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?
Right, but my question is how much all-out swimming per session? I would guess somewhere between 50-1000 yards or meters would be a good starting point?
I generally do no more than one race-pace event per workout. Lactate sets like 5x200 on 8:00 are not race-pace, though they're close to it. You can do lactate sets more often than once a week. In college we'd repeat a cycle roughly like this every 2-3 weeks:
Lactate set #1 this Tuesday
Distance swimmers do 4x500 on 12:00
Stroke/Mid-D swimmers do 5x200 on 8:00
Sprinters do 5x100 on 6:00
Lactate set #2 this Thursday
Distance swimmers do 5x200 on 8:00
Stroke/Mid-D swimmers do 5x100 on 6:00
Sprinters do 5x50 on 4:00?
Lactate set #3 next Tuesday
Distance swimmers do 5x100 on 6:00
Stroke/Mid-D swimmers do 5x50 on 4:00?
Sprinters do 5x25 on 3:00?
I don't really remember what the intervals were for the 50's and 25's since I was in the distance lane for 4 years. It was a tradition for at least one of the sprinters to reappear on the pool deck fully clothed while we still had swimming to do. Towards the end of each set, we did get to spread out into the empty lanes... :badday:
Right, but my question is how much all-out swimming per session? I would guess somewhere between 50-1000 yards or meters would be a good starting point?
I generally do no more than one race-pace event per workout. Lactate sets like 5x200 on 8:00 are not race-pace, though they're close to it. You can do lactate sets more often than once a week. In college we'd repeat a cycle roughly like this every 2-3 weeks:
Lactate set #1 this Tuesday
Distance swimmers do 4x500 on 12:00
Stroke/Mid-D swimmers do 5x200 on 8:00
Sprinters do 5x100 on 6:00
Lactate set #2 this Thursday
Distance swimmers do 5x200 on 8:00
Stroke/Mid-D swimmers do 5x100 on 6:00
Sprinters do 5x50 on 4:00?
Lactate set #3 next Tuesday
Distance swimmers do 5x100 on 6:00
Stroke/Mid-D swimmers do 5x50 on 4:00?
Sprinters do 5x25 on 3:00?
I don't really remember what the intervals were for the 50's and 25's since I was in the distance lane for 4 years. It was a tradition for at least one of the sprinters to reappear on the pool deck fully clothed while we still had swimming to do. Towards the end of each set, we did get to spread out into the empty lanes... :badday:
