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 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?Yes, it does. I trained almost exclusively for the 500-1650 in high school in a very high volume yardage club; we did more quality work at Texas, but the distance guys (where I trained all except for my senior year) still did some pretty decent volume of training. I will say this, my best 400 free / 400 IM (and subsequent 500 free / 400 IM) times came when I trained one summer in the IM lane ... but, then my 1000 and 1650 were well off previous bests.
I am a firm proponent of training to race and I think that most Masters swimmer will do better (since most race 50 - 200 distances) by adding in a lot more quality than they do today.
Where I think I differ, though, is for folks who really want to train for the 1000 and 1650: for those, I think the training to race philosophy is pretty well matched by high intensity (not all out), low rest sets. For example, if I want to be getting well under 10:00 in my 1000, I'd better be doing lots of repeat 100s on a 1:05 or even 1:00 interval ... doing 10 x 100 on 4:00 all-out, IMHO, is not going to benefit my 1000 time.
Anyway, looking forward to meeting you in person in Mesa. I've always enjoyed reading your posts.
RichThanks, and me to to meeting you.
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?Yes, it does. I trained almost exclusively for the 500-1650 in high school in a very high volume yardage club; we did more quality work at Texas, but the distance guys (where I trained all except for my senior year) still did some pretty decent volume of training. I will say this, my best 400 free / 400 IM (and subsequent 500 free / 400 IM) times came when I trained one summer in the IM lane ... but, then my 1000 and 1650 were well off previous bests.
I am a firm proponent of training to race and I think that most Masters swimmer will do better (since most race 50 - 200 distances) by adding in a lot more quality than they do today.
Where I think I differ, though, is for folks who really want to train for the 1000 and 1650: for those, I think the training to race philosophy is pretty well matched by high intensity (not all out), low rest sets. For example, if I want to be getting well under 10:00 in my 1000, I'd better be doing lots of repeat 100s on a 1:05 or even 1:00 interval ... doing 10 x 100 on 4:00 all-out, IMHO, is not going to benefit my 1000 time.
Anyway, looking forward to meeting you in person in Mesa. I've always enjoyed reading your posts.
RichThanks, and me to to meeting you.
