How Léon Marchand Trains (Phelps's Coach, and a Stopwatch Instead of a Heart Monitor)

Marchand trains under Bob Bowman, the coach who made Michael Phelps, on pace and short rest rather than heart rate. Why swimmers set zones from a stopwatch.

Sven Ahrens2026年7月29日最終更新 2026年9月6日

swimmingcssthresholdpacetraining

Léon Marchand trains against a clock. Heart rate is nearly useless in the water, so the world's best medley swimmer, coached by the man who built Michael Phelps, trains on pace per hundred metres and how much rest he gets between reps. That is how an amateur should set swim zones too.

The Bowman lineage

Marchand is coached by Bob Bowman, who guided Michael Phelps to 23 Olympic golds. He moved from France to Arizona State to train under Bowman, followed him to the University of Texas, and as of 2026 trains in Bowman's pro group in Austin. Bowman calls both Phelps and Marchand "aerobic animals": a large aerobic foundation with precisely dosed speed and lactate work on top.

Marchand holds world records in the 200m and 400m individual medley, plus Olympic golds in the 200m butterfly and 200m breaststroke from his home Paris Games.

Intensity, not duration

No session runs longer than two hours, nothing in it is easy, and the rest is minimal. In Marchand's words, "for every two hours of training, we have one minute to recover." Volume is roughly 35 hours a week, about 20 in the pool, two sessions a day, six days a week.

Bowman's "red pace" threshold sets keep rest short (hundreds on around ten seconds, two-hundreds on twenty) so the swimmer holds race pace under fatigue. A 200 with a minute of rest, Bowman says, is not red pace.

Why swimmers ignore heart rate

Being horizontal and immersed blunts the heart-rate response, and reading a monitor mid-stroke is impractical. Swimmers use pace per hundred instead. The amateur version of a swimmer's threshold is Critical Swim Speed, from two time trials:

クリティカルスイムスピード

1:35/100m

CSSスピード

1.05m/s

ゾーン	範囲	鍛えられるもの
Z1	リカバリー 1:43–1:47 /100m	楽な技術練習とリカバリースイム。 RPE 2〜3、スムーズ。
Z2	エンデュランス 1:37–1:43 /100m	有酸素的土台。長く定常的なセット。 RPE 4〜5、快適。
Z3	スレッショルド（CSS） 1:33–1:37 /100m	クリティカルスイムスピード、持続可能な閾値ペース。 RPE 6〜7、快適にきつい。
Z4	VO₂max 1:29–1:33 /100m	最大有酸素。レースペースのインターバル。 RPE 8〜9、きつい。
Z5	スプリント 1:21–1:29 /100m	スピードと無酸素性パワー。短く速いレップ。 RPE 9〜10、非常に速い。

リカバリー

1:43–1:47 /100m

エンデュランス

1:37–1:43 /100m

スレッショルド（CSS）

1:33–1:37 /100m

VO₂max

1:29–1:33 /100m

スプリント

1:21–1:29 /100m

Z1 · リカバリー. 楽な技術練習とリカバリースイム。 RPE 2〜3、スムーズ。

Z2 · エンデュランス. 有酸素的土台。長く定常的なセット。 RPE 4〜5、快適。

Z3 · スレッショルド（CSS）. クリティカルスイムスピード、持続可能な閾値ペース。 RPE 6〜7、快適にきつい。

Z4 · VO₂max. 最大有酸素。レースペースのインターバル。 RPE 8〜9、きつい。

Z5 · スプリント. スピードと無酸素性パワー。短く速いレップ。 RPE 9〜10、非常に速い。

クリティカルスイムスピードはあなたの閾値ペースで、ここでは100 mあたり約1:35です。これは200 mと400 mの運動の傾きなので、どちらも本当に最大かつ適切なペース配分でなければなりません。
CSSは同じセッションで400 mと200 mのタイムトライアルを、間に十分休息して泳ぎます。200 mが400 mペースよりあまり速くなければ、おそらく400 mを十分きつくペース配分できていません。
心拍は水中では当てにならないため、CSSペースがスイムトレーニングで最も実用的な基準です。

パーソナライズされた結果のPDFと、いつでも再表示できるQRコード付き。

Swim a 400 and a 200 as hard as you can hold, feed in the times, and you get your CSS. Easy swims sit a few seconds per hundred slower, threshold sets around it, fast work above it. Hold a known pace on controlled rest, exactly as Bowman does with Marchand.

Most amateur swimmers grind every length at a vague moderate effort with long wall-hanging between reps. That builds neither base nor speed.

Strength, not size

Marchand's dryland work is built around stability and functional power (bands, sled work, core) rather than mass. Added bulk hurts buoyancy and efficiency.

2026

Marchand strained an adductor at the French Championships in late June 2026 and withdrew from the rest of the meet after winning the 400 IM. His target is the European Championships in Paris in August, his first senior Europeans, where he has talked about attacking his own 400 IM world record.

What you can steal from it

Set swim zones from a stopwatch. Critical Swim Speed is the swimmer's threshold, from two honest time trials.
Control the rest. A hard rep with long recovery is not threshold work.
Hold a known pace. A number replaces "swim hard."
Train breadth if you can. Varied strokes build a broader engine.
Strength for stability, not size. Support the stroke without adding mass.

Marchand controls intensity against a precise external number, like every athlete in this series. His is a time on a pace clock, the one you can copy for free tomorrow.

More in this series: Katie Ledecky, Michael Phelps, whom Bob Bowman also coached, Kristian Blummenfelt, Alex Yee, Jakob Ingebrigtsen and elite rowers.

Sources

Cover photo by Tanis Coralee Leonhardi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.