Guilherme Costa is Hitting 100K Meters/Week Leading Up to Tokyo

Rising Brazilian distance star Guilherme Costa wants to up his training sessions– and stay up– as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics tick closer. He’s reportedly been training 16,000 meters a day, divided up in two 8,000-meter sessions, which can surpass 100,000 meters some weeks.

Quoted in Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte, the 21-year-old says that he’s tried longer rests (a la the traditional taper) that haven’t worked out.

At the [2019] Worlds, I asked [my coach Rogério Karfunkelstein] to try a longer rest and it turned out it didn’t work out,” Costa told Globo Esporte (translated via Google Chrome). Indeed, Costa finished outside of the top 20 in both the 800 free and 1500 free at the 2019 World Championships in Gwangju, Korea, adding big time in both races. 

“I need volume. After I saw that there was no explosion at the Worlds, I had to raise the volume to the Pan [Ams] a lot,” he said. While he didn’t go a best, Costa went 15:09.93 in the mile at the 2019 Pan Am Games to win gold, over ten seconds faster than he had gone earlier in the summer at Worlds.

“We now tried to get [the training volume] high and it worked,” said Costa, referring to staying up in yardage rather than dropping and resting a ton for the 2019 U.S. Open. Worked, it did. Costa broke South American records in the 400 free, 800 free, and 1500 free; the meet of his life

Up next, Costa is focusing on qualifying for Tokyo, and then seeing what is possible on the world’s biggest stage.

“I first want to qualify for my first Olympics. Then, in Tokyo, I want the final. Then, in the final, is to go to fight for the medal. If I can evolve everything I can, I know I can.”

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Matt S
4 years ago

Best of luck to him

M d e
4 years ago

The idea of trying something once and it not working then flipping it entirely and going better (but still not best times) so deciding that is the way forward is silly.

They should be looking at what worked well in the past and making small adjustments. Otherwise you are only guessing on how things worked.

Louiggi
4 years ago

Not everyone digests chlorine the same…different swimmers, different recipies.

DLSwim
4 years ago

You mean no USRPT? The horror!

Bobo Gigi
4 years ago

http://www.lataille.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Philippe-Lucas.jpg
Not enough!
Laure did 20 kilometers per day with me!

Drewbrewsbeer
4 years ago

Don’t Tim Shaw yourself.

Luigi
4 years ago

Paltrinieri is known to hit between 16 and 18 kilometres a day. He does rest on Sundays, though.

ArtVanDeLegh10
4 years ago

I remember Urbanchak saying that he’d have his Distance groups go 100,000 weeks – Dolan and company.

About Karl Ortegon

Karl Ortegon

Karl Ortegon studied sociology at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, graduating in May of 2018. He began swimming on a club team in first grade and swam four years for Wesleyan.

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