There is a movement in the competitive swimming world called Ultra-Short Race Pace Training. A sports physiologist, Brent Rushall developed the program and wrote about it:
http://www.exrx.net/Aerobic/RacePaceSwimming.html
Traditionally, swimmers have done lots of volume. Many thousands of yards of low intensity work. However, Rushall states that the technique is different for different paces. If you are training for a 50 meter race, the technique is different than if you are training for 500 meters. He says you need to train at the pace you race at in order to train the proper technique.
He says the best way to do this is to do ultra-short intervals of less than 15 seconds. Not all-out, as in sprint training. But race pace. And also unlike sprint training, the rest periods are short- 20 seconds or so. For example, 10 seconds at race pace, then 20 seconds rest. Repeat many, many times. 40 or 60 or up to 100 times.
With ultra-short intervals, you don't get so tired, so you can keep repeating them. The idea is to get the maximum amount of training you can at race pace. If the intervals are longer, such as 1 or 2 minutes, your body will get much more fatigued and you can't do as much work at race pace.
He also advises not to do dryland strength training, a staple among competitive swimmers. But he is right in saying that while the research supports this for many other sports, such as running or ball sports, the research doesn't really support dryland resistance training for swimming.
He says that the running research doesn't apply to swimming because the nature of swimming is different. In running and ball sports, you have to deal with gravity and hard impacts on your body. In swimming, your body is supported by the water. Also, in running, there is no slippage when your foot strikes the ground. In swimming, there is a great deal of slippage when you pull your arm through the water. Also, in swimming, the upper body is paramount, whereas in running, it's the lower body that is more important.
He is not a coach, but an exercise physiologist who looked at what the research was saying and found a big disconnect between the research and what swimmers were doing in their training. But some top swim programs, such as USC have adopted forms of Rushall's program with good results. It's too early at this point for there to be much published research comparing performance with this technique, since Rushall just wrote his paper in 2013 and people are only starting to apply it.
Remember, this is not specialized speed training. It's not done at top speed. It's done at race pace. And the rest intervals are short. It's not intended to be a small part of the program or only done at certain times of the year. It's meant to be the main part of the program year-round.
Here is a link to the article:
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