Swim aerobic endurance workouts - why no mega distances?

Triathlon Forum
1

I’ve been focusing lately on putting together my 2006 training plan. My goal race is a 1/2 IM in Sep. 2006.

My plan (like most everybody I suspect) is to spend the winter season building aerobic endurance.

From what I understand, the process of building aerobic endurance for biking and running is pretty straightforward - go long and slow: Increase length/distance (but not intensity) slightly every week for 3 weeks, then cut back for a recovery week, repeat.

But when it comes to swimming, I can’t find anybody advocating the same process. I’ve never seen a published swimming endurance workout like this:

warm-up
Swim 3000 meters long and easy
cool-down

Swimming aerobic endurance workouts seem always to be broken down into varying sets, different strokes, etc. Why the difference? Is the LSD swim non-beneficial, or just too boring?

2

Would you like to do your long 5-6 hours rides on an indoor bike, or run 15-20 miles by doing 60-80 laps on a track? I’ve never swam longer than 3700 meters in one workout and I thought it would never end. Tedious, tedious, tedious.

The swim also comprises the shortest time element of the tri and in a half Ironman it is almost, but not quite, irrelevant.

Chad

3

Differences in technique. Swim technique tends to break down sooner and swimming long and slow can be quite different than swimming at race pace for people with poor technique. Swimming, for most triathletes, is going to be much better served by improving technique than improving fitness. Hence the focus on short sets, drill sets, etc. Here you can focus on your technique and really polish it. Swimming 3000’s is no good if you are swimming like crap for 2900 of those yds/meters.

But there is nothing wrong with doing the occassional long set as you describe. Just make sure you focus on your technique the whole way.

The other question is, what will you gain doing 3000 over 5 x 600 on short rest (20sec or so)? Not much. The same is true for running. Most people don’t want to run that way, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Cycling is actually much more that way than you might think, at least for most of us. There are uphills, downhills, stoplights, etc. It’s not easy (except for the lucky few) to ride for something like 4 hours at a totally consistent effort with no stops.

4

Swimming is all about form/technique (and form usually fades after a couple hundreds) hence the 50/100 repeats.

The repeats are being done on 15-20s rest so HR does not drop much, while endurance builds by increasing the number of sets/repeats.

5

But when it comes to swimming, I can’t find anybody advocating the same process. I’ve never seen a published swimming endurance workout like this:

warm-up
Swim 3000 meters long and easy
cool-down

I think most long distance aerobic sets are exactly what you’re asking about. Rest intervals of 5-15 seconds are just to break up the monotony, they really don’t allow much recovery.

As far as published sets, I thought I remember reading Gordo advocating something like 10x100IM/150Free either continuous or with only 10 seconds rest. That’s 2500 yds right there.

6

I swim a ton (15000+ yards/week, good god that sounds like a lot) and I never do a set longer than 1000 yards in the pools - Ill do 2500 in open water. It is boring, way more so than riding a trainer or running on the track for the equivalent amount of time. Plus, any benefit can be gained by doing 100 repeats at a tight interval (dont take more than 10s to rest), youd be surprised what sticking your head out of the water for just that short amount of time can do for your sanity. The primary focus of swimming is holding your form over 3000 yards, and swimming tight intervals will simulate that.

As long as your main set is 3000 near-continuous, youll be alright.

7

Some marker sets for you to try – I like for all tri distances but they are IM specific (as are my athletes)

Swim Marker Sets

5x400, on 20 RI – descend for effort and speed – easy/steady/mod-hard/fast/very fast

Continuous

50 fast, 50 steady
100 fast, 50 steady
150 fast, 50 steady
200 fast, 50 steady
250 fast, 50 steady
300 fast, 50 steady
200 fast

Continuous
200 fast, 100 steady
300 fast, 100 steady
400 fast, 100 steady
500 fast, 100 steady
400 fast, 100 steady
300 fast, 100 steady
200 fast, 100 steady

The change of pace work in the long TTs is useful to help the time go by and also to make it more stimulating.

Another good TT is a straight 2,000 or 3,000 for time. Athletes that are new to these sorts of workouts could start with 1,000 or 1,500 and add 300 every 1-2 weeks to build up to 3,000. With elite training, a continuous, easy 4,000 swim each week is a nice session. With your longer continuous swims, you need not be aiming for a personal best each time.

For a faster benchmark set, try 15-20 x 100 where you aim to hold best 1,000 pace on 5s RI. Swim perfectly even splits. For example, if you best 1,000 pace is 1:45 per 100 then you could swim 15x100 on 1:50 and aim to arrive on 1:45 for the entire set.

Finally, in my Coaching Long Course Athletes article there is a test set of 8x400. This is a good set for sub-60 minute IMers or athletes that enjoy longer main sets. The protocol is explained in the article and I’ll chat through in our discussion. Athletes that are 75+ min IMers should consider starting with 8x300 or, even, 8x250. Use the same protocol to set the send off intervals.

Remember that Ironman is a 2.4 mile continuous swim. So the most effective benchmark sets will help you track (and build) your aerobic endurance and economy.

8

To prepare for my first Half IM last summer, I did lots of workouts that consisted primarily of warming up, then doing a single long set of between 2500 and 3500 yards, and then warming down. Doing long sets instead of long swims without stopping still provides you with the physical and mental benefits of swimming for a long time that you will need. But, getting fairly limited rest between each repeat helps you keep your stroke technique as good as possible. There are a number of other practical benefits, such as making it possible to swim with people that are of similar, but not exactly the same, speed, and also helping you to keep track of how many laps you have swum (lot easier to keep track of 20 laps six times than 120 laps straight).

