Zwemmen

Swimming

Van de drie sporten is zwemmen de meest “tijdrovende”. Verplaatsingen van en naar een zwembad, volledig omkleden en terug maken dat je algauw 2u spendeert aan een zwemtraining van 1 uur en dan moet je al niet te ver van het zwembad wonen. Voor werkende agegroupers zorgt dit feit en het feit dat zwemmen slechts het kleinste deel van een triatlon ervoor dat op deze discipline het minst wordt getraind. Voor onze atleten is het minimum 1 maal en streefdoel 2 tot maximum 3 maal. Prioriteiten stellen heet dat. Wil atleet A 1 minuut sneller zwemmen op een kwart zal hij zijn zwemuren moet verveelvoudigen van bv 2u naar 6u. 4u extra zwemmen ofte 3 extra zwemtrainingen geven extra minstens 6u extra tijdsspendering per week. Die zelfde atleet A zal een pak meer winst op de kwart halen als hij per week 6u meer kan fietsen/lopen !!!

Hieronder een mooi vb over what it takes van Gordo Byrn om beter te leren zwemmen. Dus als je slechts een tweemaal tot driemaal zwemt , moet je geen wonderen verwachten !

Saw that you did 26K+ swim meters in a week (not including Saturday or Sunday). Those are huge numbers. Would that be considered a “typical” swim week for an elite triathlete?
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It turned out that I managed a little over 30,000 meters in six days and every day had some quality, sustained freestyle. By “sustained” freestyle, I mean main sets where you are swimming strongly on short rest. This is the most specific type of training for triathlon and, often, a tiny component of AG swim programs.

The reason I did the camp was that I don’t have the time to train like an elite any more so… I tend to do-what-I-can-when-I-can. I started the camp the day after a Half Ironman race because I knew that I’d have to rest my legs. One of the nice things about triathlon is that we can rest our lower bodies while training our upper bodies. In an efficient, experienced athlete swimming is very forgiving.

In terms of what typical — it is variable as guys like Bjorn don’t like to swim (hope he doesn’t mind me saying that) and might not even do 10K per week. However, he’s the extreme low end and did a lot as a kid.

If you take athletes like Joanna Z or my wife (when she was leading out in Kona)… they are likely 20-26K (meters) every single week with nearly all of it high quality and a good chunk of it at high speed. The larger men can’t rip as much, or as often, but my IM pals are almost always 20K+ every week.

What would an elite male swim week look like?

• Monday — 5500 meters with sustained endurance main set

• Tuesday – 4500 meters with a strength focus (paddle work or medley swimming)

• Wednesday – late short easy swim after morning long run

• Thursday – 6500 meters with endurance main set (less sustained if tired)

• Friday – 4500 meters with a strength focus (paddle work or medley swimming)

• Saturday – Varies according to season: might be endurance, open water, VO2 max work… really depends on time of year

• Sunday – off or short easy swim

The ladies might look similar – only faster!

If you can roll 30K per week then most people will become decent eventually — I have seen it take up to a decade, though. Most of the hard cases quit before they breakthrough — track Bella Bayliss’ results over the last ten years — she was Comerford before she married Stephen. You can see a real case study in the power of sticking with it. She’s done a TON of swimming to achieve her results — more than me.

When I was racing, I needed to get up around 25K to increase swim fitness. 20K per week would hold my fitness and below 15K I would lose swim fitness. That’s not surprising as ~4 hours of a sport per week is not much training at all — tiny in a single sport sense.

We tried to figure out Monica’s lifetime meters… has to be over 20 million, she was doing 100,000 yards a week in high school. I know that she swam over 900,000 meters during her pregnancy.

As for me… I’m far over 5 million meters for the last decade. Something I found was that once I was under 60 minutes for my IM swim, I had to swim one million meters per minute improvement. Not everyone is able to set their lives up to achieve that.

See you at the races,
gordo

from xtri.com