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?
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Well, I'm pretty sure that the one single thing that really helped my times in 100 yard and longer events a few seasons ago was training for and participating in a charity stair climb event (roughly 100 stories). I prepared over several weeks in my own building (11 stories) by going from ground to 11th floor, which took about a minute, then getting plenty of rest riding the elevator back to the ground, getting a drink of water, and waiting for my heart rate to recover. I'd repeat this 6-8 times in a typical workout.
The actual event was about one month prior to my big taper meet for the season. I haven't done this the last two years and my times in 50-yard races are reasonably close, but anything 100 or longer I have slowed down.
Well, I'm pretty sure that the one single thing that really helped my times in 100 yard and longer events a few seasons ago was training for and participating in a charity stair climb event (roughly 100 stories). I prepared over several weeks in my own building (11 stories) by going from ground to 11th floor, which took about a minute, then getting plenty of rest riding the elevator back to the ground, getting a drink of water, and waiting for my heart rate to recover. I'd repeat this 6-8 times in a typical workout.
The actual event was about one month prior to my big taper meet for the season. I haven't done this the last two years and my times in 50-yard races are reasonably close, but anything 100 or longer I have slowed down.
