I went to a clinic last year by Dave Salo on BR and someone asked him how much yardage his team did in workouts.He replied that he didn't know and he discouraged his swimmers from keeping track as it distracted them from focusing on quality swims.I have been a proponent of quality over quantity since I started Masters Swimming,but I wasn't ready to give up on yardage.I had GTD goal after all.Last Tues I had a really good workout and finished with an extra 50 swim to get a nice round number for GTD. In the shower I realized I had probably miscounted the yards in my warmup.As I ruminated about this I remembered Salo's comments and decided it didn't matter. I decided to stop counting total yardage for workouts.I still do my sets and live and die by split times,but I don't pay any attention to totals,especially in recovery swims and warm downs.I have found this liberating.I can do vertical kicking without worrying about how it will affect my GTD. Fri I did 8 turns with pullouts in a row without worrying about calculating how far I swam.I can do just starts without having to pay attention to where I came up to figure yardage.I'll lose my opportunity to get another mesh bag,but so far for me it seems worth it.Obviously if your main goal is yardage or you GTD ranking this is not for you,but if you want to clear your mind for quality swims,give it a try.
This morning our team had a set of 16x50 on 1:00. The coach suggested 2 ways to swim the set. The first way was to pick a goal time, like the 2nd 50 of your 100 or 200 and try to stick to that time. If you missed it, you sat out the next 50 and picked it back up again. The other was was to try to hold your "best average" time. The first way to swim the set is probably not quite a "Rushall" set but is in that spirit. I actually took Alan's advice and chose the first option. Almost everyone else took the second option as no one wanted to miss any yardage. I wound up having to sit out every 4th one, but I still think I got the better workout.
Almost everyone else took the second option as no one wanted to miss any yardage. I wound up having to sit out every 4th one, but I still think I got the better workout.
And you probably got to lead your lane. :)
Totally agree with this, well for shorter distance events anyway. I like to record times achieved at race pace, and have zero interest in how many metres I've covered, or not covered as is more the case :)
Just done a 3 month stint of 1000M warmup inc drills and build work, no more than 6 x 50's max pace, with say 100 slow recovery, or flop on poolside as rest. So in a session I wont swim more than 300M hard, often less than that. The negative, if you can call it that, is I can't do general masters training sessions well any more. I used to lead the lane, but now I'm trained to race, not trained to train.
It works though - did a 0.7 second PB on 50 free and same on 50 fly at nearly 44. Some of the best sprinters have been training like this for years, just wish I'd know about it 25 years ago!
