PHOENIX, Arizona, July 28. SWIMMING World Magazine correspondent Takahisa Ide recently spoke with Yoji Suzuki, the National Team Coach for Japan, about altitude training.
The group recently trained at Northern Arizona University. The facilities at NAU have been popular among traveling national teams such as Australia, Norway and Japan in past years. The altitude of the Flagstaff center is considered to be ideal for training at an elevation of 7,000 feet or 2,134 meters.
To look at what can happen shortly after altitude training, one just has to look at Kate Ziegler's world record in the 1500 free set just days after coming down from Colorado.
Nineteen Japanese swimmers were in Flagstaff, Ariz., training for the Japan International Grand Prix meet in August. Two of the top swimmers in attendance were Tomomi Morita, who won a pair of bronze medals at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and Hanae Ito, who won the women's 100 back at the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships.
SW: Why do you train high altitude before a big meet?
Suzuki Well, we want try to increase aerobic capacity and endurance capacity. Also, we can focus on training. Just eat, rest and swimming. And, sometimes, shopping.
SW: What's the training cycle at high altitude training?
Suzuki The Japanese National Team is doing three or four weeks of training at high altitude, then two or three weeks at sea-level training, then a meet. This time, the International Swim Meet in Chiba, Japan is the target meet.
We stayed the last three weeks in Flagstaff (Arizona), then this weekend (July 30), we are going back to Japan. This time, our sea-level training will be three and a half weeks. We had great results the last several years at big meets, so we believe the high altitude training was great before the big meet. We think August's International Swim Meet in Chiba, Japan will be a great meet for the Japanese Team.
Special thanks to Takahisa Ide for contributing to this report and who will be in Chiba covering the meet for SwimmingWorldMagazine.com.