Double Workouts and Maximizing Effort Output

小臭贝

This week’s Speedo Tip of the Week comes from Devon Ames of Swim Team of Placentia in Placentia, Calif. Ames was USA Swimming’s 2001 Developmental Coach of the Year. He offers some advice about double workouts and maximizing a swimmer’s effort output.

Ames' Tip:
Any decisions about training need to be viewed on an individual basis. Doing double workouts may be advantageous to some but not to others. The logic behind double workouts is to increase the workload or effort output for a swimmer beyond what the swimmer can accomplish by doing single workouts. Effort output is not necessarily yardage or time, but an increase in the physical stress put on the body, which is essential for improvement over time.

As swimmers get bigger, faster, stronger, older, they need to continually push themselves more and more to continue to have success. Thus, if your body has adapted to six workouts a week, and you are maximizing your effort output in those workouts, you may want to increase your weekly workouts to eight or nine to generate an increase in your workload or effort output.

If you feel you are not currently maximizing your effort output with your six workouts, you should first focus on changing this before attempting double workouts. Generally, high school age swimmers and older are capable and ready to handle double workouts. I would recommend younger swimmers try to focus on maximizing their effort output with single daily workouts. As always, consult your coach on an issue such as this.