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 it's too late for the short course season (although I'll definitely be adding more quality stuff in the next month), but I may experiment this summer with doing some true speed work. Maybe devote one workout per week to this. Does anyone have an opinion on what kind of distance these quality sets should be?
One week, do a set of 50s on 3:00 or 4:00
Another week, do a set of 100s, 6:00
then, a set of 200s, on 8:00
Maybe the 4th week,
do 2 or 3 rounds of
a fast 50
a fast 100
a fast 200
When you get closer to you taper,
do some broken 500s, 100s, etc once a week.
I think it's too late for the short course season (although I'll definitely be adding more quality stuff in the next month), but I may experiment this summer with doing some true speed work. Maybe devote one workout per week to this. Does anyone have an opinion on what kind of distance these quality sets should be?
One week, do a set of 50s on 3:00 or 4:00
Another week, do a set of 100s, 6:00
then, a set of 200s, on 8:00
Maybe the 4th week,
do 2 or 3 rounds of
a fast 50
a fast 100
a fast 200
When you get closer to you taper,
do some broken 500s, 100s, etc once a week.
