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?
Chris, very good points. And, Paul, while I agree with general sentiment that d-folks need to work more on speed than they typically might they need to do, I'll offer a counter-point (n=1) from my own experience.
I can sprint as fast now in the 50 as I did back in my younger days (e.g., my 22.1 in 2008 was faster than I ever went in my teens or 20s)
I was almost as fast in my 100 (e.g., 48.1 vs. 47-mid in my late teens/20s)
By the time you get to my 200, though, my best time was 3 seconds slower now than then ... 500 was close to 20 seconds slower ... 1000 was 40 seconds and mile was 76 seconds slower.
I really didn't want to get caught up in this thread because once I got started it'd be hard for me to stop. This topic is the core of Bob Strand and my Super Session clinics and I've been writing a column on this topic quarterly for our LMSC newsletter entitled "Training to Race."
I just wanted to make one point about your last post, Patrick. From my perspective, if you trained differently in college (i.e. with an emphasis on sprints) your recent 22.1 might be a whole lot slower than your best college 50. You were able to match that time because you didn't approach your speed potential in colleege due to the way you trained then. Make any sense?
Anyway, looking forward to meeting you in person in Mesa. I've always enjoyed reading your posts.
Rich
Chris, very good points. And, Paul, while I agree with general sentiment that d-folks need to work more on speed than they typically might they need to do, I'll offer a counter-point (n=1) from my own experience.
I can sprint as fast now in the 50 as I did back in my younger days (e.g., my 22.1 in 2008 was faster than I ever went in my teens or 20s)
I was almost as fast in my 100 (e.g., 48.1 vs. 47-mid in my late teens/20s)
By the time you get to my 200, though, my best time was 3 seconds slower now than then ... 500 was close to 20 seconds slower ... 1000 was 40 seconds and mile was 76 seconds slower.
I really didn't want to get caught up in this thread because once I got started it'd be hard for me to stop. This topic is the core of Bob Strand and my Super Session clinics and I've been writing a column on this topic quarterly for our LMSC newsletter entitled "Training to Race."
I just wanted to make one point about your last post, Patrick. From my perspective, if you trained differently in college (i.e. with an emphasis on sprints) your recent 22.1 might be a whole lot slower than your best college 50. You were able to match that time because you didn't approach your speed potential in colleege due to the way you trained then. Make any sense?
Anyway, looking forward to meeting you in person in Mesa. I've always enjoyed reading your posts.
Rich
