Swimming Training: Principles and Design

The purpose of a Training Program is to identify the work to be carried out to achieve agreed objectives. 

                    

By looking at one of my favourite Olympic sports (100m Freestlye) we'll discuss the design of a personal training program, and evaluate its effectiveness based on the time and technique shown in the 100 metre freestyle swim.

The F.I.T.T concept relates to the basic principles of training, that are; 

• Frequency
• Intensity
• Type 
• Time

A successful training program relies on all its components to be structured to optimise the benefit to an athlete in their chosen sport. 

For the 100 metre freestyle event the frequency and time components are able to be consistent and based upon an athletes personal schedule, resulting in the training program being structured around the intensity and type of each exercise. 

The intensity component in a training program is based around the percentage of maximum heart rate an athlete is working at (220 – age (beat/min)).  Training at different intensities changes the fitness component that is worked; a higher intensity will improve anaerobic capacity as the body will be predominately be using the ATP/PC energy system, which lasts for short periods of time. For specifically the 100 metre freestyle swim, both ATP/PC, lactic and aerobic energy systems are used. 

Based on the energy system chart for elite athletes, 

the 100 metre swim uses 80% ATP/PC, 15% lactic and 5% aerobic. However this ratio can greatly change based on the ability of the swimmer. For example, a more relevant spread of energy systems used for a beginner swimmer may be; 10% ATP/PC, 70% lactic and 20% aerobic. With this spread the lactic system is the most predominately used system, this is due to its time boundaries being between 10 seconds and 2 minutes, which correlates with the time taken to swim 100 metres. 

The lactic energy system, also known as the anaerobic glycolysis energy system; gets its source of energy from a breakdown of glucose to form lactic acid in a number of chemical reactions know as glycolysis.  The type of exercise implemented into a training program should be specific to not only the sport, but the component of the sport in which you want to improve on. For maximum effectiveness of the exercise the type of exercise should focus on one component of fitness. The 100 metre freestyle swim is considered to be a sprint event. Therefore it predominately uses the following components of fitness; Speed and power, along with varying levels of muscular endurance and anaerobic capacity based on the athletes ability.   

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