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?
Duh, I guess I should have looked at my keyboard for two seconds. I kinda like "ling," though. I might start using that in my blog. Ling is any set where you start to feel like a lingcod in the middle. Here's the lingcod: en.wikipedia.org/.../Ling_cod
Looks like me during the second half of Friday's 10 X 100 IM "test" set.
I meant to add one thing. I have recently started using a Finis Tempo Trainer, and I find it invaluable. When I do my own sets, it is sometimes hard to come up with motivation to push hard. With the tempo trainer, I just set the tempo and try to stay with it. As a result I have doubled the amount of fast yardage I do in a workout. It is much easier to just try to stay with the beep (it fits under a swim cap near your ear and beeps at whatever rate you set) than it is to keep that pace without the beep. It's kind of like having a coach directing intervals -- you don't need to think, you're just reacting. I find my mental exhaustion actually peaks before my physical exhaustion does, and this takes the mental part out of the picture. I highly recommend it for anyone trying to improve their times.
One of the biggest mistakes I see is that many coaches/swimmers fall into a pattern of coaching/training that really has no pattern. Weekly micro-cycles training tied into an overall seasonal and yearly plan takes a lot of thought and work and when only a small percentage of your swimmers are competing its easy to just train everyone hard (and often long/aerobic) because the majority of the swimmers THINK this is better for fitness (or triathlon development).
We have held to the belief that if your coming to train with us then your going to train like a "swimmer"...and to that end we have a program thats built around avoiding over-training by using a systematic program that cycles through each energy system and is recovery base....and follows Dennis Cotterell's belief that "everything is about speed" (a talk he gave at an ASCA convention discussing training Grant Hackett).
So what does this mean? Well for starters our open water, fitness and Tri folks all do at least one day a week of speed work at a minimum of 4:1 rest to work ratio. Those that have bought in have learned to love it and have improved dramatically...some don't stick around or ask for their own lane (which we don't offer) and thats Ok as we are committed to what we are doing and the team has gone along with it.
Well for starters our open water, fitness and Tri folks all do at least one day a week of speed work at a minimum of 4:1 rest to work ratio.
Very interesting, Paul. I can tell you how many times I've done that over the past season because that number is exactly zero.
I've been lurking on this thread since it started. I am focused on getting as good as I can get in freestyle (50 throught the 1000), all backstrokes and all IM's, a passing interest in the fly, but my breaststroke is an abomination. For all the strokes I care about, I can take my 50 time, double it and add 10% and be very close to my 100 time (within a second or less). Same for 100 to 200. For 500 to 1000 it is more like 7-8% added. When I compare to top ten swimmers in the 45+ age ranges, this formula works for most of them but the 500 to 1000 comparison becomes more like double the 500 and add 5%. They have more power in their strokes, and along with that a bit more endurance (perhaps a more efficient stroke?).
What do I conclude from this? There is no way my 100, 200 and 500 times are going to fall without my 50 time falling. Doing long sets might bring my 1000 down a little, but is unlikely to make my 50 time fall. To improve in all distances I probably need to focus on dropping the 50 time. For me this means more work on powerful fast short sets, some on long intervals, some on short intervals until I can't take it anymore. Plus, I probably need to start a dryland routine. I workout with a masters group a couple of days a week, where I don't need to be internally motivated -- just follow the coach. But three days a week I structure my own workouts to try to get that 50 time down, since that is the key to a faster 100, 200 and 500.
