Hi everyone, I think triathletes might know the answer. I’m a cyclist only.
The question: Can I do the same vo2 interval sessions from cycling workouts but in the swimming pool? And expect the same stimulus to the aerobic system, as long as I do the same perceived effort? Things like 2x20mins for example.
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Reason is I’ve had an inflamed knee extensor tendon (I saw a doc) and had to stay off the bike for a couple months, now I’m coming back but only easy/short/flat rides for now. I’ve started gym to get core and knee stability and got back to swimming a month ago in the hopes of keeping vo2 in place, but these swimming “classes” (I don’t call them training sessions) aren’t much focused in aerobic fitness as I see it, it’s a mix of everything swimming related.
So I talked to the swimming coach and asked if she was ok if I did my own workouts from the bike, she said “You can, but I don’t know about cycling training, only specific swimming training, so I can’t tell if it will be as effective.” Can I expect that doing vo2max efforts in the swimming pool will give me similar results as doing them on the bike? I’ll probably have to only do easy rides for the next month at least!
I did 10min efforts on the bike in the past two rides just to check how bad things were and with about the same perceived effort it seems I’m putting about 10% less power than in april… This sucks, although I hope I can recover quickly. I swam 10h/week for many years in the past, so I still have a quite good technique, ready to go strong.
I know that… I used to do that kind of thing in the past, but that would be somehow similar to doing 1min efforts on the bike (ok, I don’t swim 100m that fast anymore but you get the point).
What I’m asking is probably more closely related to marathon swimming sessions somehow, doing sets of 1500m at a time. Would two sets of 1500m have a similar effect to 2x20min on the bike? If I do both workouts at the same perceived effort, aka finish the workout feeling miserable?
Like all sports, swimming more so than cycling, building aerobic capacity isn’t and shouldn’t be the primary driver of what you’re training. The training is the technique. If you swim 2x1500m swims with very little focus on your stroke (checked out) to build your aerobic capacity, what you’ll find is that your stroke will take on fairly sloppy mechanics, you won’t build as much aerobic capacity and you won’t see much progress. Stick with a variety of repeats of less than 125 yards/meters with about 20 seconds rest between each. Hold a hard pace through the repeats while you focus on improving your mechanics. You’ll see a lot more progress.
Depends on your swim fitness level coming in. For a well trained marathon swimmer, 2x1500 is probably similar to a 2x20 threshold bike effort. But if you don’t have the swim-specific fitness, you have to go so slow to avoid muscular failure that you probably don’t get the same cardio-vascular stress. And if you don’t have the swim-specific fitness, you are also very prone to form degradation under fatigue. Swimming thru fatigue with bad form is never a good idea, as it ingrains improper movement patterns into your CNS which can emerge later as bad form even when you’re not fatigued. Thus the suggestion for something like 10-12 x100 on 15-20 seconds rest, at a steady pace that’s taxing, but sustainable for the set, as an alternative to a straight 1500. It has been pretty clearly established that sustained interval training can and does stimulate endurance, so you’re not really sacrificing the desired cardio-vascular effect. The short recovery periods allow your muscles to momentarily recharge so you can work longer and/or harder without form failure.
Think of a bike set of 12 x . With only 20 seconds of recovery time between efforts, your 1:20 “on” isn’t going to be that much harder than your steady 20 min power, is it? And the resulting stimulus isn’t going that much different. You just don’t need to do it like this on the bike because form degradation isn’t as much of a concern.
I swam as much as 20 hours a week in my (distant) past, so I had reasonable base form and some latent muscular structure that I could re-develop under training when I took up Masters Swimming a few years ago. I worked my into multiple top-30 USMS Age Group Rankings in “distance” events (400M, 1000y, 1650y) free almost entirely with interval training of 50’s, 75’s, 100’s, and 125’s.
If you really are cyclist with little to no ‘real’ swimming background (ie no prior triathlon or pool race experience), you will find that the muscular endurance in your arms are so limited for swimming that you will not be able to tax your cardio system remotely where you did in cycling where you’ve already built up a good muscular cycling-specific chain that can stress the cardio hard.
Even if you don’t care a shred about ugly swim technique, and are perfectly fine thrashing your way to hi-HR yardage in the pool, you’ll almost certainly find that your arms will be gassed too early. It took me nearly 2 years to get my swim arms to partially catch up to my run-built cardio as an ex-pure runner turned triathlete.
It’s, however a great time when you’re injured, to take a deep dive into seeing how far along you can progress with good swim training, with proper focus on technique, technique, technique early on and seeing how you like it.
If you however do find that you still hate swimming and would much rather skip it altogether, one of the best fallbacks for really strong cardio training is HARD pool running intervals. Your legs will be ready to hammer it from the start thanks to your cycling background, and you can redline the cardio even harder in the pool than you do on land if you really want to. I did a lot of pool running when I had a running stress fracture, and it’s totally legit for cardio and even maintaining the hip flexor/extensor chain. Hardest part for me with pool running was to fine a place I could do it - very few pools around me that are neck-shoulder deep where you can stay in one spot without swimming laps.
Even if you don’t care a shred about ugly swim technique, and are perfectly fine thrashing your way to hi-HR yardage in the pool, you’ll almost certainly find that your arms will be gassed too early. It took me nearly 2 years to get my swim arms to partially catch up to my run-built cardio as an ex-pure runner turned triathlete.
That’s really true, in the past few years when I didn’t have access to club training (because my swim was too slow for the club to accept me), although I was running 5 km running 23 minutes and 10 km under 49 minutes, my arms failed me very fast once I swam at less than 2:10 / 100 m pace, and I could never access my full cardio potential while swimming.
Now, even after nearly a year of swim training and becoming a marathon swimmer, I still can’t go to that cardio level when swimming, and my run has deteriorated due to the lack of training as well (as in the past few months I was only working on my swimming such that I could complete a 13 km swim race).
You’ll find much shorter intervals work much better in the pool. Swimming is infinitely more technical than cycling. Your technique will break down on long intervals like that…
Doing a lot of 100s is better than a 2x20. 2x20 for me would be like doing 30x100.
Like Gary P I also race masters. I’m ranked consistently Top 10 in the world for my AG (400/800/1500m Free, 200 Fly, 200/400 IM) and won medals at Masters worlds. I was 4th at Masters worlds in the 3k Open Water and can swim 5000m under an hour at 42.
It all makes sense, that even though I have swam daily in the past, I wouldn’t have the arms anymore to go hard and long to keep my HR up. Plus I’d screw up the technique…
So it seems I’ll have to accept losses on the bike for now, and just do shorter swimming intervals, and easier swimming overall.
Maybe all of this takes to triathlon, since I’ve been doing short runs as well. Lets see.