I may be a little late on this but couldn’t spot any other posts on the topic…
Has anyone been following the online hype around Cam’s training approach for 2026? I don’t think it’s new but seems to have picked up some attention after a couple of interviews.
Included below are a long form interview with him as well as a much shorter video in which he also describes it.
Basically hitting really intense sessions of no more than 500m and sometimes capping his weekly swim volume at only 2km. Obviously, he has spent years building his base and refining his technique, he probably doesn’t need the time in water that the rest of us do… but I’m curious as to whether there’s any value in including one session per week along these lines for your average Masters swimmer/ triathlete? It would be a different stimulus at least.
It is pretty wild what he’s doing, but the sprint revolution is real. Stroke perfection and sprint/power efforts only. I remember 25 years ago some of the top 50/55/60 yo Masters sprinters were really cutting yardage and just doing everything they could to maintain sprintability.
I think all swimmers/triathletes should incorporate some sprinting. And 10x50 on 1:00 is not a sprint set lol. Exactly for the reason you state.. different stimulus. It’s just hard to convince triathletes that doing maybe 1200m of swimming in an hour once every week or two is going to be just as (if not more) beneficial than slogging out yet another 8x400m on :20 rest.
Be like training for the 60 yard dash for folks that run 10k to marathons. Other than a mental break, probably no real physical value in that type of training for any triathlete. Dude cannot make his team in the 100 and he is the fastest guy in the world. 50’s are going to be as different an event as the 1500 is..
When I started swimming as an adult, I opted to join a masters squad that was race focused. We did a lot of sprinting and hard sets. Meanwhile, my triathlete friends were swimming way more yards but their main sets were usually longer slow sets.
I ended being much faster than all of them, on only two swims a week.
Hmm.. I don’t know, I would equate it to doing strides as a distance runner? I think the primary benefit is elevating your max. Similar to land sports, there’s power, tempo, heart-rate markers that can be blasted through by sprinting. I would say there may be no immediate benefit, but it incrementally raises the threshold, which over time increases training capacity. It could be many months if not a couple years to see the benefit, and most triathletes will jump ship before giving it a true trial.
Perhaps, but have to keep in mind that swimming the 50 now is a completely different stroke from any distance above that. What you do there is not transferable to anything Tri related, and even to the 200 free. You would be learning a stroke that you would have to forget.
But for sure it is fun to go fast and there are all kinds of mental benefits to making top speed faster. Just for triathletes, they need to work on 200/400 speed for the take outs, if they tried that 50 stroke they would be cooked and drop off and fade back to some shitty group they swam in years ago..
Hell Cam cannot even hold it for 1 more 50 after an opening 21..
Yeah I don’t think copying the technique so much as just giving yourself a day of high-rest, low volume, max effort. Speaking of that, I’d like to just once get my turnover back under 2s per cycle!
Yes you are correct, if you just do your own distance stroke(which most of us would) then sprints are great. I was more thinking that copying the “new” 50 stroke would not have any benefit, it really is going to be a different swim from all others. It will be interesting to see what the stroke 50’s will look like, bet there is a lot of experimenting with new techniques there too. No breath 50 breast coming?
I think it’s really exciting. It’s funny because the idea of using racks and cords, none of that is new. What’s new is the underwater video, the data available due to new gadgets, the experimenting with the training methods. It’s tech geek for swimming. I really hope he gets that SS record in the 50 at LA28. He’s certainly doing the work.
Did you catch that stroke rate? I mean 0.9x spc. It takes a real special athlete to apply the force of 2 full freestyle strokes that quickly. And it looks relatively smooth when you think of some of the thrash and dash strokes we’ve seen. Monty we need a full breakdown of your 25 free
@SnappingT has an interesting set somewhere on his Magnolia Masters page. It’s basically about 1500 of warmup and then 4 x 100 sprint on 5 or 6 minutes. I haven’t tried anything like that yet but would like to.
I do find the masters group I swim with generally doesn’t like any form of long rest, though it isn’t swim meet/racing focused and the morning group doesn’t have a coach on deck. Even proposing 4 - 8 25s best effort on :45 is something I can only get my lane to agree to occasionally.
