Just a thought/request:
At some point in the future, it would be nice to have workouts posted by someone who specializes in LONG distance coaching with an eye on open water distances (1 mile "death sprints" to ??? miles). The workouts provided are generally excellent, but since open water distances basically start where pool distances leave off, it would be great to have something a bit more specific. This is especially true since there is a relatively small body of printed work on longer distance/open water training and coaches for LONG distances seem few and far between.
Would anyone else be interested and would this be possible?
-LBJ
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Former Member
Back to the original question. As I have posted before I think swimmers and swim coaches are interval obsessed. The top distance runners do a fair amount of interval training and speed work but they also do much of their mileage in long slow aerobic runs. I am not aware of any physiologic reason why this should not apply to swimming.
Swimming like most sports is bound in tradition. American swimming has tended to ignore the mile and concentrate on the 50 to 400/500 distances especially the sprints. Also it is difficult to coach long swims in a pool but is easy to coach a cross country team on long runs.
As one of the other posters indicated there are some nice benefits of LSD...long slow distance, it is relaxing and efficient. The problem is for many swimmers this is ALL they do I am not advocating that but two or three of your workouts a week can certainly be a straight aerobic swim. This is what the Kenyans and Ethiopians do and they are miles ahead of the competition.
Back to the original question. As I have posted before I think swimmers and swim coaches are interval obsessed. The top distance runners do a fair amount of interval training and speed work but they also do much of their mileage in long slow aerobic runs. I am not aware of any physiologic reason why this should not apply to swimming.
Swimming like most sports is bound in tradition. American swimming has tended to ignore the mile and concentrate on the 50 to 400/500 distances especially the sprints. Also it is difficult to coach long swims in a pool but is easy to coach a cross country team on long runs.
As one of the other posters indicated there are some nice benefits of LSD...long slow distance, it is relaxing and efficient. The problem is for many swimmers this is ALL they do I am not advocating that but two or three of your workouts a week can certainly be a straight aerobic swim. This is what the Kenyans and Ethiopians do and they are miles ahead of the competition.
