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?
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.
I agree with your larger point but disagree with two specifics:
-- I think the 500 and 400 IM benefit some from training such as you describe. (Even the 200s but to a much lesser extent.)
-- I think that 10x100 on 4:00 (a lactate tolerance set) would indeed benefit your 1000 time. It just shouldn't be the only type of training you do, the low-rest stuff is needed (think of these basically as broken race-pace swims). Though my own days of doing more than 2 or 3 10s on 1:00 are long gone...
Very well put. Endurance means a low rate of speed decrease. The faster you are, the more speed you have to lose. You can get better in endurance races by being a faster sprinter.
In limited circumstances this might be true. However, if I devote much time to being a faster sprinter there is almost zero chance it will improve a 1650 or, especially, a longer endurance event. If endurance is defined as a 500 or 1000, then I probably agree with this, as long as you don't sacrifice training for your endurance events.
I think it's too late for the short course season (although I'll definitely be adding more quality stuff in the next month), but I may experiment this summer with doing some true speed work. Maybe devote one workout per week to this. Does anyone have an opinion on what kind of distance these quality sets should be?
I think it's too late for the short course season (although I'll definitely be adding more quality stuff in the next month), but I may experiment this summer with doing some true speed work. Maybe devote one workout per week to this. Does anyone have an opinion on what kind of distance these quality sets should be?
When we do straight up speed work we tend to go 4:1 or 5:1 EZ:speed. A lot of our speed sets will begin with drill round, then an EZ/cruise round, then the speed, then EZ, then another speed, then EZ, repeat a few times.
I think it's too late for the short course season (although I'll definitely be adding more quality stuff in the next month), but I may experiment this summer with doing some true speed work. Maybe devote one workout per week to this. Does anyone have an opinion on what kind of distance these quality sets should be?
One week, do a set of 50s on 3:00 or 4:00
Another week, do a set of 100s, 6:00
then, a set of 200s, on 8:00
Maybe the 4th week,
do 2 or 3 rounds of
a fast 50
a fast 100
a fast 200
When you get closer to you taper,
do some broken 500s, 100s, etc once a week.
Based on energy systems, most of my training is firmly in EN2 territory with some in EN3 and a little at EN1, but mainly just recovery swims in between the harder work. I never do a day of EN1, for example. The place I seldom venture is anything with a rest to work ratio of greater than 1:1. I feel like even at 1:1 you really can't open it up and go all-out. Maybe for a repeat or two, but then you're toast. Because of this there's a tendency to hold back. I think distance swimmers have a natural tendency to hold back, anyway. We're always thinking about the end of the set, not the next repeat!
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!
Very well put. Endurance means a low rate of speed decrease. The faster you are, the more speed you have to lose. You can get better in endurance races by being a faster sprinter.
I agree with the sentiment that distance swimmers can usually benefit from a little more speed. Heck, you look at the top elite milers and most of them have a pretty decent max speed. (The converse is probably not true, but most sprinters I know should work on their lactate tolerance more.)
At the same time, I have have known quite a few excellent distance swimmers who do not have a fast 50, or even a very fast 200 (Jeff Erwin is a masters swimmer around my age who fits this bill). Many of the best ones never lifted seriously either and aren't that strong; they just never, ever seem to get tired.
Pure speed and aerobic endurance are not one and the same, and in fact focusing on one too much can be to the detriment to the other. It is a dangerous oversimplification to imply otherwise, IMO. The best distance swimmers I know do not "reduce their rate of speed reduction" at all, in fact they seem to get faster and stronger as the race progresses. I have lost many a race to Erwin on the last 100, and my splits were not getting slower. His top speed at the beginning of the race can't match mine...but at the end of the race it's a different story.
BUT getting back to the original question: distance swimmers certainly need to practice race-pace regularly, it is just that those practices may look quite different than those of sprinters or mid-D types. And to repeat: yes, I do think that distance swimmers need to work on their top speed. Just not nearly as much as a 50 specialist (which I hope is obvious).
I've been out of the water for nearly two weeks, and decided I needed to get wet this morning. I decided to try and apply a little of what I've read here. By the time I finished gabbing with the lifeguard I had 50 minutes of my hour left. Here's what I did. Warning: IANAS. While I didn't completely make up the workout on-the-fly (there was no fly, btw), I had really only decided on the warmup and 75s before I got to the pool.
200/100/200 S/K/P warmup
8X75 @ 1:30 - quick odds, cruise evens, descend the odds - went 1:05, 1:04, 1:03, 1:02 on the odds, evens were all 1:07 or 1:08
8X50 @ 1:00/2:00 - 2 X {ez/fast, fast/ez, build, fast} - the two fast 50s were :37, :36, more like :41-:42 for the ez/fast 50s, around :39 for the build 50s
8X25 @ 1:00 - all fast - last was :16, rest were :17
200 ez cool down
At the end I was reminded of the Rodney Dangerfield (or was it Henny Youngman?) joke: "I just flew in from New York. Man are my arms tired!"
As you can tell from the times I am clearly not a sprinter.
I would have rated the 75s as EN2, the fast 50s and all the 25s as EN3. I found the 75s easier than the 25s, certainly physically, probably mentally as well. I guess that's to be expected.
So short workout, but definitely different than my usual workouts.
Most energy charts show levels above EN3. EN3 is usually considered a mix of aerobic and anaerobic. Anything above this relies primarily on the anaerobic system. Charts I've seen label these zones as SP1, 2 and 3. SP1 and 2 are what most of us would consider "speed work" and SP3 is very short, explosive type sprints, like 15 meter blasts, maybe 25s tops.
For example:
www.teamunify.com/.../Energy Zones in Swimming.pdf
