Friday 11 December 2009

VELOCITY TRAINING FOR 800m - 1500m SWIMMERS

While developing the High Velocity Swimming blog my research led me to the noted sports scientist Per-Olf Astrand and his work with 5,000 and 10,000m runners.I have converted his reasearch for swimming.

A synopsis is presented below :

Per-Olof Astrand stated that short interval training of 10 seconds with 20 seconds rest raises an athlete’s aerobic capacity within the muscle much more effectively than working with longer intervals, such as for exercising for 1 minute and resting for 2 minutes.

This would be only expected if the short exercise period was executed more aerobically than do longer intervals? Surprisingly, this is so. Because of the presence within the working muscle of myoglobin, an oxygen-binding protein which provides a small but important store of oxygen, only a proportion of the oxygen required during the short exercise period can be delivered by the circulatory system, leaving a deficit which must be restored by anaerobic metabolism, and the latter does not train the aerobic system.

Myoglobin in this instance is providing extra oxygen to meet this deficit so that the aerobic system can be used to its OPTIMUM capacity and therefore effectively trained which must be restored by the anaerobic capacity and thereby effectively trained.

However, this is not the ‘trick’ that Astrand revealed. Working at a percentage of an athlete’s maximum during a stipulated distance was a stroke of masterly observation .

To utilise Astarnd's formula it will be necessary for the swimmer to swim flat out for 3 minutes from a push start, covering as much distance as they possible can within that time frame.

Let us imagine that we have a swimmer who has covered exactly 200m in the 3 minute time frame. That distance must be noted as that will be utilised for one month, no matter how long or short that distance may be, because it will be constantly used at different percentages of time.

The first training session involves the swimmer swimming at 80%. That is 80% of3:00.0minutes (180sec) which is a 200m swum in 3:16.0 seconds (216 seconds).This swim is repeated as many times as possible during the session with only 30seconds recovery after each swim, until the distance cannot be swum in the prescribed time, These swims are at about 75% of the swimmers VO2max.

The second pool session, involves the swimmer swimming the noted distance at 90% of 3:00.0 minutes which is 3:18.0 seconds, with 1 minutes recovery in-between each repeat. Again, repeated until the swimmer cannot cover the distance in the stated time. These swims are about 95% of the swimmers VO2max.

The third session involves swimming at 85% of 3:00.0 minutes which is 3:27.0 seconds, with 45seconds recovery in-between each repeat.
We are now in a position to draw up a complete training plan based upon Astrands recommendations.

* Please note that these are main set swims *

Session 1#
Swim sets at 80% of 3:00.0 with 30 seconds rest.

Session 2#
Swim 10 second intervals with 20 seconds rest, attempt to cover more the 12.5m each swim.

Session 3#
Swim sets at 90% of 3:00.0 minutes with 1 minutes rest.

Session 4#
Swim 10 seconds intervals with 20 seconds rest, attempt to cover more than 12.5m each swim.

Session 5#
Swim sets at 85% of 3:00.0 minutes with 45 seconds rest.

After one month of utilising Astrands weekly cycle, it will become necessary to perform the 3:00.0 test swim again to determine whether there has been a major improvement and also to amend the training programme.

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