Reply To: Target time for 100Free LCM

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#3401
pault1607
Participant

Wow, 3.5 hours a week? Most other coaches won’t see an improvement with 10 hours a week. It’s always frustrating to compare metrics when limited data is available:

“My athlete improved 2%!” [he swam 15 hours a week, 8k a session]
“Darn, mine only improved 1.5%” [swam 4 hours a week, 1.5k a session]

And also, it’s always going to difficult to determine the actual cause of improvement. Is it the training, is it physical development, is he just having a good day?? It’s all about what they do whilst they are there too isn’t it. Swimmer A might be working twice as hard in half the time as Swimmer B.
I agree, 3.5 hours a weeks isn’t very much is it?!! I think it’s actually not “enough” to be reaching his peak performance, but it’s all we’ve got at the moment. He is still just shy of 18 so there is still some physical development going on. But in the last year he has gone from doing nothing for 4 months, a few months of a few sessions a week (trying to fit USRPT into traditional sessions), a few months of dabbling with USRPT and about 5 months (with summer break) of trying it “by the book”. He also plays other sport so is getting some cardio benefit from that.
He does work very hard in the pool and always pushes to his limit. I track his times and can see the improvement trend in his training times. We’ve decided to incorporate a few more 50s at 200 pace sets to try to build that back end.
As I said above, even on such a limited amount of time, we are seeing enough to be convinced that it is working for him. The main reason of course is that it’s got him back in the pool!!!