Is anyone else irritated by the general user-unfriendliness of the new format for the "workout library"? (I would have noticed sooner had not coronavirus left me with lots of unlooked-at workouts on the forums.) I just discovered the coached workouts have now had their usefulness butchered.
I used to be able to see one week's workouts, with all the details, with one click and usually not too much wasted space (for those who put all 5ish workouts in a single post). Now, I see some of a handful of workouts - no intervals or details - but I have to click each one individually to get those details, and I can see fewer workouts at a time. (It also takes a little longer to load each page.)
This destroys a lot of the usefulness from these coached workouts for me! It also now takes much longer to figure out what I will swim the next day/few days. I don't have time to click a gazillion times and go forward and backwards every night.
Some improvements that could be made:
- allow all posted workouts to be searched from the search bar (e.g. look for kick sets from IM, high-intensity, and basic training in a single search)
- allow multiple types of sets to searched for at once (e.g. look for both kick sets and pull sets)
- display the full workout and not only the distance and a stroke (e.g. show intervals, instructions, etc.) without having to click on each individual day
----maybe just add an option for the whole page "show abbreviated version or show everything"
----or just add a "view all detailed workouts from week #30" button
- not have so much blank space on the page
Please try to keep user-friendliness in mind when making website changes, not just "don't make people on phones struggle too much" or "make it snazzy". There are lots of people that use these workouts, so please don't just assume everyone accesses and reads them the same way!
The new Workout Library is on the swim.com platform and one has to be logged into their My USMS account in order to view the practices now. I guess this is supposed to make it easier to integrate with our FLOGs and other swim.com activities for those who use the latest technology.
It definitely looks very different than the previous workouts posted on the discussion forums under Workouts. I agree that it is more difficult to pull up the specific details for each practice now - there are a few more steps involved.
I must have missed the announcement that the workouts had officially moved over to the new platform. I figured it out when I realized there hadn't been any new workouts posted to the forums in a few weeks.
I'm not sure what you are looking that is some sort of format change from the site. I look back and it all looks the same to me. Now granted, the coaches who write them may use different formats they use, and they don't always give intervals. But that seems to be how the individual coaches do it. I know taht since I joined (a bit over 3 years ago), the "Basic Training" has had 3 different coaches. Their formats are all different. I go back a few years to see the sets taht I learned on, and they are the same. So are you sure what you are seeing is not just the wat the coach posts, rather than some sort of format change?
I don't see any sort of workout library on swim.com
I have no idea how to navigate that site.
Access the Workout Library from the USMS main page under the Fitness and Training Tab at the top of the page. Click on Workout Library and then select what type of workout you want to view (Basic Training, Open Water Training, High Intensity Training, etc). You will be asked to log into your "My USMS" account in order to view the workouts.
fact we don't have a pool to swim in ...
Do you have a pool to train in? Count your luck stars ...
You must be dearly missing your home pool now after the move...
You must be dearly missing your home pool now after the move...Yes, I did miss it a lot from mid-March to late May, but, now that I've discovered gobs of 'swimming holes' in the lakes around Ontario, I'm a happy man. Plus, given how well Canada's doing, I suspect our pools will open before the fall chill drives me from the lakes!
I finally clicked on the new workout library tab and created and linked to swim.com since we no longer have a Masters team here and I was getting tired of writing my own workouts. I have to agree with swimmile that it's difficult to work with. I've tried the link for editing workouts with swim.com, but it just sends me to a page telling me to download the app on my mobile device. After putting the app on my mobile device, I still can't see a way to edit workouts. Supposedly my Garmin and swim.com are linked, but my Garmin never gets the data correct on my swims. There is a way to send workouts to my watch, but that's out of my league apparently. I figured that I could find a workout that I mostly liked and copy and paste it into Word to make edits, but it adds blank spaces and lines creating a 7 page document for one workout. Has anyone figured out solutions to these issues?
I finally clicked on the new workout library tab and created and linked to swim.com since we no longer have a Masters team here and I was getting tired of writing my own workouts. I have to agree with swimmile that it's difficult to work with. I've tried the link for editing workouts with swim.com, but it just sends me to a page telling me to download the app on my mobile device. After putting the app on my mobile device, I still can't see a way to edit workouts. Supposedly my Garmin and swim.com are linked, but my Garmin never gets the data correct on my swims. There is a way to send workouts to my watch, but that's out of my league apparently. I figured that I could find a workout that I mostly liked and copy and paste it into Word to make edits, but it adds blank spaces and lines creating a 7 page document for one workout. Has anyone figured out solutions to these issues?
Around 2:40 on this overview video shows how to edit a workout on swim.com: www.usms.org/.../workout_library_overview_phone.mp4
