Swimmers and coaches often set workout targets like 90% effort or 95% effort for practice swims. I've always found these directives to be less than useful. What is "90% effort"? I've taken to setting time targets of race time plus a certain percentage. For example one could specify the set:
5x(100 free @ race + 15%)/2:00.
That is, five 100 free swims on the 2:00 (120 sec.) interval with a target time of race time + 15%. (This would be a painful lactate production set in my estimation.)
Based on my own experience, I constructed this chart giving qualitative descriptions of the effort level associated with a practice swim from a push to achieve race time plus a percentage:
7283
A few notes:
This would correspond to the effort level of the first swim in a group. Obviously even race +25% will constitute a very hard effort after you have done a lot of them.
Generally, it appears to be easier to swim at race pace + x% for longer swims.
It is easier to swim near race pace for backstroke than freestyle. I suspect that this is simply due to the fact that a freestyle dive start gives more of an advantage over a push than a backstroke race start.
I pose the following two questions to the forum community:
1) How do these effort levels compare with your experience? I'd love to see similar charts for other swimmers.
2) How much time do you spend in practice at each effort level? This will certainly depend on the time of the season. Early in the season I expect one might do a lot of "blue" swims up to some yellow, whereas later in the season one needs to spend a lot more time in yellow with frequent excursions into in the "red zone".
I'm looking at just 1 event, 100 free, which I raced in about a minute (I think it was 1:00.2 or .3) the last time. This actually makes very easy time conversions:
+5%: 1:03, I can do it in workout sometimes, but often just once
+10%: 1:06, I can usually pull this out 1-2 times a workout on our sprint days, sometimes more
+15%: 1:09, more likely, and can sometimes do on a an interval like 1:40
+20%: 1:12, highly likely, and can usually pull this off on a 1:30 or faster interval for a few repeats (maybe 5)
+25%: 1:15, extremely likely, and can usually do 10 repeats on a 1:30 interval. possibly can do 5 on 1:20 (on a good day).
Perhaps my race pace isn't what I'm fully capable of though.
I'm much more of a distance swimmer, or that's what I prefer at least. I actually like to swim the 1500m free, and prefer LCM.
Our team typically does a sprint day, every Tuesday, when we do fast swims. But the coach periodizes the training, optimizing for specific meets (sometimes nationals, but usually LMSC meets that many will go to). We'll have different phases (and a focus) depending where we are in the cycle.
Oh, and to add more to the mix... I also cycle, sometimes run, and lift weights. So my swimming ability can vary based on what else I'm currently doing. In addition to diet, rest, etc.
I'm looking at just 1 event, 100 free, which I raced in about a minute (I think it was 1:00.2 or .3) the last time. This actually makes very easy time conversions:
+5%: 1:03, I can do it in workout sometimes, but often just once
+10%: 1:06, I can usually pull this out 1-2 times a workout on our sprint days, sometimes more
+15%: 1:09, more likely, and can sometimes do on a an interval like 1:40
+20%: 1:12, highly likely, and can usually pull this off on a 1:30 or faster interval for a few repeats (maybe 5)
+25%: 1:15, extremely likely, and can usually do 10 repeats on a 1:30 interval. possibly can do 5 on 1:20 (on a good day).
...
Our team typically does a sprint day, every Tuesday, when we do fast swims. But the coach periodizes the training, optimizing for specific meets (sometimes nationals, but usually LMSC meets that many will go to). We'll have different phases (and a focus) depending where we are in the cycle.
Oh, and to add more to the mix... I also cycle, sometimes run, and lift weights. So my swimming ability can vary based on what else I'm currently doing. In addition to diet, rest, etc.
Are these from a push or from a dive? I'm impressed that you can get within 5% of your 100 free time in practice. I've never done that from a push. From a deck dive I can do it, barely. From a push, even +10% is bloody near impossible. Correspondingly, you are hitting +15% and +20% more easily than I.
You are certainly correct about this being highly variable. For example, after I lift it is much much harder to hit a given time target and the impossible level goes up in time. During taper I can get times I can't touch the rest of the season.
Not to hijack but Eaglerest what would a typical workout be for you as a sprinter? I'm just getting back into swimming after 27 years so I'm always looking for workout ideas. Example of what I did last night 16x25fr @ 15-16 secs with 1 minute rest. So I was close to 90% each rep. This was after some kicking drills, br drills and warmup fr/br
Good question.
I think there are 2 sides to this coin - 1) effort and 2) time-targets. They are mutually exclusive. Your charts appear to be purely focused on time-targets, not effort. Times that you achieve in training can vary wildly due to numerous circumstances (fatigue, recovery, diet, sleep, previous session training, etc). Perceived effort should always be the same, so if you're working at 90% effort, although the times may vary day to day, the effort is the same. Perhaps a better indicator is to monitor your heart rate at the end of a training swim, and equate that with what you perceive the effort to be?
The chart shows colour shading for targets that are impossible. There are very few circumstances where 100% effort cannot be achieved during a training session. Time targets may not be possible, but MAX is MAX, so again perhaps time-targets are not the best indicator of effort.
