Topic: Fistgloves during speed work?
Conf: Freestyle
From: Rhoda Potter
Date: Friday, March 31, 2006 09:15 AM

In a moment of temporary insanity, I volunteered to be on the swim team of
my company's Corporate Challenge group. That will be in September, which
means six months of trying to get faster. I'm starting to throw in a few
faster 50s into one of my weekly swims and finding it tricky to maintain
form. Would there be any advantage in keeping the Fistgloves on for these
short bursts of fast swimming?

From: Angus MacGowan
Date: Monday, April 03, 2006 12:20 PM

I've just started working with Fistgloves, and from what I can see (and what I've read), there's always a benefit to using them.

TI theory, however, will tell you that you should only swim as fast as you can without losing form (the great example of this being Popov's training regime).

When training with friends of mine, we've developed a pace we call "Powercruise", which we use for swimming 50m sprints. It means basically we swim as hard as we can whilst maintaining good form. It means we swim fast (because swimming fast is fun), but don't swim so fast that it starts to hurt. We give ourselves as much rest as we need to know we'll be able to "powercruise" the next 50m sprint. We often do 10 x 50m powercruises at the end of a workout, and all three of us agree that it's one of our favorite parts of the workout.

If you were going to do some sprints, I'd suggest doing some powercruise sprints. Let's say you are going to do 8 x 50. Wear your fist gloves for the first four of them and then take them off for the next four. You'll feel like you're leaping through the water. It's a great way to finish a workout, because you'll get out of the pool feeling like a good swimmer.

Finally, take the time during your warm down to slowly swim with 100% perfect form. This will leave you with good mental and physical memories of good swimming.

From: Terry Laughlin
Date: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 08:00 AM

The Powercruise approach is an excellent idea and very similar to how I train for increased speed. I view speed training as mainly an exercise in neuromuscular coordination - whereas conventional training views it as mainly an exercise in energy system development. The functional goal is to train your nervous system to recruit more motor units, and get them to fire with more intensity IN THE MUSCLES THAT MOVE YOU MOST EFFICIENTLY. The key to striking that balance is to patiently, thoughtfully and incrementally increase your ability to swim "fast" while staying efficient. (One of the simplest ways I have of striking the balance is to swim my "speed" repeats as quietly as possible.) And while you are recruiting those "effective swimming" motor units, the necessary energy gets supplied.

When I do that sort of training, every decision I need to make – how many repeats, what distance (25s or 200s?), how much rest between them, what kind of rest – active (swim easy) or passive (wait at the wall), what speed to swim them at, what stroke count – is influenced by whether I can maintain the form and feeling I associate with racing at my peak. Over time, with more such training, I should be able to gradually raise the bar on each of those elements.

The Powercruise approach sounds like exactly this kind of decision-making.

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