How They Train: Amanda Beard
The Resilience of a Champion
By Tito Morales

So how did Amanda Beard pull it off at the World Championships in Barcelona by tying the world record in the 200 meter breaststroke?

Answer: with a year-long training regimen that meshed diversity and ultra-high intensity.

In the beginning of each season, Amanda and her Arizona teammates build strength and endurance through cross-training. They not only run along Tucson's cactus-punctuated roads, but they also mix in very demanding trips up and down the stairs of the university's football stadium. Additionally, Amanda recently bought a bicycle, and she plans on incorporating cycling into her building phase as well.

A typical mid-season week of training consists of nine swimming sessions and three visits to the weight room. Her gym work includes both free weights and machines, and is designed to target both the upper and lower body. Exercises include a mix of just about everything from bench press to lat pull-downs to squats, and the emphasis is always on high repetitions, using light to moderate weights.

Amanda's dryland sessions also include crunches, medicine ball work, and cord exercises, which are all designed to develop core strength.

In the pool, the 22-year-old estimates that roughly half her swimming is devoted to breaststroke, one quarter to IM and another quarter to freestyle.

In order to swim fast, she concludes: one must practice fast.

A mid-season set, for example, might include 6 x 200 meters breaststroke at a very high intensity. The idea is not only to build cardiovascular endurance, but to make the body simulate race conditions.

Two weeks out from a big competition such as the World Championships, Amanda hones such a set further by reducing the number of intervals, but elevating the intensity level still higher, 3 x 200s at maximum effort. The first two are from a push, and the last one is from the blocks. She knew she was more than ready to hop aboard the plane to Europe when she was able to hold 2:32s.

A similar set Amanda uses to gauge her breaststroke quickness is a set of 3 x 100s. Again, the first two are from a push-off, and the last one is off the blocks. Her objective on this set is to average low 1:10s.

Naturally, when you're swimming all-out like this, rest is at a premium. If your efforts are not high quality and pretty much even across the board, you're not taking enough time between repetitions.

This type of swim training is remarkable in its simplicity, yet, as evidenced by Amanda's success, quite effective in its intention.

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For more on Amanda Beard, including a two-page pullout poster, check out the November issue of Swimming World magazine.

Tito Morales, a novelist and free-lance writer, is a Masters swimmer who competed collegiately for the University of California at Berkeley.