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?
Everyone's gotta swim the first 50.
If you don't have a fast first 50, you won't have a fast 100.
If you don't have a fast 100, you won't have a fast 200.
If you don't have a fast 200....and so on!
Different types of Sprinting - pure power generation vs. easy speed vs. reducing your rate of decreasing speed!
Very well put. Endurance means a low rate of speed decrease. The faster you are, the more speed you have to lose. You can get better in endurance races by being a faster sprinter.
I agree with the sentiment that distance swimmers can usually benefit from a little more speed. Heck, you look at the top elite milers and most of them have a pretty decent max speed. (The converse is probably not true, but most sprinters I know should work on their lactate tolerance more.)
At the same time, I have have known quite a few excellent distance swimmers who do not have a fast 50, or even a very fast 200 (Jeff Erwin is a masters swimmer around my age who fits this bill). Many of the best ones never lifted seriously either and aren't that strong; they just never, ever seem to get tired.
Pure speed and aerobic endurance are not one and the same, and in fact focusing on one too much can be to the detriment to the other. It is a dangerous oversimplification to imply otherwise, IMO. The best distance swimmers I know do not "reduce their rate of speed reduction" at all, in fact they seem to get faster and stronger as the race progresses. I have lost many a race to Erwin on the last 100, and my splits were not getting slower. His top speed at the beginning of the race can't match mine...but at the end of the race it's a different story.
BUT getting back to the original question: distance swimmers certainly need to practice race-pace regularly, it is just that those practices may look quite different than those of sprinters or mid-D types. And to repeat: yes, I do think that distance swimmers need to work on their top speed. Just not nearly as much as a 50 specialist (which I hope is obvious).
Everyone's gotta swim the first 50.
If you don't have a fast first 50, you won't have a fast 100.
If you don't have a fast 100, you won't have a fast 200.
If you don't have a fast 200....and so on!
Different types of Sprinting - pure power generation vs. easy speed vs. reducing your rate of decreasing speed!
Very well put. Endurance means a low rate of speed decrease. The faster you are, the more speed you have to lose. You can get better in endurance races by being a faster sprinter.
I agree with the sentiment that distance swimmers can usually benefit from a little more speed. Heck, you look at the top elite milers and most of them have a pretty decent max speed. (The converse is probably not true, but most sprinters I know should work on their lactate tolerance more.)
At the same time, I have have known quite a few excellent distance swimmers who do not have a fast 50, or even a very fast 200 (Jeff Erwin is a masters swimmer around my age who fits this bill). Many of the best ones never lifted seriously either and aren't that strong; they just never, ever seem to get tired.
Pure speed and aerobic endurance are not one and the same, and in fact focusing on one too much can be to the detriment to the other. It is a dangerous oversimplification to imply otherwise, IMO. The best distance swimmers I know do not "reduce their rate of speed reduction" at all, in fact they seem to get faster and stronger as the race progresses. I have lost many a race to Erwin on the last 100, and my splits were not getting slower. His top speed at the beginning of the race can't match mine...but at the end of the race it's a different story.
BUT getting back to the original question: distance swimmers certainly need to practice race-pace regularly, it is just that those practices may look quite different than those of sprinters or mid-D types. And to repeat: yes, I do think that distance swimmers need to work on their top speed. Just not nearly as much as a 50 specialist (which I hope is obvious).
