Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Monday, May 29, 2006 Mid Distance, IMs, Choice
This is workout is a combination of mid distance, IMs and Choice. Below is the workout for the expert lane.
Warm up
800 Choice
Drills
8x50 Drill on 1:00
Mid distance set
Do the Following 4 times:
- 300 free at cruise pace
- 75 (kick, free, kick by 25)
IM Set:
3x200 IM on 3:10
Choice
3x100 choice
Warm Down
200 Choice
Warm up
800 Choice
Drills
8x50 Drill on 1:00
Mid distance set
Do the Following 4 times:
- 300 free at cruise pace
- 75 (kick, free, kick by 25)
IM Set:
3x200 IM on 3:10
Choice
3x100 choice
Warm Down
200 Choice
Sunday, May 28, 2006 Distance or 50 Sprints for time
This is the workout for the expert lane. You have a choice of distance or 50s for time
Warm up
800 Choice (mix it up)
Sprint workout
6x100 Free on 1:25
10x50s on 2 minutes for time. The goal is to sprint, but make them all consistent. This works power and recovery
6x100 Pull or swim steady pace. This is the start of warm down.
Distance Workout
10x50 Drill (1:00)
Start easy and descend
100
200
300
400
500
400
300
200
100
6x50 Choice
Warm Down
200 Choice
Warm up
800 Choice (mix it up)
Sprint workout
6x100 Free on 1:25
10x50s on 2 minutes for time. The goal is to sprint, but make them all consistent. This works power and recovery
6x100 Pull or swim steady pace. This is the start of warm down.
Distance Workout
10x50 Drill (1:00)
Start easy and descend
100
200
300
400
500
400
300
200
100
6x50 Choice
Warm Down
200 Choice
Friday, May 19, 2006
Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel, New York Times May 16, 2006
Lactic Acid is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel
May 16, 2006
Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel
By GINA KOLATA
Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give out.
Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they have to learn to work out at just below their "lactic threshold," that point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate. Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic thresholds.
But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid.
The notion that lactic acid was bad took hold more than a century ago, said George A. Brooks, a professor in the department of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It stuck because it seemed to make so much sense.
"It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Dr. Brooks said.
Its origins lie in a study by a Nobel laureate, Otto Meyerhof, who in the early years of the 20th century cut a frog in half and put its bottom half in a jar. The frog's muscles had no circulation — no source of oxygen or energy.
Dr. Myerhoff gave the frog's leg electric shocks to make the muscles contract, but after a few twitches, the muscles stopped moving. Then, when Dr. Myerhoff examined the muscles, he discovered that they were bathed in lactic acid.
A theory was born. Lack of oxygen to muscles leads to lactic acid, leads to fatigue.
Athletes were told that they should spend most of their effort exercising aerobically, using glucose as a fuel. If they tried to spend too much time exercising harder, in the anaerobic zone, they were told, they would pay a price, that lactic acid would accumulate in the muscles, forcing them to stop.
Few scientists questioned this view, Dr. Brooks said. But, he said, he became interested in it in the 1960's, when he was running track at Queens College and his coach told him that his performance was limited by a buildup of lactic acid.
When he graduated and began working on a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, he decided to study the lactic acid hypothesis for his dissertation.
"I gave rats radioactive lactic acid, and I found that they burned it faster than anything else I could give them," Dr. Brooks said.
It looked as if lactic acid was there for a reason. It was a source of energy.
Dr. Brooks said he published the finding in the late 70's. Other researchers challenged him at meetings and in print.
"I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I had my papers rejected," Dr. Brooks recalled. But he soldiered on, conducting more elaborate studies with rats and, years later, moving on to humans. Every time, with every study, his results were consistent with his radical idea.
Eventually, other researchers confirmed the work. And gradually, the thinking among exercise physiologists began to change.
"The evidence has continued to mount," said L. Bruce Gladden, a professor of health and human performance at Auburn University. "It became clear that it is not so simple as to say, Lactic acid is a bad thing and it causes fatigue."
