Your Weekly Yardage for 50+ age

I'm under 50, but I agree with Glenn. My best events are distance events and I've never exceeded 30k yards in a week in my 12 year masters career. Generally I shoot for between 15,000 and 20,000 yards, but I'm not a stickler on total yardage.

... have begun to wonder if my times would improve if I did less yards and incorporated more quality workouts in. The short answer is yes. Work on quality sets not quantity. I'm 65, and in the last year have swum best times in ten years by swimming quality.

I'm 66 next week.I haven't gone 30,000/wk since college,usually closer to 10,000,and less if I am focusing on particular drills that are slower(you don't get much yardage in doing vertical kicking or doing 10 BR turns/pullouts in a row.).I swim 4X/wk.I find as I get older that the recovery days are more important. I totally agree that how you swim should be driven by your goals.If your goal is to get is as much yardage as possible,as it seems to be for many fitness swimmers,then you swim as far as you can.If you are wanting to compete,then the workouts need to be tailored to your most important events.

Agree with all the above!!!!! (This post is geared towards people that pool race, and sprints!) Counting yardage is an absolute pet peeve of mine. I try not to. (Except in 2 cases -getting up to 50 miles on the flog for a free cap and getting up to 50 miles to have my name on the wall in Breckenridge). While some minimum level of yardage is neccessary, it isn't the only thing that matters! Don't use yardage as a CRUTCH for NOT doing all the other things that go into being the fast swimmer that you know you can be!! Quality - YES! But don't forget to also mix things up to have FUN, and also TALK to your coach about your goals! As an adult, coaching is a collaborative effort. You have to communicate with your coach so that he/she can customize parts of your workouts and help lay out a timetable for you! Coaches are really good at this kind of stuff! But they can't help you if you don't talk with them! I highly suggest adding things that are FUN, and may not at first seem like you are doing much, but really, you are!!! Here are some examples! The most apparent are dives! If you have access to a diving block, there is no excuse for doing less than 15 dives per week! Put another way, why would you do 30,000 yards/meters and not one single dive a week when it's 15 yards/meters of every race? If I had to huff and puff down the pool for 20 minutes at 8 x 200 or similar, or stand around and get psyched and then do a burst dive to 15 yards/meters every 2-3 minutes 5 times, that's an easy choice for me!!! And you can go in pairs and watch (or even video!) each other and give feedback - FUN! So drop a 600 pull, and do 4-5 rounds of dives with your friends! Kick more! A fun set would be to do "trashcan" sprints with your teammates! Go a smooth 37 1/2 and then everyone sprints for the wall! On coach's command, he will call out the stroke to kick (mystery kick) until the final moment! So instead of 8 x 200's, do 12 x 50's on coach's interval with some mystery early commands and/or instructions, ie, NO Breath! Board out in front, face in the water! etc. FUN! Underwaters! Here's a fun set, and surprising gut busting the first time I did it. Probably because.... I NEVER DO IT! 8 x 75's broken as 25 moderate sprint on :30; 50 pushing off with UW dolphin kick to the 15 meters NO MATTER WHAT, then easy swim to finish the 50. Emphasis is on the UW dolphin kick, without getting lazy on the first 25. Interval at least 1:30. You need it at the end if you are really scout's-honor doing the UW to the very best of your ability. FUN! So drop a big long boring pull or swim set and do these instead! FUN! For some reason, I am really into things that don't require actually swimming back and forth. Probably because I want to do FUN things! Vertical kicking, of all types. Burst push offs from the pool bottom. Here's a modified set I got for the USA website, somewhere in the annals of their video clips, I think it was on Micah Lawrence showing breaststroke kick drills (but I do breaststroke kick SPARINGLY, like many masters!) 10 seconds fast freestyle kick with flat palms pushed on the wall (not holding on, push against the wall) w/no breath; quickly turn around and go straight toward the pool bottom, palms flat on the bottom and kick 5 strong breaststroke kicks into the pool bottom (have to kick hard & fast so you are pushing yourself down), then come up and vertical kick fly for 30 seconds, really push the last 10 seconds to the next level, then do 8 x bursts with streamline off the bottom; arms above head. Total set will take about 1 minute; rest 1 minute. Do this at least 4 times. FUN! See Glenn's posts and USRPT! Fort's HIT workouts! SUPER FUN! And last, one of my favorites...just get out early and talk to your coach!Plus, you get first dibs on the showers with the best water pressure! FUN! ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Since you claim to be sort of OCD, here is something I did to help me understand what I was ACTUALLY doing. Instead of just writing down the workouts and sets, I had a spreadsheet. The down (y axis) were the days of the week and the across(x axis) I labeled: Pure sprint Moderate sprint Mix/stroke sprint Kick Dives/Turns Other notes Each day, I would mark what I did in each column. Notice you do not include what I consider "garbage yardage", so no warmup, no transition set 8 x 50 kick/swim, no 400 pulls, no 8 x 200 swims, no warm down sets. ONLY the quality bits. It kept me very honest about whether I was actually doing what I needed to do - things I believed would directly translate to improvement in my key events, 4 x 50's! Any missing column or light column would GLARINGLY show what I didn't work on that week! I suggest making your own columns and labels. I don't use this anymore, as I swim 2 x days on my own and get exactly what I need for those days, and then the other days joining the team for IM workout days which also doubled as my weekly garbage yardage workout. I would pick ONE longer set a week early on, and absolutely CRANK on it, buoyed by the fact that I wasn't going to be doing 4 x 200's again until the next week. No Way! You would be surprised at how fast you can go when the entire set you are telling yourself this is the one and only "yardage conditioning" set you will do all week, so make it a good one and show 'em who's still the boss when she wants to be! tee hee! Good luck to you!!!! We'd love to hear how you have modified what you are doing and how it has impacted your performances!!

