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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Fort breaking three world records in as many hours was inevitable. If you've seen her practice, you know what I mean. She spent, what, three solid years doing sprint dolphin kick repeats? That's a serious commitment to fast swimming. Do it every day it practice, and it's automatic.
Every Masters group I've seen doesn't even care. "Okay, 15x100 on blah blah blah descend the interval into the wall-touch zone. Let's do some mental math!" And then everyone squeals like "Ooh that's such a tough set!" So what? What does it do? It gets you ready to swim the mile. And it's considered a speed set.
You just seem to have it all dialed in.
As to "my time"? It has come and gone. I just regret not taking advantage of the great training opportunity I had (quit), and not choosing a better swimming college.
I am really just blundering along using trial and error.
I only swam one season in college -- your time IS coming!
Jazz touches on another thing that's frustrating. Sometimes I see sets written where it's as if just writing "sprint" somewhere in there is going to make it a quality set. Sorry, but "10x100 @ 1:15 sprint" isn't a quality set. I can either make the 1:15 or I can sprint. I can't do both.
That's actually a cool set if you reinterpret it. For example, sprint the first 25+flip of odd-numbered repeats (or all of them, if you want to be beastly about it). Then you have to hustle a little bit to make the interval. Swimmers like Ande are experienced at adapting workouts in this fashion.
I'm also in the yes and no camp!
For me I like the yardage, I have always been better at distance. Even as a kid my 50s were relatively better than my 25s, then my 100s were better and now I'm at 200/500. Also swimming is my primary (err - only) cardio workout I do, therefore if I'm not gettng in at least 3000 yards an hour, I feel short-changed!
However, I know that those short, intense burst are good for us too, and that last year when I was racing 50s and 100s, training at speed was the right thing to be doing.
So comes down to what has been said before I guess - train like you want to race.
From the end of SCM until 15 wks before my SCY taper meet I do long slow stuff to give my shoulders and knees time to heal and my gosh is it boring.I don't see how you distance people stay motivated.This doesn't mean race pace sets are easy,they take concentration and discipline as well as making the muscles burn.Doing 12X25 on the minute it is really easy to either go 98% instead of 100% or let your stroke get sloppy on the last 4,but it's certainly not boring.
i'll go out on a limb here.....
i heard someone say (not to me) "just because you swim short events; doesn't make you a sprinter"
i think the popularity of short events has a lot to do with laziness, self doubt, wanting to squeeze in the max # of events allowed (cheapness?), etc.
of course this does not apply to leslie who probably trains as much as any marathon swimmer i know (ironic?.... not really)
Wow I go to lunch and this thread sprints to almost a one pager already :) *EDIT* by the time i typed my reply it's 1.5 pages.
Absolutely agree. I create my workouts with the 50/100 free in mind. They're so far from what some would call a typical hard masters workout that many people would be turned off by them. So far they're working out great for me... I am 6 tenths off my college best 50 time at 60lbs over college race weight at only 6000m per week. I attribute it to the training I do now and how much different it is even compared to what I did in college. I am very critical of turn work and starts and everything else that happens outside the flags (any time saved here is free). Most masters workouts I've seen only seem to work on things that happen between the flags. Its evidenced by the fact that you can watch people dog turns and flop starts in their races.
It's all about how you swim rather than how far you swim. I think a lot of masters workouts either lose sight of that, or don't really explore that for fear of losing interest. I could see many joe-typical participants want to leave a team if workouts got as intense as they need to be for sprinters.
Great thread though. Hoping some day I can set a record of some kind besides fastest fat man :)
I don't like training alone. The trade off is that you have to be willing to modify the sets to achieve your individual training goals. Fortunately we have separate "Fun and Fitness" lanes at Nitro for those who don't compete. For those who do, the coaches incorporate IM, distance, stroke, sprinting, and race pace work throughout the week. One of our coaches assigns the intervals by lane on his days with a specific goal in mind for his sets. Garbage yardage hasn't been an issue; the real challenge has been trying to determine how much time to allocate for each of the areas we need to work on when we only have six 75 minute training sessions per week. You are left with about 2000 yards for the main set after factoring in warm up, a transition set, and warm down.
Making a long aerobic set on tough sendoffs you didn't think you'd be able to make is rewarding, though, just like swimming fast throughout a race pace set. I guess the key is challenging yourself however you're training that day. We're all entitled to the occasional "just got in my hour" type workout, but if that becomes your standard operating procedure you're probably not going to get much faster.
