I saw this in a post: I will swim 200 laps in a 25 meter pool. All free style. Non stop. This is done in 3 phases , !st 64 laps is moderate speed 2nd 64 laps is distance the balance is for endurance.
My first reaction was WHY ? If you swim like this you will never know how good a swimmer you could be !
Reasons why.
1.- Your range of motion becomes less as your muscles fatigue and tighten up. This leads to the long, smooth stroke that your first few lengths have, deteriorating into a short, choppy survival stroke.
2.- You can only train one energy system, Aerobic, the anaerobic & lactic systems are untouched.
3.- You cannot improve your technique unless you use drills in a progressive manner.
4.- Why not put in some drills to check your technique. For example 10 strokes of head-up free every few lengths to check you hand entry ?
5.- By only doing Freestyle you are setting yourself up for injured shoulders, with all kinds of impingement problems.
6.-Where are the Kick sets and fly kick sets to improve core body strength and awareness ?
7.-What about the joys' of fly, back and
*** ?
I put together this poll to see how people out there are training.
Former Member
The book Swimming Fastest has a good review of much of the research as it pertains to exercise physiology and swimming and I would highly recommend it for this. He cites many references and one of the things I took away is when you are swimming a set you should be asking yourself what are you trying to accomplish.
If you are trying to accomplish aerobic conditioning then continous swimming can achieve this quite well. If on the other hand you are trying to increase your muscles buffering ability then your really need to be doing interval training. The question of non stop vs intervals is again complicated and I would be leary of some posters who have a simple answer.
I think the more interesting and practical question is if you have limited amount of time is it better to swim lower yardage and do interval training or higher yardage and swim non stop? And if yes to yardage where is the cutoff?
My two cents worth is when pressed for time continuous swimming is hard to beat and through in fartlek and you have some of the benefits of interval training also.
I like a Non stop swim. Although it does make me go slow, but I have found it makes me sort of lazy. Just say iam going to swim 3-4 miles , I tell my self relax. I have plenty of time. But if I train to do speed, I do much less laps. But since I just love to swim, I rather do longer swims. dom in AZ.:snore: :shakeshead:
dang! teach me to make a post a reply.... i responded to the poll, and agreed (to some extent) with the doc.... next thing i know... tension all about....
1) is it really important which athlete or group of athletes is most intelligent? (it is not how smart you are, it is how you are smart.)
2) a person who walks around the block gains more than the individual who sits on the couch. conclusion... any exercise is better than none.
3) some grow, some atrophy. some live, some die having never lived.
4) too much energy expended on the beliefs of others may be a good indicator (i suspect) of where one's focus lies. if too much of one's focus is on others, it leaves little focus for that which is within one's self.
be,
jim
I agree with you I was trying to give a 10 part answer to what is the best workout looking at the scientiific data and the first part which is really obvious is the best work out is the one you do.
I know this sounds silly and super obvious but the fact is still the vast majority of Americans don't exercise. So you obviously need to pick a workout which will work for you. I also think a really high level of achievement in a sport is almost a disincentive to continue it lifelong.
So rule one: no studies cited is the Nike rule. just do it.
I will get to rule #2 later
In trying to come up with an answer to which is a "better" way to swim from a scientific point of view we need to address what our goals are. Some posters seem to view masters swimming as kind of like age group swimming for old folks, I do not share this view. To me the greatest Masters swim would be to be under a minute SCY in the 100 free on one's 80th birthday.
Soooo if we are looking at workouts from a long term health particularly cardiac health point of view what do studies show?
Interestingly in the National Runners Health Study a suggestion comes that high intensity training say interval training and lower intensity training such as LSD may be doing different things even to the cardiac system. The high intensity runners had a greater drop in blood pressure the higher mileage lower intensity runners had a greater elevation in HDLs.
The best workout is the one you do, I mean if you never make it to the pool that is not a good workout. At times it can be a little off putting because some of the posters are such good swimmers and swimming obviously takes up much of their personal identity.
There is this obese guy who swims in the pool where I swim and he is there every day I am there and he works out easy for over an hour and I think many of these posters would sneer at him I take my hat off to him. Just do it. We all suck compared to Michael Phelps that is not the point.
Which brings me to the long reply on intervals vs continous swimming, point one is just do it. That is obvious but the most important point if after a stressful day at the office you want to chill and swim long slow distance go for it.
Exercise is not without a cost to the body in generation of free radicals and oxidative stress. There is a lot of experimental evidence and piles of anecdotal evidence that you can "break a body down" lower the immune system and damage the body with an overdose of exercise.
How much is too much. Probably quite a bit, the National Runners Study showed a continued benefit in health to runners with increasing mileage until the 80K a week mark then it was unclear. The examples cited by people like Dr. Weil of people's health suffering are extreme example like Ironman athletes. There is a bit of political correctness with mainstream medicine coming up with a prescription for exercise....30 to 45 minutes a day. But the evidence does not really support this number more is better to a point where that point is is hard to determine.forums.usms.org/.../dedhorse.gif
It does seem logical that adding some LSD (long slow distance) allows one to add health benefits without stressing the body too much though it might not do too much to help one's times.
i'm just gonna go ahead and say this at the risk of offending.... but it seems to me that the original point of this thread has completely disappeared and the good dr tecumseh seems to have turned this thread/poll into a lecture series on exercise physiology or somesuch... am i incorrect to suspect this should be in its own thread? the information being presented is excellent... but seems it should be standing on its own, not buried in a thread about "do you swim non-stop or do intervals and drills?"
i think you've gone a tad off topic, tecumseh.... if i am wrong, i will go back to my corner and keep my peace.
be,
jim
