Hey guys,
I'm a collegiate runner but my first love was always swimming. I swam competitively for about 9 years and all through high school. Now, with a broken toe, I have been relegated to the pool in order to get in shape for track season. I have been slowly working my way up to doing about 3,500 yards per day (hoping to get back up to about 7000 in the next few weeks), as well as doing base interval workouts. My question is, how often should I do interval work? For instance, yesterday I did a set of 3x at my base interval pace. Should I get back in the water and do another interval set today? I remember doing base work just about every day in high school, but I'm not sure if that's how it's supposed to be, because in running at least, you can only do 2 or 3 hard efforts per week. Thanks for any advice!
Zack
I guess it really depends. I also swim and run, and rarely do interval sets running, other than on a treadmill. I've done a couple of track workouts, and they were really tough.
In swimming, I use intervals more so I don't drive myself crazy going back and forth in the pool. They don't necessarily have to be swimming at 90%+ to make. You can swim say 5 x 100 @ 2:30 for a warm-up set, and do 4 x 50 @ 1:15 for a cool-down set.
If you take a look at the swimming area of my blog, you'll see that a good 80% of my swimming is interval-based. I usually will do 300-500 or so yards to warmup, then mostly move into things on intervals. Things are sometimes different at team workouts, but I think the coach has an interval (or rest interval) in mind, for nearly everything.
If I swam without intervals, there would feel like no sense of urgency to complete whatever I was doing. It doesn't have to be fast intervals like Tim mentioned, just set an interval and pace yourself. Much better than just swimming 7000 yards straight through! I'd have to try drowning myself before doing that!! :)
If I swam without intervals, there would feel like no sense of urgency to complete whatever I was doing. It doesn't have to be fast intervals like Tim mentioned, just set an interval and pace yourself. Much better than just swimming 7000 yards straight through! I'd have to try drowning myself before doing that!! :)
+1
I always use intervals - I will set myself say 6 x 100 kick, but don't necessarily decide on the interval until I get to the pool and see how I feel! For endurance I would pick say 2.00, but if I was feeling speedy I'd go to maybe 2.30 to give my legs a chance to recover.
I started running about the same time my swimming started to plateau.
Interestingly, about a month ago I stopped running and my swimming has picked back up from where I left it 1.5 years ago, even started backstroke.
Intervals are a great way to accomplish many things in the pool. We often do a base set of 10x100's and these can be done in different ways to tax different energy systems. For example:
10X100's on a short rest interval (for us 1:15) - is great for base pace training or,
10x100's (2 on 1:30, 2 on 1:25....2 on 1:10) - descending interval while holding same pace as you go, try to descend swim as interval decreases!
10X100's on 2 mins (goal is one to one swim to rest ratio) while maintaining best possible average - great set to train for 500/1000
8x100's on 3:00 mins (more rest but swim faster try for 200 race pace)
6x100's on 4 mins All out - goal to improve speed
5x100's on 1:10 - broken 500 while trying to maintain 500 race pace
We try to do a mix of all of the above to challenge all the energy systems and we track progress as the season progresses. It also mixes it up to avoid boredom!!!
Adjust intervals for pace work based on individual ability.
Thanks a lot guys! Rob, that's what I was kind of thinking, and it makes sense. James, looking through your blog has given me some good ideas for some main sets (obviously not as fast, but the same principles ha). I hope to keep swimming every morning even when I'm back on the track to help keep my aerobic base up, and maybe this summer I'll enter myself into some local meets and see if I can't break some of my old PB's.
