Physiological Basis of Reduced Training Distance.
PART ONE:
Briefly then, let's consider the purposes of training. Obviously, the first purpose is to swim faster. One tenet of coaching is “to swim fast, you have to train fast.” But, if all the swimmer ever does is swim long sets of repeats or swim fatigued, when do they learn to swim fast?
The second purpose for training is to be able to recover faster. This seems especially important when swimmers compete in multiple events with limited rest between events.
The ability to endure a six or eight or even a ten thousand-meter session has very little to do with swimming a fast 50m or 400m race.
In swimming, the majority of coaches design their workouts with the major focus of how many meters are swum and less on the content.
In fact their season plan is usually designed around how many meters per workout are swum with little attention to anything else.
At a rather basic level many coaches have designed their programs around an Aerobic / Anaerobic cycle.
But, the majority of current research suggests that many of the early season’s desired training responses are achieved within about six to eight weeks of beginning to train. Again the early season volume
At that point, to continue to swim faster you have to change the training stimulus as a means to continue to adapt to the training.
For swimmers then, there is little support for increases in cardiopulmonary performance beyond what takes place in the first 42 – 56 days of training.
From this point on, the swimmers cellular metabolic machinery can be maintained by several aerobic bouts a week.
Continued emphasis on A1/ A2 /A3 training will do little to improve a swimmers power output and may, in fact, be detrimental.
Instead, the development of power and then the application of that power to the water should be the focus.
PART TWO:
Another way to look at this is to separate 'training' from 'practice'. Training is more about accumulating distance and focusing on cardiopulmonary performance.
Practice is more about technique, tactics, neurological improvements, and the development and application of power.
Thus, early season pool sessions are centered upon training and mid to late season shifts much more towards practice. The taper is almost exclusively practice.
Practice is demanding of the swimmer, in an entirely different way than training and takes cooperation and focus by both the swimmer and the coach.
However, the benefits of practice in contrast to the benefits of training are key factors to continued improvement.
Our teams and swimmers required considerably less meters, and aside from the physiological justifications for high-intensity training, we have found that each training session became a competitive experience which better prepared our swimmers for competitive meets.
Further, we have found that the swimmers and parents who have bought into this method are happier and will readily accept their exhaustion. They were always willing to give their best and complete effort with each session.
The velocity workouts we use can appear rather simplistic to some... but our programs are designed with a focus on content rather than just swimming meters.
When designing our programs we ensure that the focus of each workout is not on, "How Much?" but rather "How?"
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