Reply To: Bob Bowman on USRPT
I don’t get it! This obession with volume or holstic approach or whatever you want to call it. If you go on USA Swimming SWIMS data base and plug in a name of the top swimmers and look at their performance progressions over the last 4 years you will see a very different story. Rates of improvement over 4 years that are a negative and that would get the majority of club coaches fired! and yet we hang on to this myth of volume is the answer for now and the future.
A kid spends 100s of hours of training each year and makes no improvement? Really?
Look at race splits of kids that you know their programs go large volumes, dryland and lift. Where is the advantage? There has to be one or why would you do it.
During the Civil War they filled soldiers with whiskey, a stick to bite on and cut their leg off. If your Dr tried that you would hopefully ask about some type of anesthetic and if his reply was “hell this worked during the Civil War” you would crawl out of the office.
This “they need an aerobic base” when young as if this will last a life time. Really, you need to spend sometime reading about adapations in human performance and how long that lasts. Do you think the first time coaches saw U. Bolt, they said this kid needs to train for the 10k, so he will have the base to go faster when he’s older? I think hell no, they looked at him and said “shit this kid is fast” or at least I would have. Why would you turn a thoroughbred into a donkey or plow horse, with the hope that you can reconvert them back into a thoroughbred. Really!
Venting!
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