I’m sure this must have been brought up before. What is the point of doing aerobic intervals in swimming?
Assuming you have a minimum amount of swimming fitness, why would you split a 1 hour swimming workouts in lots of sets of 100, 50 meters at aerobic pace.
Even if you were to use a lot of tools (pull buoy, paddle) is there any benefit in splitting them up in short repeats?
Why wouldn’t you do all your aerobic swims as relatively long sets (3km, 3x1km, 6x500m).
Is there any science that can clarify?
edit: aerobic in the sense of the equivalent of Zone 2 in Coggan zones.
First let’s make sure you understand what “aerobic†swimming is, because:
Zone 2 swimming is not the same as zone 2 running.
John Urbancheck devoted a lifetime to this and what he concluded was for 90% of us, your average speed per 100 for a 2000 swim is what should be used as your “base aerobic†pace in a set of 100s with 10-15 seconds rest.
If you swim 2000 yards (or meters) in 30:00 then you should do your hundreds on 1:40 or 1:45 and target completing each interval in 1:30.
If you do repeat 400s on the track at your 10k pace you will quickly move into zone 5. However, if you are in great swim shape you can do this set and never have your hr topple into zone 3.
Here are the facts:
1: oxygen delivery to your muscles is so much more efficient while swimming because your body is horizontal.
2 after a few minutes of oxygen debt due to lower respiration ( a fact about swimming) your hr will climb
3 a 10-15 rest on the wall will quickly re- oxygenate your blood.
Because of this, a swimmer can swim at their threshold pace day in and day out by simply adding a little rest.
And it’s just a fact: 10 100s at a 1:30 Pace is a higher load than a 1000 at 1:34 / 100.