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.
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.
