I'm not much of a stroke swimmer...that is to say my workouts are generally pretty much just various sets of crawl stroke...at which I'm very strong...for longer open water swims. Now and then I'd throw in a set of other strokes just to break up the monotony. I can swim the other strokes good enough...endurance-wise...except for BF. It was, and is, always difficult for me to make it just 50m BF. I'd have to rest at each wall. And it seemed that I couldn't just "slow down" to pace myself. It was like I'd have to swim the BF all-out or drown. But a year or so ago, for some reason, I began ending all my workouts with a 400 IM (scm). Slowly but surely my BF got better. I started to notice that I could actually slow down some. Still, I'd usually have to rest on one wall, or go into the modified BF with a breaststroke kick in the last 50. But finally...yesterday I did the whole 100 using the correct BF kick without resting at the wall, and was able to swim the entire 400 IM without stopping. We won't discuss time.
Dan
I can only say: 400IM on LCM is a beast and really hard for the body and mind...I guess if you want swim this event well, you have to put a lot of yards in your workouts...quantity over quality..you have to swim more than 20km/week at least!. I dont see any other way going through it without putting massiv bulk and volume.I disagree. It is a relatively short race (e.g., vs a 1500 or an open water swim). What you need to train is quality and variety. I rarely train stroke repeats at target pace over 50 and do only a few straight 400 IMs in workout. The race is 4 x 100 stroke, so I've taken a 'race pace' training approach (my own variation) for this. There's no need to worry about training 200s of any of the strokes during workout. My favorite training set for the 400 IM is:
8 x 50: on 1:00, 2 each stroke, build the odds and make sure the evens are at your target 400 IM race pace
4 x 100: on 1:50, do as 100 IMs, descend to your target race pace divided by 4, ideally starting on #1 no slower than 12 seconds above that
Masters' Two Minutes and an easy 50
2 x 200: on 3:20, build each stroke on #1, try to make #2 at your target 400 IM race pace divided by two
4 x 50: active recovery, on 0:45, 0:50, 0:55, 2:30
1 x 400: IM on 6:00, AFAP, from blocks
When I am training for a 400 IM (the main event I train for), I might do that test set every week, at most. I could almost always hit my target race pace on the 50s, many times on the last 100 IM, but almost never on the 200 IM. My average weekly volume over the last 5 years as been 14.5K yards per week.
I don't see any need for massive volume as a Masters swimmer unless you start training for an open water race longer than one mile. Even when I recently spent the 2015-2016 season training for the 1500 and 1650, my training volume was moderate and much of my pace effort was done on 50 or 100 repeats at target pace.
I can only say: 400IM on LCM is a beast and really hard for the body and mind...I guess if you want swim this event well, you have to put a lot of yards in your workouts...quantity over quality..you have to swim more than 20km/week at least!. I dont see any other way going through it without putting massiv bulk and volume.I disagree. It is a relatively short race (e.g., vs a 1500 or an open water swim). What you need to train is quality and variety. I rarely train stroke repeats at target pace over 50 and do only a few straight 400 IMs in workout. The race is 4 x 100 stroke, so I've taken a 'race pace' training approach (my own variation) for this. There's no need to worry about training 200s of any of the strokes during workout. My favorite training set for the 400 IM is:
8 x 50: on 1:00, 2 each stroke, build the odds and make sure the evens are at your target 400 IM race pace
4 x 100: on 1:50, do as 100 IMs, descend to your target race pace divided by 4, ideally starting on #1 no slower than 12 seconds above that
Masters' Two Minutes and an easy 50
2 x 200: on 3:20, build each stroke on #1, try to make #2 at your target 400 IM race pace divided by two
4 x 50: active recovery, on 0:45, 0:50, 0:55, 2:30
1 x 400: IM on 6:00, AFAP, from blocks
When I am training for a 400 IM (the main event I train for), I might do that test set every week, at most. I could almost always hit my target race pace on the 50s, many times on the last 100 IM, but almost never on the 200 IM. My average weekly volume over the last 5 years as been 14.5K yards per week.
I don't see any need for massive volume as a Masters swimmer unless you start training for an open water race longer than one mile. Even when I recently spent the 2015-2016 season training for the 1500 and 1650, my training volume was moderate and much of my pace effort was done on 50 or 100 repeats at target pace.