The example you reference is a lactate tolerance set, rather than lactate production. You will certainly produce lactate during that set but there isn't enough rest/recovery to remove it. An example of a lactate production set is 6 x 100, first 25 MAX, 75 recovery on 3 mins. Produce lactate/remove lactate, repeat.
The levels that others swim @ can only really be compared if you understand what they are training for.... I'm a drop-dead sprinter and a session is either recovery or lactate production with recovery. So my perceived effort is either MAX or 40-50% aerobic work. I don't do hardly any tolerance or threshold work.
100/200 sprinters will incorporate more tolerance and threshold work, where the perceived effort can vary from 70%- MAX.
I know very little on training for distance events, but those that I train with seem to work everything hard, not MAX of course, but probably 70%+ effort on every set.
I don't tend to think about % effort.My workout sets tend to be race pace/recovery sets.Race pace for me is the speed of the 2nd half of the race.So if my goal time for 100 BR is 1:07+ and my goal drop off from 1st to 2nd 50 is 4 sec my goal time is under 36 for a 50.I'll give myself enough rest/recovery swim to make the goal time(such as 50 at 100 pace with 150 recovery EZ on the 4 min or 5 if I need it X 5-8)Since my longest event is the 200 BR I don't see much value for me in doing anything at other than race pace or recovery,at least in mid-season.
Not to hijack but Eaglerest what would a typical workout be for you as a sprinter? I'm just getting back into swimming after 27 years so I'm always looking for workout ideas. Example of what I did last night 16x25fr @ 15-16 secs with 1 minute rest. So I was close to 90% each rep. This was after some kicking drills, br drills and warmup fr/br
If you are a sprinter, go to the Workouts section and look at High Intensity Training:
forums.usms.org/showthread.php
These are GREAT workouts! Here is a sample from this week.
forums.usms.org/showthread.php
I pose the following two questions to the forum community:
1) How do these effort levels compare with your experience? I'd love to see similar charts for other swimmers.
I checked the freestyle ones and I'm pretty darn close to where you are.
Good question.
I think there are 2 sides to this coin - 1) effort and 2) time-targets. They are mutually exclusive. Your charts appear to be purely focused on time-targets, not effort. Times that you achieve in training can vary wildly due to numerous circumstances (fatigue, recovery, diet, sleep, previous session training, etc). Perceived effort should always be the same, so if you're working at 90% effort, although the times may vary day to day, the effort is the same. Perhaps a better indicator is to monitor your heart rate at the end of a training swim, and equate that with what you perceive the effort to be?
The chart shows colour shading for targets that are impossible. There are very few circumstances where 100% effort cannot be achieved during a training session. Time targets may not be possible, but MAX is MAX, so again perhaps time-targets are not the best indicator of effort.
The example you reference is a lactate tolerance set, rather than lactate production. You will certainly produce lactate during that set but there isn't enough rest/recovery to remove it. An example of a lactate production set is 6 x 100, first 25 MAX, 75 recovery on 3 mins. Produce lactate/remove lactate, repeat.
The levels that others swim @ can only really be compared if you understand what they are training for.... I'm a drop-dead sprinter and a session is either recovery or lactate production with recovery. So my perceived effort is either MAX or 40-50% aerobic work. I don't do hardly any tolerance or threshold work.
100/200 sprinters will incorporate more tolerance and threshold work, where the perceived effort can vary from 70%- MAX.
I know very little on training for distance events, but those that I train with seem to work everything hard, not MAX of course, but probably 70%+ effort on every set.
Swimmers and coaches often set workout targets like 90% effort or 95% effort for practice swims. I've always found these directives to be less than useful. What is "90% effort"? I've taken to setting time targets of race time plus a certain percentage.
I was reading a study on this two days ago, they found that as a group 90% effort was faster than 80% effort for example. But on an intraindividual basis, a coach prescribed 90% effort wasn't faster than a coach prescribed 80% effort.
I agree with you, there is too much variability in those descriptions for me. As a coach, one of the biggest problems we have s communicating, the message we think we are sending is not the message being received. What I think is 90% and what you think is 90% can be wildly different things.
I use something similar but I follow through with monthly time trials and publish the results so that people aren't guessing at the proper paces.
I calculate critical swim speeds from the time trials and the en1, en2, and en3 sets are based off of critical pace. The sp1 and sp2 sets are based off of 200 or 100 time trial day times. SP3 sets are just all out.
So for me a set might be 12 x 100 (:15 rest) at 0:05 / 100 slower than critical pace
Or a sprint set might be
50 (:20) at 200 time trial day pace
50 (1:00) at same pace
200 swim down between rounds
I calculate critical swim speeds from the time trials
What's the calculation? I'd like an example of what a "critical speed" might be.
My coach like to give us paces based on threshold speed, which he considers to be :05/100 slower than your 500 pace. I have a feeling your critical speed is quite similar. That is just about what I could hold on the 12x100 set you mentioned. Well, I guess I should say I could almost hold my 500 pace +:05, 500 pace +:10 would be easy.
