For those of you that do IM, do you focus on doing IM only in your main sets or do you focus on one or two strokes each time? I have recently started swimming the IM and love it but want to get much faster. I know my backstroke and breaststroke are slowing me down. I am not sure if I should focus on those once a week or something or just keep swimming IMs since that is what I want to race.
Short answer - do both.
Slightly longer answer - the axis-switching nature of the stroke changes, at least for me, means it is important to do a lot of IM training if I want to swim fast in IM races. For example, if I do a 200 breaststroke in a workout, my third 50 will almost always feel "smoother" and better than if I was to do a 200 IM. So, I tend to do more IM work that straight stroke work.
Caveats:
Beyond a 25 and maybe a 50 of fly in a workout, my stroke falls apart, so I rarely train fly repeats in workout at longer distances than that except when I do a 400 IM. So, I rarely train much fly at distance.
On the other end of the spectrum, I will do many freestyle repeats at longer distances ... for no other reason than I can do them.
Short answer - do both.
Slightly longer answer - the axis-switching nature of the stroke changes, at least for me, means it is important to do a lot of IM training if I want to swim fast in IM races. For example, if I do a 200 breaststroke in a workout, my third 50 will almost always feel "smoother" and better than if I was to do a 200 IM. So, I tend to do more IM work that straight stroke work.
Caveats:
Beyond a 25 and maybe a 50 of fly in a workout, my stroke falls apart, so I rarely train fly repeats in workout at longer distances than that except when I do a 400 IM. So, I rarely train much fly at distance.
On the other end of the spectrum, I will do many freestyle repeats at longer distances ... for no other reason than I can do them.
