Do you want to know how an Olympic swimmer trains for the Games? Of course you do. Do you want them to tell you in their own words? Of course you do more.
Okay, we here at The Olympian Blog a.k.a TOB will grant your wish by bringing you Australian swimmer Brenton Richard who’ll tell us how he is training for Beijing. Here’s Brenton:
Swimming is a sport dominated by training. We train for months in preparation for one major race that will hopefully last less than one minute in my case. Training may dominate our time in the sport, but it is racing that we are judged on.That is why this weekend is so important to me; it will give me another opportunity to practice my race plan and my race-day preparations. I feel if I go through my race processes right I will gain a lot from this weekend. I’m certainly not expecting to “swim the house down” or break any records.
Swim the house down, eh? What’s that? Ahh, okay. Something like, bring the house down. Nice phrase there, Brenton. Anyways, here’s him again:
In a normal training week I will swim 9 or 10 sessions of between 5km and 6km each session.
But it is not just the 55-odd kilometres in a week that makes swimming a tough sport. (For the record 55kms isn’t that much in the grand scheme of things compared to middle distance and distance swimmers who may consistently swim 80kms and even do big weeks of over 100kms).
On top of the kilometres in the pool I will also try to fit in three 75 minute weights sessions, two 45 minute Pilates sessions and an hour yoga or circuit session. So you can no doubt imagine that by the time Saturday comes, I am pretty wrecked physically.
Whew. That’s a lot of swimming in one week. And we haven’t even swam a total of one kilometer in our lifetime. But then we’re only bloggers not Olympic swimmers. Let’s see how Brenton prepares when he’s about to compete in that “less than one minute” of his life he mentioned earlier:
Before a major competition (like World Champs or team trials) swimmers taper their training. This means we reduce the training load and physical load on our bodies. During taper I usually reduce my training from a normal week of 50kms to around 10km. During the week before a big competition I would usually swim 6 sessions of only 1 to 2.5km per session and do a short abdominal circuit gym session. I would do no weights, Pilates or yoga. This is because freshness makes such a big difference to my body. I will not quite be swimming a normal training load this week but I will be training solidly right until I arrive in Sydney. This will be quite different from arriving at the end of a taper!
So there, that is how an Olympic-level athlete with a pretty good chance of winning a medal trains for the Olympics. Good luck to you Brenton. We hope you overcome your disappointment when you didn’t make it to Athens 2004.
Did we just get a scoop or what? Eat your heart out ESPN. You have legions of staff members but you were scooped by a blogger from the boondocKs. You don’t even have a feature story on Brenton while we already know his training regimen. Hah, what about that.
And while we’re at it, let’s pick a fight with the giant. Hey, ESPN you shamelessly call yourself “the worldwide leader in sports” but you’re actually mostly about American college sports. Duh, the U.S. is not the world, you know. Just saying. Because we scooped them on Brenton’s training, our emerging rivalry with ESPN looks like this: TOB=1 vs. ESPN=0.
[Psst: Don't tell ESPN that we actually got Brenton's training info from his blog. By the way Brenton, if you need someone to design you a better looking blog, do email us. Seriously. We're trying to make a living from blogging you know.]
