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".
With my USAS team, we tend to do a lot more fast stuff, or near fast stuff, on a longer rest interval.
Example:
Tonight we did a quick set of 4 x 200 Choice Stroke @ 4:00, FAST, MAX REST
My first one was Free, did a 2:06 (recent best time in meet is 1:55.8). 2nd one did Fly, did a 2:18 (recent best time in meet 2:07.5), 3rd one I was dead from the Fly, but did Free again in a 2:12. Last one I did Back just 'cause. :)
We do a lot of sets like this, Freestyle 200s @ 3:30, IM 200 @ 3:30/4:00, etc.
Occasionally we'll do the short rest "old school" stuff (8 x 100s - 4 @ 1:10, 4 @ 1:05), but not really a whole lot of stuff like that. We tend to do more high quality efforts, with a bit more rest. I've been doing this all season, and my swim have been great this year. I've had no problems with lack of endurance in my distance races either. In fact, I'm very very confident this year vs. years in the past.
One thing that we do every day is FAST fin kicking (12 x 100 @ 1:20 Max Rest) (8 x 200 @ 2:50) (20 x 50 @ :45 or :40) etc. The majority of the group does this with a board, but I always SDK on my back.
With my USAS team, we tend to do a lot more fast stuff, or near fast stuff, on a longer rest interval.
Example:
Tonight we did a quick set of 4 x 200 Choice Stroke @ 4:00, FAST, MAX REST
My first one was Free, did a 2:06 (recent best time in meet is 1:55.8). 2nd one did Fly, did a 2:18 (recent best time in meet 2:07.5), 3rd one I was dead from the Fly, but did Free again in a 2:12. Last one I did Back just 'cause. :)
We do a lot of sets like this, Freestyle 200s @ 3:30, IM 200 @ 3:30/4:00, etc.
Occasionally we'll do the short rest "old school" stuff (8 x 100s - 4 @ 1:10, 4 @ 1:05), but not really a whole lot of stuff like that. We tend to do more high quality efforts, with a bit more rest. I've been doing this all season, and my swim have been great this year. I've had no problems with lack of endurance in my distance races either. In fact, I'm very very confident this year vs. years in the past.
One thing that we do every day is FAST fin kicking (12 x 100 @ 1:20 Max Rest) (8 x 200 @ 2:50) (20 x 50 @ :45 or :40) etc. The majority of the group does this with a board, but I always SDK on my back.
