Swimming vs Track Recovery

This is why swimmers train so much. Multiple efforts during a meet session. Lots of college meets put the men's 1650y/1500m right after the 200 IM for men. I have watched guys climb out switch lanes and race the mile right after a 200 IM. Chad Carvin comes to mind.

SwimLifer wrote:

This is why swimmers train so much. Multiple efforts during a meet session. Lots of college meets put the men's 1650y/1500m right after the 200 IM for men. I have watched guys climb out switch lanes and race the mile right after a 200 IM. Chad Carvin comes to mind.

Yeah- this is just amazing. But it's weird they can beat other Olympic caliber swimmers on such little rest.

I think it means that swimmers are in insane shape and also that swimming and track are not, in the least bit, comparable when it comes to going all-out. May be due to swimmers not taking the pounding/impact of an 800m or 1500m?? Or maybe swimmers can be that much better than their competition?? No clue but you wouldn't see it on the track.

Swimming is a low impact sport, running is a high impact sport.

For a sprinter doing 100/200 or 60/200 indoors, 30 minutes is just about ideal rest, because you can hold your warmup (not if the rest is any longer than that). And it's not totally uncommon for sprinters to do up to 4 or 5 events in a championship (100,200, 2 relays, LJ).

coach d wrote:

For a sprinter doing 100/200 or 60/200 indoors, 30 minutes is just about ideal rest, because you can hold your warmup (not if the rest is any longer than that). And it's not totally uncommon for sprinters to do up to 4 or 5 events in a championship (100,200, 2 relays, LJ).

Sprinters are running for 10-20 seconds, swimmers are swimming for 2-3 minutes. As OP noted- it'd be like trying to double in a 1500/800 within an hour.

Dan Boy wrote:

SwimLifer wrote:

This is why swimmers train so much. Multiple efforts during a meet session. Lots of college meets put the men's 1650y/1500m right after the 200 IM for men. I have watched guys climb out switch lanes and race the mile right after a 200 IM. Chad Carvin comes to mind.

Yeah- this is just amazing. But it's weird they can beat other Olympic caliber swimmers on such little rest.

I think it means that swimmers are in insane shape and also that swimming and track are not, in the least bit, comparable when it comes to going all-out. May be due to swimmers not taking the pounding/impact of an 800m or 1500m?? Or maybe swimmers can be that much better than their competition?? No clue but you wouldn't see it on the track.

For one thing, the training is on another planet. One classic hard running "workout" like 10x400 or 6x1k would be a single set among several in a basically continuous two-hour swimming session. As a so-so HS swimmer I did two-hour, 6,000m+ workouts, 5-8x per week. In running terms that is like 24km per session in terms of time spent, and most of it would be quality.

You can do this because the impact is so low, so there isn't much injury risk. Although you get tired as hell. Chronic fatigue and just getting sick are bigger issues in most swim clubs than loads of injuries.

There's also no heat buildup in swimming, as the water cools the body. Add high impact and excessive body heat to swimming and there's no way they could do those long, hard workouts.

When running you are lifting your body weight of the ground with each stride. That is a difficult thing to do repeatedly. In swimming (and cycling) your body weight is supported. You have to propel it forward but that isn't quite the same thing. Even more destructive in running is the landing; your entire body weight crashing to the ground and the shock being absorbed by one foot/leg.

That said swimmers do train harder than runners. They can do because their training does not do the same damage to the body as running does. How many quality sessions do you think motivated athletes would do if they never got sore legs, ran negligible risk of injury etc. etc?