By David

First I must explain, then agree and then apologize. The content of this article refers to a lengthy reply from Brent discussing previous Swimwatch articles promoting the benefits of long distance conditioning. His reply is well worth reading. The discussion is important as it affects the content of what some poor bugger in a swimming pool is going to spend the next four years of his life doing. Besides, Brent’s right, writing about it is more fun than the things I should be doing. In this article I have taken extracts from Brent’s replies and commented on them. This is unfair which is why it would be best to read his reply in its entirety.

Brent said – “When you are training aerobically, we can’t really say that you are making yourself faster anaerobically. It is much more complicated than just saying “the faster you can swim aerobically the farther ahead you start.” I’ll move on because that’s really beside my point. I feel like you probably know all this, but you are trying to pull one over on your readers and me to help prove a point.”

I absolutely agree that aerobic improvements are not proportional to anaerobic racing improvements. Every season I have tracked the time and percentage improvements of swimmers in the distance conditioning period in the hope of finding a formula that related aerobic improvement to racing times. I am satisfied no such formula exists. In every case though, improved aerobic distances and times have resulted in faster race results. I don’t know whether better aerobic results mean sprinters train better anaerobically or directly contribute to the race performance. It may be both. I am satisfied that “the faster you can swim aerobically the farther ahead you start” and the faster you will race. And that is not just to help prove a point.

Brent said – “This may come as a shock, but I am an advocate of a strong aerobic base as long as it accomplished well in advance of racing time.”

I knew that anyone who took this amount of time debate the merits of distance conditioning had to be a believer at heart.

Brent said –“ The low yardage group ended up with much more power in the water (and speed) than they started with, but before tapering the training group actually had less power in the water (tested on power rack) than they did before the season. After tapering the yardage group regained their power to about the same levels, and they dropped some time, however, they dropped less than the low yardage group.”

This sort of logic really annoyed Arthur Lydiard. Group A did something and got one result. Group B did something else and got a different result. So what. What about Group C that did both things for an equal period of time? What result would they get? After all that’s how a balanced distance conditioning program works. To clarify this point the table below shows what a typical Lydiard swimming program would look like for a 50 and 100 swimmer. They would do weights all through the 26 weeks. Incidentally the distance of 100 kilometers was not arrived at by chance. Without referring to anyone else we tried all sorts of distances in an effort to replicate the physiological changes that occurred in a runner training 100 miles. We got closest at 100 kilometers. The real point though is that a good program is not a matter of choosing between distance and power – it’s a matter of doing both; lots of both.

Brent said – For the ones that can’t yet, we’ll settle for lower numbers during basal aerobic phases (which by the way can’t last 25 weeks for everyone). My message here is that we shouldn’t rack up the yardage for the simply for the sake of hitting a number.

The table above clarifies the 25 week confusion. It’s actually two seasons of 12 weeks per year. I agree there will be swimmers who complain about 100 kilometers and use the old “I’m a sprinter” excuse to dodge a bit of hard work. However, every national class swimmer can swim 100 kilometers for 12 weeks. It’s not that difficult; “Racking up the yardage” is not “simply for the sake of hitting a number”. Racking up that mileage is because that’s the time and distance it takes to produce aerobic physiological changes. That’s how we arrived at 100; certainly not because it was a nice round number.

Brent said – When dealing with sprinters, however, we should look at track’s sprinters. We don’t see sprint runners out running lots of miles. In Michael Johnson’s (400 meter world record holder) base endurance phases he was reported as doing 15 miles a week, and he ran the 400!

A week ago Brent was telling me not to look at what someone else does and follow the pack – only joking. The point here is the same as I have mentioned above. A Lydiard program is not suggesting Michael Johnson should have abandoned his weeks of 15 miles of sprint training. After all see how similar this is to the ten weeks in a Lydiard program. What Arthur is suggesting is that Johnson’s 400 would have been faster and he may still hold the 200 record if he had added a few weeks of aerobic conditioning before he did the 15 miles of sprint training. I know a few runs around Auckland that might have done Michael a “power” of good.

Brent said – You basically said yourself that sprinters aren’t able to swim well when the set gets long.

No, I didn’t say that. What I said was sprinters, who hadn’t done distance conditioning found it difficult to do long sets at a fast pace. That’s because they haven’t been trained properly. One of the three swimmers I mentioned was a 200 specialist but won the 50 at a US Nationals, the other was a 50 specialist and got a bronze in that event at the Pan Pacific Games. The third was a 200 breaststroke swimmer but swam the 100 in her National relay team. They were all sprinters, near enough. They could also do a pretty good 10,000. There is a difference between not wanting to do something and not being able.