As for the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness, Dr. Gladden said, that never made sense.
"Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of exercise," he said. "You get sore one to three days later. The time frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found."
The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.
Mitochondria even have a special transporter protein to move the substance into them, Dr. Brooks found. Intense training makes a difference, he said, because it can make double the mitochondrial mass.
It is clear that the old lactic acid theory cannot explain what is happening to muscles, Dr. Brooks and others said.
Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best way possible to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood things the scientists didn't," he said.
Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer distances, for example.
That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria, letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work harder and longer.
Just before a race, coaches often tell athletes to train very hard in brief spurts.
That extra stress increases the mitochondria mass even more, Dr. Brooks said, and is the reason for improved performance.
And the scientists?
They took much longer to figure it out.
"They said, 'You're anaerobic, you need more oxygen,' " Dr. Brooks said. "The scientists were stuck in 1920."
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
May 16, 2006
Lactic Acid Is Not Muscles' Foe, It's Fuel
By GINA KOLATA
Everyone who has even thought about exercising has heard the warnings about lactic acid. It builds up in your muscles. It is what makes your muscles burn. Its buildup is what makes your muscles tire and give out.
Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they have to learn to work out at just below their "lactic threshold," that point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate. Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic thresholds.
But that, it turns out, is all wrong. Lactic acid is actually a fuel, not a caustic waste product. Muscles make it deliberately, producing it from glucose, and they burn it to obtain energy. The reason trained athletes can perform so hard and so long is because their intense training causes their muscles to adapt so they more readily and efficiently absorb lactic acid.
The notion that lactic acid was bad took hold more than a century ago, said George A. Brooks, a professor in the department of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley. It stuck because it seemed to make so much sense.
"It's one of the classic mistakes in the history of science," Dr. Brooks said.
Its origins lie in a study by a Nobel laureate, Otto Meyerhof, who in the early years of the 20th century cut a frog in half and put its bottom half in a jar. The frog's muscles had no circulation — no source of oxygen or energy.
Dr. Myerhoff gave the frog's leg electric shocks to make the muscles contract, but after a few twitches, the muscles stopped moving. Then, when Dr. Myerhoff examined the muscles, he discovered that they were bathed in lactic acid.
A theory was born. Lack of oxygen to muscles leads to lactic acid, leads to fatigue.
Athletes were told that they should spend most of their effort exercising aerobically, using glucose as a fuel. If they tried to spend too much time exercising harder, in the anaerobic zone, they were told, they would pay a price, that lactic acid would accumulate in the muscles, forcing them to stop.
Few scientists questioned this view, Dr. Brooks said. But, he said, he became interested in it in the 1960's, when he was running track at Queens College and his coach told him that his performance was limited by a buildup of lactic acid.
When he graduated and began working on a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, he decided to study the lactic acid hypothesis for his dissertation.
"I gave rats radioactive lactic acid, and I found that they burned it faster than anything else I could give them," Dr. Brooks said.
It looked as if lactic acid was there for a reason. It was a source of energy.
Dr. Brooks said he published the finding in the late 70's. Other researchers challenged him at meetings and in print.
"I had huge fights, I had terrible trouble getting my grants funded, I had my papers rejected," Dr. Brooks recalled. But he soldiered on, conducting more elaborate studies with rats and, years later, moving on to humans. Every time, with every study, his results were consistent with his radical idea.
Eventually, other researchers confirmed the work. And gradually, the thinking among exercise physiologists began to change.
"The evidence has continued to mount," said L. Bruce Gladden, a professor of health and human performance at Auburn University. "It became clear that it is not so simple as to say, Lactic acid is a bad thing and it causes fatigue."
As for the idea that lactic acid causes muscle soreness, Dr. Gladden said, that never made sense.
"Lactic acid will be gone from your muscles within an hour of exercise," he said. "You get sore one to three days later. The time frame is not consistent, and the mechanisms have not been found."
The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.
Mitochondria even have a special transporter protein to move the substance into them, Dr. Brooks found. Intense training makes a difference, he said, because it can make double the mitochondrial mass.
It is clear that the old lactic acid theory cannot explain what is happening to muscles, Dr. Brooks and others said.
Yet, Dr. Brooks said, even though coaches often believed in the myth of the lactic acid threshold, they ended up training athletes in the best way possible to increase their mitochondria. "Coaches have understood things the scientists didn't," he said.
Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer distances, for example.
That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria, letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work harder and longer.
Just before a race, coaches often tell athletes to train very hard in brief spurts.
That extra stress increases the mitochondria mass even more, Dr. Brooks said, and is the reason for improved performance.
And the scientists?
They took much longer to figure it out.
"They said, 'You're anaerobic, you need more oxygen,' " Dr. Brooks said. "The scientists were stuck in 1920."
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
Monday, May 22, 2006 Free and IM
This is a workout of Free and IM for the expert lane (3,800 yards)
Warm Up
200 Free
200 Pull
100 IM Dr
100 Kick
1st section of Main Set
5x200 freee (2:40 to 2:50 aerobic)
4x150 pull (wiht pull buoy or board) (:15 sec rest)
3x100 free (1:30)
2nd section of Main Set
4x50 Kick
6x100 IM (1:35)
6x50 (1:05) swim 1st 15 Meters underwater
Warm Down
200 Choice
Warm Up
200 Free
200 Pull
100 IM Dr
100 Kick
1st section of Main Set
5x200 freee (2:40 to 2:50 aerobic)
4x150 pull (wiht pull buoy or board) (:15 sec rest)
3x100 free (1:30)
2nd section of Main Set
4x50 Kick
6x100 IM (1:35)
6x50 (1:05) swim 1st 15 Meters underwater
Warm Down
200 Choice
Sunday, May 21, 2006 Distance or Mid-distance/sprints
Again this day has a choice of two workouts. This is a posting for the expert lane.
Warm up
200 Choice
3x100 Pull
3x100 Free
200 Kick
1st section of mid-distance/sprint workout
2 times the following:
100 Free Drill down pool/ swim back
50 kick
100 Pull
50 kick
100 Swim
2nd section of mid-distance/sprint workout
4x200 Free
3rd section of mid-distance/sprint workout
3 times the following:
100 choice drill down/swim back
50 kick
100 choice
4th section of mid-distance/sprint workout
Sprints off the blocks
1st secton of distance workout
8x50 free descend stroke count 1-4 and 5-8 on 50 seconds
2nd section of distance workout
6x300 free on 5 minutes, or 6x250s non-free on 5 minutes
This should be a push. You sould get at least 45 seconds rest. If you don't then drop 50 yards
3rd section of distance workout
4x50 kick
400 pull moderate pace
Warm Down
200
Warm up
200 Choice
3x100 Pull
3x100 Free
200 Kick
1st section of mid-distance/sprint workout
2 times the following:
100 Free Drill down pool/ swim back
50 kick
100 Pull
50 kick
100 Swim
2nd section of mid-distance/sprint workout
4x200 Free
3rd section of mid-distance/sprint workout
3 times the following:
100 choice drill down/swim back
50 kick
100 choice
4th section of mid-distance/sprint workout
Sprints off the blocks
1st secton of distance workout
8x50 free descend stroke count 1-4 and 5-8 on 50 seconds
2nd section of distance workout
6x300 free on 5 minutes, or 6x250s non-free on 5 minutes
This should be a push. You sould get at least 45 seconds rest. If you don't then drop 50 yards
3rd section of distance workout
4x50 kick
400 pull moderate pace
Warm Down
200
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Monday, May 15 Choice
This workout is for the EXPERT lane and is 3,700 yards. This workout the swimmer chooses which stroke to practice.
Warm Up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
First Choice Set
6x50 choice drill
3x100 mod choice
6x50 choice kick
100 fast!! Choice
100 ez
Second Choice Set
6x50 2nd choice
3x100 2nd mod choice
6x50 2nd choice kick
100 2nd choice fast!
100 ez
Third Choice Set
5x50 moderate choice thinking about stroke technique
5x50 choice alternating sprint and ez (take rest to make sprint FAST)
Warm Down
200 Choice
Warm Up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
First Choice Set
6x50 choice drill
3x100 mod choice
6x50 choice kick
100 fast!! Choice
100 ez
Second Choice Set
6x50 2nd choice
3x100 2nd mod choice
6x50 2nd choice kick
100 2nd choice fast!
100 ez
Third Choice Set
5x50 moderate choice thinking about stroke technique
5x50 choice alternating sprint and ez (take rest to make sprint FAST)
Warm Down
200 Choice
Sunday May 14, 2006 Distance or All Strokes
This workout is for the EXPERT lane and totals 4,000 for the distance set and 3,800 for the all stroke set
Warm up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
Main Set for Distance Workout
6x50 drill
300 Free
300 Pull
6x50 Kick
3x100 (1:20)
400 Free
400 Pull
200 Free
200 Pull
3x100 (1:30) fast
Main Set for All Stroke Workout
3x50 kick
In the sets below, do drill on the first of each set, except pull and IM
4x100 breast
4x150 back
3x200 free
4x150 pull (descend 1-4)
3x100 IM
3x50 choice
Warm Down
200 Choice
Warm up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
Main Set for Distance Workout
6x50 drill
300 Free
300 Pull
6x50 Kick
3x100 (1:20)
400 Free
400 Pull
200 Free
200 Pull
3x100 (1:30) fast
Main Set for All Stroke Workout
3x50 kick
In the sets below, do drill on the first of each set, except pull and IM
4x100 breast
4x150 back
3x200 free
4x150 pull (descend 1-4)
3x100 IM
3x50 choice
Warm Down
200 Choice
Friday, May 05, 2006
Monday, May 8 100s and broken 1650
This is the workout for Monday. This is the expert lane workout of 3,700 yards
Warm up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
Main Set
4x100 Pull
4x100 IM
4x100 Free
275, 250, 225, 200, 175, 150, 125, 100, 75, 50, 25
Warm Down
100 Choice
Warm up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
Main Set
4x100 Pull
4x100 IM
4x100 Free
275, 250, 225, 200, 175, 150, 125, 100, 75, 50, 25
Warm Down
100 Choice
Sunday, May 7, 400 7 times or 47 50s
This is my birthday workout. This is for the EXPERT lane (4000 yards for the 400s and 3750 for the 50s)
Warm up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
Drills for 400 set (no drill set for the 50s workout)
50 left arm, 50 right,
50 catch up
50 breast 2k/pull
50 back goggles on head
50 1 arm fly
Main Set for 400 set
400 (50 drill/ 50 swim)
400 free
400 free pull
400 (50 swim/50 Kick)
400 (4x100 IM)
400 (4x100 Free
Main Set 50s workout
8x50 alt free and fly
8x50 free desc1-4/5-8
8x50 back desc1-4/5-8
8x50 kick
8x50 free desc1-4/5-8
8x50 breast desc 1-8
7x50 free desc 1-7
4x100 IM
Warm Down
200 Choice
Warm up
200 Free
200 Pull
200 Choice
200 Kick
Drills for 400 set (no drill set for the 50s workout)
50 left arm, 50 right,
50 catch up
50 breast 2k/pull
50 back goggles on head
50 1 arm fly
Main Set for 400 set
400 (50 drill/ 50 swim)
400 free
400 free pull
400 (50 swim/50 Kick)
400 (4x100 IM)
400 (4x100 Free
Main Set 50s workout
8x50 alt free and fly
8x50 free desc1-4/5-8
8x50 back desc1-4/5-8
8x50 kick
8x50 free desc1-4/5-8
8x50 breast desc 1-8
7x50 free desc 1-7
4x100 IM
Warm Down
200 Choice
