Lower fatigue and faster recovery of ultra-short race pace swimming training sessions

ABSTRACT

Ultra-short race-pace training (USRPT) is a high-intensity training modality used in swimming for the development of specific race-technique. However, there is little information about the fatigue associated to this modality. In a crossover design, acute responses of two volume-equated sessions (1000-m) were compared on 14 national swimmers: i) USRPT: 20×50-m; ii) RPT: 10×100-m. Both protocols followed an equivalent work-recovery ratio (1:1) based on individual 200-m race-pace. The swimming times and the arm-strokes count were monitored on each set and compared by mixed-models. Blood lactate [La^-] and countermovement jump-height (CMJ) were compared within and between conditions 2 and 5 min after the protocols. The last bouts in RPT were 1.5–3% slower than the target pace, entailing an arm-strokes increase of ~0.22 for every second increase in swimming time. USRPT produced lower [La^-] ([Mean ± standard deviation], 2 min: 8.2±2.4 [p = 0.021]; 5 min: 6.9±2.8 mM/L [p = 0.008]), than RPT (2 min: 10.9±2.3; 5 min: 9.9±2.4 mM/L). CMJ was lowered at min 2 after RPT (-11.09%) and USRPT (-5.89%), but returned to baseline in USRPT at min 5 of recovery (4.07%). In conclusion, lower fatigue and better recovery were achieved during USRPT compared to traditional high-volume set.

KEYWORDS:

• High-intensity interval training (hiit)
• physical conditioning
• athletic performance
• endurance training
• short-term potentiation
• physiology

Acknowledgments

To all the swimmers who voluntarily participated in this research.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Spanish Research Agency and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under Grant: PGC2018-102116-B-I00 “SWIM II: Specific Water Innovative Measurements: applied to the improvement in performance” and the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport: FPU17/ 02761 grant and FPU16/02629 grant.