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 have trained with 3 teams here in Tucson and 2 of them are super-saturated with triathletes and fitness swimmers who just want to get in the miles. The 3rd team is just too far away for me to drive. As a breaststroker and pool competitor, I find this frustrating.
Although first and foremost, I swim for health, I also have some performance ability and I would like to bring more of it out. Most of the time, I have to adjust sets to suit my needs, but I don't always push myself as hard as I would if there were other swimmers in the pool who had similar objectives. When I have people to race, it gets me motivated!
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.
BRAVO!!
Was hoping that a head coach from a large masters program would chime in here.
It is kind of known that I "swim around"... so it's no secret to me which of the clubs train for true health & fitness.
If the program doesn't have a training cycle and a focus on technique, there are going to be athletes who get injured and or burned out. (unhealthy)
There are those athletes who know deep down that they need this type of practice/training and will even ask the coach for it! But if they don't follow the program laid out and or practice poor technique, the result will eventually be as problematic as swimming with an unplanned program.
If you live too far away from one of the great programs, inquire if the club offers a "Satellite" membership.
When I coached at Nova in Irvine, we offered this option and the workouts were emailed out each month. I remember the coach telling me, if you just do the workouts as written, you'll improve. They were planned and had evolved over 20+ years of coaching masters. Technique is written into the workouts and the intervals are stated at 4 levels.
I watched this program for 2 years. It serves a huge number of novice/fitness swimmers. As well open water, triathletes, and competitive swimmers. They improve - and yes, get a lot faster.
I never experienced an injury with one of the athletes unless they were doing something outside the pool or refused to slow down and work on their poor technique.
This is the one yearly training plan I experienced first hand and could recommend. I would be very interested in hearing about others around the country outside of the workouts posted here on the forum.
I'm one of those swimmers who find it impossible to train alone for long. Often we swim in poorly planned workouts for the sake of swimming with friends and training partners.
It can be a huge trade off.
Unfortunately for some, there are few other options.
But perhaps The Fortress has successfully demonstrated a way to combine training alone, with friends and occasionally with a club. And you know she has a plan!
I'm not a sprinter, so swimming distance sets with my club team does not bother me. I think we keep the garbage yardage to a minimum, but obviously sprinters don't need 3,000 yard main sets.
I would guess that your average masters program has fewer coaches than club/college counterparts, making it difficult to create specialized workouts every day and pay attention to everyone. A swimmer has an easy gauge of improvement if they can hold a faster interval in a set after a month of hard training. They don't need a coach watching them for that. In a set of sprint 50's, unless they have a coach giving them splits, it can be very difficult to tell. Even then, you could be talking improvements in the tenths of a second, which leaves room for timing discrepancies. From that standpoint, it is more challenging to assist sprinters in practice.
Another issue is stroke technique. I think stroke correction is far easier when swimming at a moderate pace as opposed to sprinting. The more yards someone swims with good technique, the greater the likelihood that it will become natural for them. And if the swimmer is trying to unlearn a problem from years of training, it's going to take that much longer to fix the issue. If you already have perfect technique, then by all means, sprint away!
For the most part, I agree with everything that has been said in this thread so far.
I think stroke correction is far easier when swimming at a moderate pace as opposed to sprinting. The more yards someone swims with good technique, the greater the likelihood that it will become natural for them.
I find that it's much harder to hold my technique together when I approach race pace. It's more challenging for the coach to provide critique when I am swimming fast, but probably more important.
That said, I believe I simulate stroke breakdown fairly well at lower speeds if I am worn out from a long main set. ;)
BRAVO!!
Was hoping that a head coach from a large masters program would chime in here. And you know she has a plan!
Tall Paul's workouts are outstanding! I swipe them fairly regularly and adapt them to my sprinterly mega-rest ways. He is also one of the few masters coaches that prioritizes kicking. And he's been saying masters need to kick more for years!
I actually use weekly micro cycles as well (trying to mix in speed, lactate, hypoxic, recovery and technique work). And do 3 weeks hard + 1 week recovery (hopefully around a meet). A recovery workout is a great time to focus on technique.
And, again, race pace work is NOT just for sprinters. For example, while I understand Salo's sprinters do zero distance work and long aerobic sets, his D swimmers don't do that much short rest stuff either.
Very interesting, Paul. I can tell you how many times I've done that over the past season because that number is exactly zero.
All I can say is that its something I believe very strongly about. I will use our group of the Tri-Mesa guys on our team as an example...when they started with us 18 months ago all they wanted was long freestyle/pull sets and no matter how much rest they had none of them could go faster than about 1:40. Now all of them hold 1:20's on 1:30 base 100's and swim in the 1:10 range...all but two went under 60 minutes for their Ironman swims.
Now to be honest they all do a T30, T60, 10 x 500's and assorted other long swims monthly so don't think they are training like sprinters!
Everyone's gotta swim the first 50.
If you don't have a fast first 50, you won't have a fast 100.
If you don't have a fast 100, you won't have a fast 200.
If you don't have a fast 200....and so on!
Different types of Sprinting - pure power generation vs. easy speed vs. reducing your rate of decreasing speed!
Paul's program sounds great to me. I wish my team trained that way.
Yesterday I missed the morning workout so I had to come in later and train alone. I chose to ignore what was on the board, which was a bunch of typical zero rest "garbage" stuff like 50s on :45, 100s on 1:30, etc. I'm training for the 500 free, 50 fly, and 100 free, so I did the following:
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on "garbage".....
I thought the thinking was that repeat 100's & 200's were aerobic sets that might be a training plan for the 500. Maintaining a certain pace over 5 or 10 (or more) repeats and building aerobic endurance. It seems like it would be better than repeat 500's because you'd be working on pacing.
I can see it being "garbage" if you're able to maintain 1:10 to 1:15 and are waiting :15 to :20. And it's "garbage" for sprinters because there's not enough rest to put in an all-out effort.
But if a swimmer is coming in at 1:20 or 1:25 and working hard, isn't it OK training for a 500?
Just when I thought I was getting a handle on "garbage".....
I thought the thinking was that repeat 100's & 200's were aerobic sets that might be a training plan for the 500. Maintaining a certain pace over 5 or 10 (or more) repeats and building aerobic endurance. It seems like it would be better than repeat 500's because you'd be working on pacing.
I can see it being "garbage" if you're able to maintain 1:10 to 1:15 and are waiting :15 to :20. And it's "garbage" for sprinters because there's not enough rest to put in an all-out effort.
But if a swimmer is coming in at 1:20 or 1:25 and working hard, isn't it OK training for a 500?
None of what you or Thrashing Slug listed is necessarily garbage - it's aerobic swimming. Garbage yardage is swimming without purpose.* Aerobic swimming is garbage if you're just going through the motions. Same with anaerobic swimming. Needless to say you'll do much better if you push yourself and work on something like descending, SDK's off every wall, fast turns, and beating whoever's next to you.
* 99% of the credit for that definition goes to The Fortress. In a blog comment I happened to paraphrase it down to the minimal verbiage you see above. The shortened version was well-received and resulted in me being elected mayor of Blogtown for seven whole minutes! :banana:
