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 Ahrens2026년 7월 29일마지막 업데이트 2026년 9월 6일

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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:

임계 수영 속도

1:35/100m

CSS 속도

1.05m/s

존	범위	무엇을 단련하는가
Z1	회복 1:43–1:47 /100m	쉬운 기술 및 회복 수영. RPE 2–3, 매끄러움.
Z2	지구력 1:37–1:43 /100m	유산소 기초; 길고 꾸준한 세트. RPE 4–5, 편안함.
Z3	역치 (CSS) 1:33–1:37 /100m	임계 수영 속도, 즉 지속 가능한 역치 페이스. RPE 6–7, 편안하게 힘듦.
Z4	VO₂max 1:29–1:33 /100m	최대 유산소; 레이스 페이스 인터벌. RPE 8–9, 힘듦.
Z5	스프린트 1:21–1:29 /100m	스피드와 무산소 파워; 짧고 빠른 반복. RPE 9–10, 매우 빠름.

회복

1:43–1:47 /100m

지구력

1:37–1:43 /100m

역치 (CSS)

1:33–1:37 /100m

VO₂max

1:29–1:33 /100m

스프린트

1:21–1:29 /100m

Z1 · 회복. 쉬운 기술 및 회복 수영. RPE 2–3, 매끄러움.

Z2 · 지구력. 유산소 기초; 길고 꾸준한 세트. RPE 4–5, 편안함.

Z3 · 역치 (CSS). 임계 수영 속도, 즉 지속 가능한 역치 페이스. RPE 6–7, 편안하게 힘듦.

Z4 · VO₂max. 최대 유산소; 레이스 페이스 인터벌. RPE 8–9, 힘듦.

Z5 · 스프린트. 스피드와 무산소 파워; 짧고 빠른 반복. RPE 9–10, 매우 빠름.

임계 수영 속도는 당신의 역치 페이스로, 여기서는 100 m당 약 1:35입니다. 200 m와 400 m 노력의 기울기에서 나오므로, 둘 다 진짜 최대 강도이고 페이스가 잘 조절되어야 합니다.
CSS는 같은 세션에서 400 m와 200 m 타임 트라이얼로 수영하되, 사이에 완전히 휴식을 취하세요. 200 m가 400 m 페이스보다 그다지 빠르지 않다면 400 m를 충분히 강하게 하지 않은 것일 가능성이 높습니다.
물속에서는 심박수가 신뢰할 수 없으므로, CSS 페이스가 수영 훈련에서 가장 실용적인 기준입니다.

당신의 개인 맞춤 결과가 담긴 PDF와, 언제든 다시 열 수 있는 QR 코드.

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.