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Training Progressions at South Sound Titans
Skill Progressions & Seasonal Progressions
South Sound Titans Swim Team training progressions work on two tracks. The first track is called Skill Progressions. Although all competitive swimmers learn skills throughout their career, this track primarily affects new and younger swimmers. This track methodically builds technical and mental skills athletes need to acquire as they advance into training regimens with increased physical demands. The second track is Seasonal Progressions. It primarily affects veteran and physically mature swimmers through demanding physical conditioning regimens that progressively intensify over the course of a season, a training cycle or across multiple training cycles and seasons.
Psychological Maturation & Physical Maturation
Two sets of forces direct how the various elements in our training program are distributed over the training groups and how they are integrated. The first set of forces is swimmer growth in two areas: physical maturation and psychological maturation. The second set of forces is swimmer performance in two areas: biomechanics (technique) and training volume (physical conditioning). There is a great deal of interplay between both sets of forces and balancing the mix as athletes improve and mature is the primary responsibility of any swim team's coaching staff.
Balancing Training Progressions In Prepubescent Athletes
At South Sound Titans Swim Team we place little importance on training volume for the prepubescent athlete. Generally, prepubescent athletes fail to respond to manipulation of training volume in an effort to stimulate specific physiological responses. In other words, despite the fact that a young swimmer may be motivated to complete rigorous training bouts and capable of enduring them as well, there is probably little additional benefit to taking that course.
Research suggests that, regardless of the athlete’s perceived effort and actual volume, prepubescent bodies respond to training almost entirely aerobically, the same way they respond to lower training volumes. Therefore, accelerated training will most likely realize little genuine improvement in physical condition and competition.
When administered correctly, practices designed for young swimmers by a professional swim coach that emphasize technique will prove just as beneficial for improving fitness as swimming thousands of yards. This is one reason prepubescent athletes are best served by the acquisition and refinement of biomechanical skills, as emphasized in the Guppies, Beginner, and Mid-Level training groups. Physical conditioning is necessarily served by repetition of skill building drills at practice.
In addition to the young body’s lack of response to high volume training, in all swimmers there is a rapid deterioration of biomechanical efficiency with the onset of fatigue. As a swimmer tires during training their technique fails. They spend so much energy responding to the physical demands of a rigorous training bout that little thought or effort can be directed at technique and rule related skills. Younger, pre-pubescent swimmers naturally have smaller energy reserves and fatigue faster with higher demands. Since the Titans value technique over volume for the prepubescent athlete, young swimmers in our program can direct their effort at acquiring good technique while improving their physical condition.
Among prepubescent athletes one must also consider the long-term psychological implications of demanding higher training volumes from developing athletes. While one can debate the impact ad nauseam, the few tracking studies that have been conducted indicate that swimmers introduced to heavy training volumes early in their careers tend to quit competitive swimming before reaching college age. Of course, this does not mean that they would not have quit anyway. But, casual interviews with some of these athletes indicate that the increased volume at an early age affected the way they viewed competitive swimming and, therefore, influenced their decision to discontinue the sport.
Balancing Training Progressions in Physically Mature Athletes
As previously implied, physically mature athletes are contrasted with the prepubescent group in the way their bodies adapt to training volume. Balancing training to stimulate specific biochemical and physiological responses at the cellular level is critical to their success. Perhaps more importantly for this group of swimmers, puberty brings with it some early indications of the aging process.
The acquisition of fine motor skills, the establishment of efficient neuromuscular response patterns, and the ability to correct biomechanical errors grows increasingly difficult as athletes reach physical maturity. Simply put, it's far easier to establish correct technique in the prepubescent athlete than in athletes aging into their teens. As they grow older their bodies are better suited to endure rigorous training bouts intended to manipulate metabolic responses and less responsive to attempts to correct errors or change inefficient biomechanical patterns established in their youth.
Valuing Technique, Efficiency, and Volume
Perhaps the most important consideration when valuing biomechanics and training volume is the fact that better conditioned athletes do not outperform athletes with greater technical expertise. One of the primary influences on South Sound Titans Head Coach Shawn Jones is Dr. Leo D’Acquisto, a professor of exercise physiology at Central Washington University that conducted extensive research at the Human Performance Lab at Ball State University with Dr. David Costill.
Dr. D’Acquisto demonstrated in several studies that competitive swimmers with biomechanical superiority will outperform similarly trained but less mechanically efficient competitive swimmers that are in better physical condition as measured by their VO 2 max (one’s ability to absorb oxygen - a widely accepted indicator of general fitness). Competitive swimmers whose VO 2 max is up to 25% superior to teammates with lower VO 2 max have been shown to always be inferior in competition to less fit but technically superior competitive swimmers. Although volume plays a role, it appears that, in well-conditioned swimmers, efficiency is more important than volume.
As mentioned earlier, mature bodies respond with difficulty to technical modifications and young bodies respond minimally to metabolic manipulation. Consequently, it is logical to spend a great deal of time emphasizing correct technique to young swimmers.
Training Group Advancements
In the Titans system, swimmers improve their chances for success by being built one step at a time rather than undergo drills for randomly selected skills based on casual observations at meets and practice. Each step needs to compliment the previous step while simultaneously preparing them for the next step. Integrating technique skills as swimmers grow and improve ensures no important skills are overlooked as they age and mature and prepare to undertake heavy training bouts later in their careers. Learning skills is good. Learning them in a methodical way is better. The Titans Team equips competitive swimmers with sets of skills that are distributed over the swimmer’s entire career based on age, maturation and acquisition of prerequisite skills. This is best.
Advancement through the Titans system is methodical and our coaches are conservative in their evaluations of swimmer preparedness to advance. The degree of mastery required to advance varies for each skill or set of skills and advancement to a new training group is at the sole discretion of our coaches.
Conclusion
All the factors mentioned in this outline are the primary driving forces behind The Titans Way Our training philosophy emphasizes coaching swimmers to achieve sustained success over the long term by valuing biomechanical efficiency over training volume and refusing to accelerate a talented age group swimmer in the interest of achieving accolades in the short term. Other elements like teamwork, leadership and time management are naturally occurring by-products of this system.
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