You can literally do this, but who wants their easy day to be intervals at a pace that represents the pace that corresponds to roughly 5k + 90 sec when you could just run that fast or a little slower in a steady effort and get done faster with the same stimulus?
If you're proposing only aerobic threshold training, ie marathon pace ish, then you'd be limited on mileage and your ability to recover quickly, but you would probably still get faster this way as well, your ceiling is probably just lower because your total workload won't really progress, however, you'll still probably get within 90% of your potential because most people don't train this enough.
Since no one has mentioned it yet, the Billat 30-30 workout is 30 seconds at mile race pace followed by 30 seconds at 1/2 that pace (jogging). It has been proven to increase VO2 max. It's also quicker to recover from than a tempo for the same time.
I think this is a great workout for 5k and below because the running pace is closer to the range of motion that is used in the 1500 to 5k distance and it teaches you how to relax at that pace. The Billat 30-30 is typically 17-24 reps.
When I was swimming I often swam sets with lots of shorter/faster reps (50-200m normally) with very short rest, sometimes only 10 or 15s.
Why doesn’t running do anything like this? Is it not ideal? Would it be too likely to cause injury?
If you're running short, fast, reps you're probably trying to develop speed, i.e., getting your muscles adapted to running as fast as you can. And you want that happening on each rep. But as a workout goes on fatigue can set in and you won't be able to run as fast in the later reps. So you want recovery between reps to be complete allowing later reps to be run as fast as possible.
That said, there are sessions along the lines of what you're suggesting. Lydiard had a session where you'd sprint for 50 yards and float for 60. You'd do as many of these as you could manage. A mile was pretty respectable. Anyone who's done it correctly will tell you it's a killer. World class guys might manage a couple miles with total times under nine minutes.
I’ve never researched sprint training but I thought they mostly did long/full recovery between efforts?
Yes, at the very highest level Swimming sprinters do very fast repeats with a lot of rest. It looks a little closer to track and field sprint training.
But pretty much all Swimming sprinters do very high yardage at a young age. At least, for a few years, most of them are trained as if they were distant swimmers. It would be the equivalent of Noah Lyles spending his youth training for the mile.
I’m not saying it’s right, but that’s generally the formula for Swimming.
When I was swimming I often swam sets with lots of shorter/faster reps (50-200m normally) with very short rest, sometimes only 10 or 15s.
Why doesn’t running do anything like this? Is it not ideal? Would it be too likely to cause injury?
Swimming coaching is about flogging the heck out of the swimmer, then easing it off before the key races.
Who knows what they'd do if it was real coaching?
As a swim coach I can say that’s a good question. It’s hard to say. Young swimmers are trained, almost to a man, as distance swimmers in all four strokes at least through high school. Some evolve into sprinters in college. There is more speed training at the age group level than there was 20 years ago, but most coaches still follow the distance/individual medley strategy of training young swimmers. I’m not sure it’s always best, but very few successful swimmers have done anything else.
To be fair, swimming is a very difficult series of movements to learn, much more so than running. It takes years of technically perfect strokes to produce an elite swimmer. It’s sort of like dance or martial arts in that way. Most swimmers never get there, because truly excellent technique is beyond their grasp. But the best chance to learn great technique is to perform a lot of good strokes, thousands upon thousands, and distance training is the best way to get those strokes in. A big part of age group training is nervous system adaption.
When I was swimming I often swam sets with lots of shorter/faster reps (50-200m normally) with very short rest, sometimes only 10 or 15s.
Why doesn’t running do anything like this? Is it not ideal? Would it be too likely to cause injury?
Look again at this OP. Swimming-to-running is typically about one-to-four, so these "shorter/faster reps" would be roughly equivalent to 200-800m reps for runners. Would any running workout, with any coach, include multiple 800m repetitions (at workout paces) with 15sec rests? Come on.
Swimming and running are different. The water eliminates pounding and the buoyancy speeds recovery. I knew a national-level college swimmer (female) who had been doing 20,000 yards a day--the "equivalent" of 40+ miles of running. Granted, this was the "more is better!" 1970s, but even now a swimmer like Katie Ledecky has frequent 15,000-yard days; for a runner that would be ~35 miles on a regular basis, almost none of it at a jog or easy run.
I've had 400/800m runners do sets of 4x150 with 50m jog/walk recoveries, 60sec from the start of one rep to the start of the next. So the 150s are in the ~20sec range, with the rest of the minute (~40sec) to get back to the start. They find these pretty taxing. A swimmer would find 40 seconds of rest, after "only" 20sec of effort, even quality effort--and for only four reps!--to be kind of strange: "too much rest!"
TL, DR: Running doesn't mirror a lot of swimming workouts, especially in recovery periods, because recovery is faster in the pool.
Bakken, the guy who invented the Norwegian method regularly did (and still does!) 45s on/15s off threshold sessions. Ingebrigtsens do 25x400 @ 62-65s /w 30s rest regularly.
