Too Far, Too Slow

By David Kelsheimer

Note: Author David Kelsheimer is an American coaching in Queensland, Australia. Following are his impressions of American distance swimming as seen from Down Under. This is a reprint of his article which appeared in Swimming World and Junior Swimmer, June, 1995.

Australian coach John Carew claims, "American distance swimming is long, slow and boring."

In the July 1994 issue of Swimming World magazine, Douglas Belkin asks the question, "Where Have All The U.S. Distance swimmers Gone?" The article goes on to question the work ethic of America's coaches and swimmers stating that they are simply "not willing to work as hard." Belkin quotes experts who extol the virtues of the good 'ol days of American distance swimming when "Hurt, Pain and Agony" were the prices of winning. The definition of work is provided in meters: "over 100,000 meters per week." However successful those values may have been in their day, the success they brought is 20 seconds off the pace by today's standards.

Maybe a new approach should be considered. Maybe the question of that Swimming World article should have been: "Is America's Concept of Distance Training Outdated?" Australian swimmers have been under the 15-minute mark for the 1500 meters more times than swimmers from any other nation. And their middle distance performance is far from slack. How can a nation of 17 million inhabitants thrash the Americans in any distance greater than 200 meters? Why aren't there any sub-15 minute 1500 meter freestyle swimmers among the 252 million inhabitants of the United States? Perhaps by emulating - or at least studying - their methods, real progress can be made in American distance swimming.

Age Group Programs

America's woes, Australian coaches believe, can be traced back to age group programs where distance swimming remains the great unknown. John Carew, coach of '70s distance great Steve Holland and present 400, 800 and 1500 meter world record holder Kieren Perkins, sees a different focus in U.S. competitions. "Age group and high school meets in the U.S. are too sprint-oriented," he says. "If a kid can't sprint, he's not provided for. There is not enough distance racing." In Australia, swimmers are given the chance to race all distances with kids their own age. This allows programs to expose their age groupers to the entire spectrum of events, allowing each athlete to find his or her niche.

Effective Training

Just exposing swimmers to the distance events is not enough if they can't be trained effectively. At the senior level, most U.S. distance programs tend to go too far and not fast enough. But then there are exceptions: Australian coaches find Jon Urbanchek's University of Michigan program, for example, similar to their own. But by and large, as Carew points out, "The sets are too big and too long. You can't get quality like that," he says. "I try to keep each set under 3,000 meters."

Carew's most famous prodigy, Olympic gold medalist Kieren Perkins, averages 77,000 meters per week. Coaches Dennis Cotterell and Michael Bohl indicated that similar workloads also put their swimmers, Daniel Kowalski and Glen Housman, into the elite sub-15 minute club.

Carew experienced the "yards and more yards" mentality at the Hawaiian distance camp he ran during the World Coaches Clinic in 1993. "The Americans couldn't believe that I was only going to give 8,000 meters a workout. I told them that if they wanted to give more than that, they would have to do it after I left. I wasn't going to be a part of it,"

In the opinion of Dan Talbot, former Australian national team coach, this is because "American coaches are stuck on (Vladimir) Salnikov's idea of distance. Training such insane yardage does nothing physically and can be very damaging psychologically."

I N T E N S I T Y

The Australian preference for less distance at high quality allows their swimmers to train more at and beyond their race pace. As Housman puts it, "If you swim all that distance at 1:01 and 1:02 pace, in a race situation that's only a 15:30." Talbot encourages the race pace training for the variety it gives: "It is not enough to do work for work's sake. Obviously distance swimmers must train aerobically, but not exclusively.

Distance swimmers must be able to change speed. This comes from sprinting. All energy systems must be trained for success in any event," he asserts. To illustrate this point, last May Perkins did a main set of 30 x 50 meter free on 2:00 (long course). He held 25 seconds for each. The last 50 was 24.1.

The bottom line for Australian distance swimming is intensity. The best indicator of intensity is heart rate. "If distance swimmers are not swimming the majority of their work at a high heart rate, they're wasting their time," says Bohl. Ninety percent of Australian coaches own their own heart rate monitors. "Without a monitor, you're just guessing," argues Carew. The device gives an instant reading When touched to the chest of an athlete. Entire sets are run with the goal of maintaining or increasing a given heart rate.

If American swimming is to take advantage of the methods proven successful for Australian distance programs, then a fundamental change in approach must take place.

The change in training methods Down Under is due, in part, to a lot of sports science support. Explains Talbot: "General suspicion of sports science is understandable because sometimes Ph.D.s look down on coaches. There has to be good exchange of ideas. Sports science has helped us to understand more what is going on in practice so that we can better control lactate and heart rate."

The end result for Australia means more effective training. No longer do Aussie coaches gauge how hard an athlete is working solely by the yardage total at the end of a workout.

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