Brent said – Also, as I kind of touched on, the principle of training specific to races close to the big meet, and doing lots of power and sprint work for sprinters favors the idea that power is lost with distance training but can be regained. Think about it…

That’s a valid argument although I wouldn’t put it quite that way; as you can well imagine. I would say that power temporarily takes second place while other needs are addressed. Power is not lost or considered unimportant. It is a vital part of good swimming and will be nurtured in full measure at the right time. In fact it will be nurtured better as a result of arriving at that stage of training with an aerobically fit, well conditioned body.

Thank you for the discussion – it’s been fun.

By David

I was pleased to receive a comment from Brent to the article on “The Case for Distance Training”. It would be best to read his comment in full, but if you are in a hurry I have attempted to extract his crucial points and copied them in the summary below.

“Please tell me – what does 20,000 or even 14,000 yards a day do for a sprint swimmer? Why would someone racing for less than a minute need to train aerobically so much? This article talks a lot about who is training with this much yardage, but not about why they do it. I am not saying that lots of yardage is never good, but it isn’t for everyone. Fact: distance training decreases maximal stroking power. Fact: maximal stroking power is continually shown to be very highly correlated to maximal swimming velocity. In my opinion, the benefits of lots of yardage are not worth the loss of power in sprinters. Right now I feel like quality trumps quantity for sprinters.”

Brent is quite right. No one should swim 100 kilometers every week just because Phelps or Lochte are reported as swimming that far. That’s asking for far too big a leap of faith. Of course there should be a good reason. After all it’s a bloody long way to swim. Only a complete moron would do it without some idea of it physiological outcome.

So what does happen when an athlete swims 100 kilometers a week for 25 weeks a year? In the five years it takes to develop an international level of aerobic fitness that’s 125 weeks and 12,500 kilometers; or New York to Los Angeles three and a bit times. Here is a simplified description of the physiological changes that occur. Remember though I’m not a doctor. However the descriptions are accurate even if they are not couched in medical terms.

First there is a 40% increase in the density of the muscle’s capillary bed. A detailed study completed in Poland recently concluded with the following statement. “Endurance trained men have 821 capillaries per mm2, that is 40.3% more than untrained men (585 per mm2).”

A similar Manchester Metropolitan University study concluded that “endurance exercise training results in profound adaptations of the cardio-respiratory and neuromuscular systems that enhance the delivery of oxygen from the atmosphere to the mitochondria and enable a tighter regulation of muscle metabolism. These adaptations effect an improvement in endurance performance that is manifest as a rightward shift in the ‘velocity-time curve’. This shift enables athletes to exercise for longer at a given absolute exercise intensity, or to exercise at a higher exercise intensity for a given duration.”

So what is the practical effect of these changes? One National Champion I coached began by swimming 26×200 meter sets in 2.45 with a heart rate of 160. Four years later the same swimmer was swimming the same set on the same interval, at the same heart rate in 2.16; same effort 18% faster. All the physiological changes mentioned above had occurred. This swimmer could now swim at a 100 meter rate of 1.08 without dipping into her anaerobic mechanisms. Her base aerobic pace had improved from 1.23 per 100 to 1.08. When she added anaerobic training to that she quickly came down 13 seconds to 1.10 when she was training at 1.23 pace and 55 when her training aerobic pace was 1.08.

At its most simple the faster you can swim aerobically the further ahead you start and the faster you will swim when you dip into your anaerobic and speed energy systems. And that’s true whether the event is 50 or 100 or 200 or 1500 meters.

There are two frustrating aspects of Brent’s comments. The argument that quality trumps quantity is just bloody insulting. I’ve coached three female swimmers who could swim 100×100 meters going every 1.30 and average 1.06. In one set the last 2×100 were in 59. One of the swimmers was an Olympic Gold Medalist, another a Pan Pac Bronze Medalist and the third a Pan Pac semi-finalist. Their time of 1.06 for that set was probably better quality than sprint swimmers could swim for ten of them. For a well trained athlete further does not mean slow. Any coach would be hard pushed to describe a 1.06 pace for 10,000 meters as lacking quality.

The second frustration is the argument that long distance swimmer “decreases maximal stroking power”. This is a similar argument to the “you’ll lose your speed” argument. Arthur faced that comment all the time. His curt reply was, “Where will it go?” Brent’s claim ignores the fact that most distance coaches have only ever argued for 50% of the athletes time to be spent doing big distances. The other weeks, the other 50%, focus on power, speed and anaerobic conditioning. That’s plenty of time to take care of the speed and power aspects of the athlete’s preparation. This summer I coached a 33 year old male swimmer to two Master’s world records in the 50 and 100 meters butterfly. Before his swims we spent ten weeks doing all the stuff Barry would drool over. For ten weeks he never swam further than 16,000 in a week. But he did it on top of a steady aerobic base. That’s why it worked.

I once asked Arthur, “What’s the most important stage of your training program?” He answered, “The speed-work period of course; because that’s when you get ready to race.” That’s from the man who invented long distance training.