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.
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.
Thanks. I have thrown in some extra free at the end sometimes just to try and work on my aerobic conditioning as well so that makes sense.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Training for the IM is a complex process since you have to juggle all 4 strokes. You'll want to avoid any possibility of injuries by ensuring that you have an excellent technique in each of the strokes - I would suggest consulting a qualified stroke coach to ensure that you have a balance of technique and strength-building in your training.
Excelling in the IM requires a great deal of variety in your workouts. You should not train only using IM sets nor should you train in one or two specific strokes. A good way to maintain an appropriate variety in your training is to combine several strokes into your sets: breaststroke pull with freestyle or dolphin kick, for example, or sets of kick and drills in IM order, or even reverse-order fullstroke IMs. This will allow you to ensure a balance between technique and interval work and between the strokes themselves.
It is great to hear that you are interested in improving your IM times. Best of luck with your training!
Thanks for the insight. It's nice to have another educated opinion (especially since my opinion isn't educated in this area).
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sry for the question but what IM stands for ?
In the context of this thread, IM = Individual Medley. A race where people swim butterfly, then backstroke, then breaststroke, then freestyle. Or alternatively, swimming the strokes in that order in training. An Individual Medley can be 100 yards/meters (25y/m of each stroke), 200y/m (50y/m of each stroke) or 400y/m (100y/m of each stroke). People sometimes swim Medleys longer than 400m because they can, but they're not recognized events by FINA (international governing body of swimming)
Irrelevant to this thread: IM can also mean Ironman triathlon - a 2.4 mile open water swim, followed by a 112 mile cycle, followed by a full marathon (26.2 miles), in under 17 hours.
