It's An Uphill Battle - Tough Pool Training

SwimNetwork's Casey Barrett wrote about the upcoming ultimate pool distance training camp to be held in Potsdam, Germany between January 4-17, called Battle Training.

World 5K and 10K open water swimming champion Thomas Lurz will participate as will world record holder Paul Biedermann and several other elite swimmers from Germany, Russia, Australia, South Africa and Canada. Battle Training founder and German national team coach Dirk Lange told Casey, "The strongest will survive. We're offering it for everyone who is not scared of pain."

Dirk shared the purpose of Battle Training to renowned swimming reporter Craig Lord of SwimNews, "The idea of the training camp is to instill in all participants that only a strong performing training group will lead to success - similiar to how it is done in the US. Germany has, with regards to training methods, nothing to hide. We want transparency and openess. Especially in long distance swimming many countries have problems with the number of strong performing swimmers. The same goes for Germany. In forming an international training group for long distance swimmers, we hope to increase motivation and pressure in training alike. So hopefully everyone will benefit."

Casey then wrote his opinion of the all-time hardest pool training sets with additional details here.

- 24 x 400-meter stroke (six of each stroke, descending 1 - 6)
- 80 x 200-meter freestyle on 2:30, wearing gym shorts and tights
- 20 x 1500-meter freestyle on 20:00
- 4 x 5000-yard freestyle on 50:00 (note: 20K averaging under 1:00 each 100)
- 30 x 1000-yard freestyle on 10:00

We had previously written about the the hardest pool workouts performed by elite swimmers who competed in the 2009 RCP Tiburon Mile. Click here to compare.

Upper photo by Colin A Gift shows Erik Vendt, one of American swimming history's most renowned workout performers, getting his lactate levels checked by Genadijus Sokolovas at the 2008 Olympic Training Camp. Lower photo by Colin A Gift shows American Olympic swimmers Klete Keller, Erik Vendt and Mark Warkentin.

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