Bakken, the guy who invented the Norwegian method regularly did (and still does!) 45s on/15s off threshold sessions. Ingebrigtsens do 25x400 @ 62-65s /w 30s rest regularly.
Grete Waitz (also Norwegian) was doing workouts like 15-20 x 300m with 10-15sec recovery, 50 years ago (1974 and earlier), so perhaps Bakken learned something from her.
When I was swimming I often swam sets with lots of shorter/faster reps (50-200m normally) with very short rest, sometimes only 10 or 15s.
Why doesn’t running do anything like this? Is it not ideal? Would it be too likely to cause injury?
If you're running short, fast, reps you're probably trying to develop speed, i.e., getting your muscles adapted to running as fast as you can. And you want that happening on each rep. But as a workout goes on fatigue can set in and you won't be able to run as fast in the later reps. So you want recovery between reps to be complete allowing later reps to be run as fast as possible.
That said, there are sessions along the lines of what you're suggesting. Lydiard had a session where you'd sprint for 50 yards and float for 60. You'd do as many of these as you could manage. A mile was pretty respectable. Anyone who's done it correctly will tell you it's a killer. World class guys might manage a couple miles with total times under nine minutes.
I think what I had in mind was not necessarily a full on sprint but maybe something like 40s to 90s a rep like we did in swimming, so it ends up being reasonably aerobic pace. E.g we’d do 100m leaving every 90s so we’d do 100m in 75s and rest 15s. This was not a full out pace but like 800m or so race pace probably.
Swimming is also limited by breathing more than running. Running you can breath more efficiently creating a much higher intensity.
The water also limits explosive movements.
Another thing about swimming is that because you are horizontal and buoyant... venous return is way more efficient. You can get reoxygenated blood to your muscles (which in swimming are generally smaller non weight bearing muscles... thus the required recovery time is generally shortened
If you're running short, fast, reps you're probably trying to develop speed, i.e., getting your muscles adapted to running as fast as you can. And you want that happening on each rep. But as a workout goes on fatigue can set in and you won't be able to run as fast in the later reps. So you want recovery between reps to be complete allowing later reps to be run as fast as possible.
That said, there are sessions along the lines of what you're suggesting. Lydiard had a session where you'd sprint for 50 yards and float for 60. You'd do as many of these as you could manage. A mile was pretty respectable. Anyone who's done it correctly will tell you it's a killer. World class guys might manage a couple miles with total times under nine minutes.
I think what I had in mind was not necessarily a full on sprint but maybe something like 40s to 90s a rep like we did in swimming, so it ends up being reasonably aerobic pace. E.g we’d do 100m leaving every 90s so we’d do 100m in 75s and rest 15s. This was not a full out pace but like 800m or so race pace probably.
Okay. That's not what I took you to mean. When Ron Clarke came back to serious running he did it with a group of guys from his club who ran every day for about an hour at a horse track. They did a steady run at what you probably could call a reasonably aerobic run. but they hadn't started that way.
The guys who started that group were all big admirers of Zatopek, as were so many others at the time, and initially imitated what he had done, large numbers of 440s at not really fast paces with fairly short and not really slow recovery jogs. Over time they slowed the reps even more and sped up the recovery jogs. They kept doing this until the runs ended up being good paced steady runs by the time Ron joined them. Peter Snell told me that early in his interval phase he did a session of twenty 440s, not all that fast and with short and relatively fast recovery jogs. I knew a guy who was one of the best roadrunners in the DC area when I was there who did a session of 440s, twenty or more of them in 90 seconds with a very short recovery, which seems along the lines of what you've described.
I coached an NCAA D3 team for 41 years and yes, most swim coaches use short-rest interval training for endurance development, but also use long rest interval work for speed development. Early in my career I was privileged to get to coach our college runner in his post-grad days using short-rest interval training and you can read about the success he had with it in this LetsRun article
Jack Daniels tested him during his training days with me and then later when he trained at Indiana University with Sam Bell while getting his PhD. He never did another short-rest workout after moving to IU and the two charts show the distinct detraining effect that had on his lactate curve. (If I could figure out how to insert the pdf of these charts, I would, but since I can't, if anyone wishes to see them, you can email me at
In my retirement, I coach a local running club of adults using this same short-rest interval work twice a week on our college track. Regardless of their 5K level (14:00ish to 22:00ish) they can all handle this kind of training and find it beneficial.
When I was swimming I often swam sets with lots of shorter/faster reps (50-200m normally) with very short rest, sometimes only 10 or 15s.
Why doesn’t running do anything like this? Is it not ideal? Would it be too likely to cause injury?
If you tracked heartrate and how fast it slows down after a rep in the pool, you would understand why you need very short rests for a swim workout. If you take longer rests in the pool, your heartrate will plummet near resting and you'll get cold.
Swim workouts with short rest are not all out, its something like 10x100m Freestyle starting every 70 seconds, so you swim the 100m in 60 gliding as much as possible. They are definitly more aerobic.
Swim Sprinting is normally combined with a jump start and rest outside of the pool.
Swim training is very volumen oriented as technique and gliding can not be learned at maximal efforts.
