I wasn't sure if the Workouts forum was the best place to put this, so I put it here. I'll go ahead and ask my essential question:
What's the best way to train as an all-around but especially middle-distance freestyle swimmer, in the pool and in the weight room?
If you don't want to read my whole post you don't have to go any farther but I'm going to try to be pretty specific.
A little background info: I'm a 17 year old male high school swimmer (rising senior) and I don't have any club swimming experience (I know my age might be a little weird for Master's swimming but this is the only really active swimming forum I could find). Compared to my fellow high school swimmers, some of whom have swum for club teams but stopped, I feel that I'm pretty good at the 200 and 500 freestyle (SCY). I don't think I've had enough training to really excel in any other strokes in the past, but I'll get more into that in a second. I've improved fairly consistently over my high school career especially in the 200 and 500, from 2:08 freshman year > 2:02 sophomore year > 1:56 junior year in the 200 and 6:04 freshman year > 5:37 sophomore year > 5:19 junior year in the 500. I think I can especially do well in the 500 because no one else seems to want to swim it. All 3 seasons we've done about 3000-4000 yards a day 5 days a week, and I never go to the gym on a regular basis. Some of my club team friends say they do 8 workouts a week for swimming including 2-3 sessions in the weight room, and I think if I try and do more than what I've done these past 3 years that I can maybe swim in college at a D2 or small D1 school.
So basically my plan this summer is to try ramp up my swimming training for my senior year of swimming.
The problem is I haven't been really able to find structured plans online for middle distance swimmers. My idea was to combine what I could find for distance and sprint training and do what I feel what helped me during the winter season to a larger extent, along with doing sessions with my high school coaches to work on technique and helping me structure my workout plan. The problem is that my coaches are a little busy with a summer league team they run so their assistance is sort of limited, and without their help I don't entirely trust myself with coming up with a workout, not being a real professional at any of that stuff.
The other issue is I don't want to completely specialize in one stroke or event in the case that I do swim in college. But I also don't really know how to put well-roundedness into a workout plan let alone combine it with the middle distance training program I don't know how to design.
Here's the general workout plan I came up with on my own just as a guide. I borrowed some ideas from various sources.
For 12 weeks:
Sunday: Rest
Monday: AM- Rest, PM- Weight Room
Tuesday: AM- Go for high volume, PM- Work on IM
Wednesday: AM- Pace work (I feel that this really helped me during the season), PM- Weight Room
Thursday: AM- Go for high volume, PM- Work on IM
Friday: AM- Pace work, PM- Weight room
Saturday: Rest
I'm not too sure if that's a great plan, and I especially need help on what to do in the weight room, as I've never gone on a regular basis, although I do have a pretty good understanding of how to do most exercises.
If you have suggestions on anything I've said please share, I would really enjoy as much input as I can get.
Again, in case you don't want to scroll back up, my question was:
What's the best way to train as an all-around but especially middle-distance freestyle swimmer, in the pool and in the weight room?
PS- I don't really want to join a club team. I like not having a concrete schedule (despite what the plan I designed implies) but I think I have enough self-accountability and motivation to be able to carry the plan I outlined. EDIT: I also can work on technique with my high school coaches, so that isn't much of an issue for me either.
Wow, I was once looking for a swimmer like you. I've been swimming for 35 years but never swam on an organized team. In h.s. I was a distance runner. When I began swimming, I did it to be a distance swimmer (open water, triathlon). I only knew how to train for distance running, so that's how I went about training for distance swimming. I have never understood why an entire h.s. team does the same exact workout. Seems like any specializing is strictly forbidden. Fast-forward to several years ago when my daughter was on her h.s. swim team. The coach asked me if I'd like to be an unpaid assistant. And, like your team, no one wanted to swim the longer events. I told the coach that I could weed out one or two swimmers that I thought would excel at the distance events, and I would train them separately from the rest of the team. My swim coaching career lived and died right there. I mentioned my plan in these forums and was ridiculed here too for wanting to let a swimmer specialize in just one discipline. I guess that's what I get for trying to bring a running mentality into swimming. But, good luck with your plan. I think it's a great idea.
Dan
Wow, I was once looking for a swimmer like you. I've been swimming for 35 years but never swam on an organized team. In h.s. I was a distance runner. When I began swimming, I did it to be a distance swimmer (open water, triathlon). I only knew how to train for distance running, so that's how I went about training for distance swimming. I have never understood why an entire h.s. team does the same exact workout. Seems like any specializing is strictly forbidden. Fast-forward to several years ago when my daughter was on her h.s. swim team. The coach asked me if I'd like to be an unpaid assistant. And, like your team, no one wanted to swim the longer events. I told the coach that I could weed out one or two swimmers that I thought would excel at the distance events, and I would train them separately from the rest of the team. My swim coaching career lived and died right there. I mentioned my plan in these forums and was ridiculed here too for wanting to let a swimmer specialize in just one discipline. I guess that's what I get for trying to bring a running mentality into swimming. But, good luck with your plan. I think it's a great idea.
Dan