Counting yardage is an absolute pet peeve of mine. I try not to. Well, duh. It's already been confirmed you didn't even know how many yards there are in a mile! :)

That was brilliant, chowmi. . Yes chowmi,that is one of the best posts I have ever read!!

When I first posted I didn't notice it was a poll.I think the numbers are too far apart.There is a huge difference between 10,001 yd/wk and 30,000.

Glenn, how many yards do you swim per week? I don't count yardage. It is not important how many yards you swim. What is important is how many strokes you take at race pace. I probably take 800 - 1000 race pace strokes per day, so that's about 4 to 5 thousand race pace strokes a week.

This is turning out to be an interesting thread. First, to answer the OP's question: According to my FLOG I swam 459 miles last year so that's an average of 15535 yds/week. If I don't count illnesses, vacations etc, so that I only count weeks in which I was really training the average weekly distance is probably 17K+. Next, I'll add my voice to the chorus of voices arguing that one should pay attention to the quantity of fast swimming, not the quantity of swimming. A practice with 800 yards that are truly race-pace has got to be worth more than a 5000 yd aerobic bu$$ kicking - at least if you are training to pool race anyway. Finally, I'll also vote up Chowmi's post. Inspired by that I offer the following two sets as challenging, fun, and short on distance: Set #1: Get a deep lane. For N = 1..4 Set #2: Get a lane that is deep at one end and shallow at the other, Repeat the following 4 or more times

I don't count yardage. It is not important how many yards you swim. What is important is how many strokes you take at race pace. I probably take 800 - 1000 race pace strokes per day, so that's about 4 to 5 thousand race pace strokes a week. Let me give you an idea of what I do. After a 400 warmup, I do two USRPT sets. First set are 50s on the :50 second interval holding :32 until I hit the third failure. Failure means that I go until I cannot hold :32 anymore. When I miss a total of three the set is over. I then rest for 12 - 15 minutes and do it again. The two sets with rest between sets takes usually just under one hour.