9

I have come to triathlon via a collegiate distance swimming (400 IM, 500 free, 1650) background. We rarely did supreme overdistance training of any repeat longer than 500s. The majority of our sets were 100s, 200s, 300s…lots of them. Others have said that technique tends to break down more quickly in swimming. I agree with this. For instance, the best indicator of a 1500 LCM time is to do 15-20 100s on 1:30 holding best average. Usually this average time ends up being 1-1.5 seconds faster per hundred than you can hold when tapers. I don’t mean to digress too much, but I do not see much benefit from swimming 3000 straight. Swim with a good masters coach. Recently I have found a great masters program which gets 5500-6000 yards completed in 1:30 in lane one. I would say that you are not misguided in terms of focusing on volume, but in swimming you need to ensure you use interval training to maintain proper form.

10

I don’t really get the full explanation of it myself, even with about a chapter devoted to it in ‘Swimming Fastest’. But the short version of it is that it’s the system that’s been found to work best after a 60 year experiment involving thousands of coaches and millions of competitive swimmers.

Intervals just give you the best results, even if you’re swimming strictly with the distance group. If you look at the elite distance guys, their workouts may be 8,000-9,000 yards in a practice, and very little of that will be beyond 400s.

11

As others above have stated, the main reason swimmers train by swimming intervals rather than just swimming a straight distance is because stroke breakdown caused by fatigue leads to a big difference in the pace which can be held over short vs long distances. In fact, for less accomplished swimmers, the breakdown in technique is often so great that there is little training effect at all from doing long swims.

A “retired” competetive swimmer swimmer can hold their stroke together at a high enough speed over a long swim to get in decent trithalon swim shape (but not true competetive shape) by doing just long swims in training. But – the worse you are at swimming, the more you need to have a big part of your workout consisting of short repeats with some rest, otherwise, you’ll be swimming too slow to make any real improvement in your strength and conditioning.

12

…In fact, for less accomplished swimmers, the breakdown in technique is often so great that there is little training effect at all from doing long swims.

…you’ll be swimming too slow to make any real improvement in your strength and conditioning.

That’s a great point (assuming it’s correct).

I find that even 10 seconds of rest in between repeats/intervals can provide massive relief to shoulders/lats that are seemingly out of gas. After that mini-rest, I can definitely swim differently, at least for a little while. :slight_smile:

I think shorter stuff works great for: 1) the point above, 2) easy lap counting (I tend to lose track after 350y or so), 3) mental break, since tasks are psychologically easier when broken into smaller chunks.

I wonder, if you don’t like repeats over a couple hunski, does that mean you don’t really like swimming all that much? :slight_smile:

13

I must be an anomaly. I do long sets all the time.

Some of my favorites:
4x1000 desc.
or
2000 wetsuit continuous at IM tempo.
5x200 as fr,pads,kick,pads,fr.
3x800 as fr,pads, fr.
10x50 desc to mod-hard.
100ez

My stroke breaks down… that’s the point. The more you push beyond your ability to hold your stroke together, the longer you will be able to hold it.

14

"I don’t mean to digress too much, but I do not see much benefit from swimming 3000 straight. "

I agree with using intervals to help keep technique tight. But how will you ever know what your performance will be like if you never swim 3000+ sets outside of racing. Especially if you’ve never raced an IM distance before. Even though there may be some stroke break down I think it is important to know how you will feel and how you will adapt to that breakdown. Today I jumped in the pool with a bouy and pulled 6000m straight. I stopped at 3000m for <5sec to readjust the bouy and check my time. Swap it as a negative split and concentrated on form and distance per stroke the whole time. Ended with 6x250 kick. I didn’t plan on swimming that far and this is the first time I’ve ever done a long set like that (I usually swim intervals and get in about 3000m-4000m) but it felt really good after and if my form did deteriorate then it did so very slightly, because held my negative split and kept dps constant. I think if for nothing than knowing and understand how your body will react to long constant swims that it should be tried a few times.

15

I think a lot of people do get that type of key workout in each season. I did a few Aquathons this summer in a small lake that also hosts outdoor masters workouts. Every wednesday I was there I saw an average of 30 people doing long slow laps in the lake. Then there were usually around 50 triathletes doing the race each time, which is considered a good swim/run brick workout by most. I’ve also heard there are tons of folks there on Saturday mornings doing long swims. Now in the pool, a 1500 is about all I can stand without taking a minute to look around…

16

Circumstances have largely decreed that I do nothing BUT long straight sets in the pool this year. The pool on campus where I swim generally has very limited hours and a large community of users. This means that, more often than not, I’m swimming in crowded lap swim conditions which make it darned near impossible to do sets with fixed rest intervals, varying tempos, etc. Generally it’s a case of doing everything in your power to hold your place in the lane without slamming or getting slammed into other folks.

So I swim long straight workouts of 1800-3200 meters. I break it up mentally by alternating 50 yards hard, 50 yards long easy strokes focusing on glide and technique.

It’s probably not ideal, but on the other hand, my swim splits at races have surprised me this year. Bear in mind that I’m a very mediocre swimmer anyway. The year that I REALLY focused on my swimming, did lots of intervals and tempo stuff, etc., the best I could muster for an IM swim was 1:10:32. I’ll be curious to see just how lousy my swim will be in Kona…

Oh, and every year about 5-6 weeks out from my goal IM my coach has me do a 5000 meter monster swim, and that one just SUCKS.