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.
Since you identified two strokes that need a lot of improvement, I would recommend doing strokework on your back and br. You won't swim your best IM until you are comfortable with your skill level in all strokes.
I was in a similar boat -- I love 100 IM, but my backstroke has never been good. To work on both my stroke and IM at the same time, every practice after warming up, I would do a broken 200 of each stroke. Drills and kicks and some full stroke. Then I would do some sort of speed set, which many days included IMs, or a slow and easy 800 IM where I just worked to hold each stroke together.
My backstroke improved greatly to where now my slowest length is usually ***, which I am supposedly good at. This helped me go from struggling to break 1:10 to swimming a pretty consistent 1:07 for a while. Not blazing fast, but better than I ever expected.
Since you identified two strokes that need a lot of improvement, I would recommend doing strokework on your back and br. You won't swim your best IM until you are comfortable with your skill level in all strokes.
I was in a similar boat -- I love 100 IM, but my backstroke has never been good. To work on both my stroke and IM at the same time, every practice after warming up, I would do a broken 200 of each stroke. Drills and kicks and some full stroke. Then I would do some sort of speed set, which many days included IMs, or a slow and easy 800 IM where I just worked to hold each stroke together.
My backstroke improved greatly to where now my slowest length is usually ***, which I am supposedly good at. This helped me go from struggling to break 1:10 to swimming a pretty consistent 1:07 for a while. Not blazing fast, but better than I ever expected.
