gary p wrote:
MadisonGuy wrote:
Hi Dev,
Like you I am also an AOS who is working to become a well balanced swimmer in all of the strokes. So I've been following your posts on the topic, but my approach is a little different. I've been working on the 50's for each stroke, mostly backstroke, for swim meets. Just recently starting in on br and fl.
For getting faster would it not be better to do your 50s on long rest and decend them in sets of 4 rather than do 20 holding a pace on short rest? Maybe the experienced swimmers can chime in on this? Even training for a 200 decending 50s seems like a better approach unless you're an experienced swimmer. No?
Depends on the race distance. To train for the 50, I do long rest 25's. For the 100, short rest 25's. For the 200, shortish rest 50's.
I subscribe to the principal of specificity, and prefer consistent pacing to build neural-muscular memory of swimming at actual race pace. It helps that I have a fairly extensive history of race event results to reference. But descending has been an effective training strategy used by countless swimmers through the years so I'd be foolish to recommend against it. "More than one way to skin a cat" and all that.
One of the big reasons for descending (and I mean "proper" descending, not the kind that I tend to do these days which is more of 3 recovery swims followed by a hard one), is that it gets you used to the progressive nature of the fatigue you'll experience in a race. But as you say, there is a place in a well rounded program for short rest intervals, long rest intervals, descending and variable pace intervals, technique work, kicking, pulling, other drills, longer and shorter interval lengths, and so forth.
Swimming Workout of the Day: Favourite Swim Sets: 2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly