The Training Season

I remember reading about how training on a year round basis for youth sports can actually be not beneficial, except for the exception of track because of its use of periodization. This article was not a swimming magazine, but from a youth sports magazine, so the author was familiar with the fact that track uses periodization in their training process. The author didn't realize that swimming also uses this process when training year round athletes.

Doc Councilman was one of the earlier researchers when it came to applying science to how we develop our swimmers. One of the things he did was look at how track and field trained their athletes, as the sports do have some similarities in what we want to accomplish in terms of developing physiologically. The idea of periodization has been developed in our sport now, to be pretty universal amongst coaches.

So, this blog is mainly for the parents to understand what we are doing and for young coaches who might not know what periodization is (but you probably do it in your training regimen already because you grew up in it). It is when we look at our season in phases and in these phases we train differently. Our rest to work ratio changes between the phases, and the emphasis of development changes depending on the phase.

Parents have asked me in the past, "why aren't they swimming more laps?" A common question. The answer is normally because of the phase we are in within our training cycle. I'll also hear question about why are we doing so many long yardage repeats, or why are we doing so many short yardage repeats. All of this normally comes down to the training phase that a group is in.

Let's say that the group is in an aerobic development phase. They will probably be doing longer free yardage repeats, intertwined with kicking and IM's. Intervals probably not too hard (relative to the group), so that heart  rate doesn't get really high, but is maintained for a long period of time. Then it will contract with a period of time when the group will be doing short free repeats with fast interval. This period of training will be more focused on developing some speed, but also hybrids with some aerobic and anaerobic training. End of seasons are normally ended with a taper, where the swimmer will work on more race specific aspects and clean up things, while tapering off the yardage so that the body fully recovers from the long season of work that they have done.

Age-Groupers also do a type of periodization. My phases aren't as physiological as they are developmental. One phase will be fundamental; to the construction of strokes; to the beginning to learn to train; to race skill development. The level of the age-grouper and the experience with fundamentals and basic strokes will determine the phases concentrating on, and the length of phase.

So when you are out there watching workouts, realize that you are going to see practices change depending on the coaches training cycle. Those that are totally focused on stroke to the practices that the swimmers are training, and those workouts where they will be working on little things and race speed. The seasons are long, and we have a lot of time to develop. We use Periodization as it is a great way to develop the athletes, and not make the whole season monotonous.