that's a point of some debate.
And the way some people split their races that is a skill that needs to be taught.
If someone other than geekster wants to educate me on how 10x300s double descend will teach a sprinter (up to 200s), stroke or IMer to swim faster, I am all ears... or eyeballs in this case.
The last time I had this argument with Geek, the cost of chicken in Thailand came up, but the issue remained unresolved.
You descend 1-5 and 6-10. In addition, 6 is faster than 1, 7 is faster than 2, on down the line. It's what Q refers to as teaching yourself to swim slowly, but that's a point of some debate.
And the way some people split their races that is a skill that needs to be taught.
If someone other than geekster wants to educate me on how 10x300s double descend will teach a sprinter (up to 200s), stroke or IMer to swim faster, I am all ears... or eyeballs in this case.
The last time I had this argument with Geek, the cost of chicken in Thailand came up, but the issue remained unresolved.
