I swim an average of 30,000 yards a week. The way I get 30,000 is the question I have. Some weeks I swim three times and do 10,000 each day. Other weeks I swim six times a week and do 5,000 each day. I wonder which way is the most effective for training. I feel guilty when I only swim three times in a week, even though I have the same total yards.
What are your thoughts on this. Is it better, worse, or the same to swim three times a week instead of six times? I don't know, I am just trying different things to figure out what the best way to workout is. I should also mention that swimming is the only excercise I do and when I swim 10,000, I usually need the next day to recover.
I believe at a minimum you need to swim "half time", that is to say every other day or 5 days out of ten. If not, you will not be able to maintain the base work that you have put in.
Former Member
No help from me when I competed in the Olympics, Pan Am Games, and the British Empire & Commonwealth Games, I swam 4000 yds a week.
Former Member
I'll bet there are as many different opinions as there are participants here.
Personally, I do 3500-4200 yards per day, 6 days a week. I just vary the intensity and set distance within each day's workout. (On days that follow an intense interval workout, I almost always have to hold back, take it slower.) Some days I'm dead tired before I even start, and I just plod along and "serve my sentence" (as I like to call it.) But I've tried skipping on days I feel that way and I seem to be worse off the rest of the day than if I force myself into the pool. (I think it's endorphin addiction.) And I'm almost always a bit crabby on Sundays (my day off.)
So if I were faced with the choices you offered here, I would do 6 days of 5000 yards each. Or maybe alternate between 6500 and 3500 or something like that.
Former Member
That many yards. I'm jealous. Our "Y" crappy hours only ley me get 1 hour a day which usually amounts to about max 3000 yds 5 days a week....at best.... if classes are done on time and the lanes are in.
Former Member
Age has much to do with the recovery rate. Some people can bounce back from day to day depending on other demands on their time. A stressful job, a house full of kids, or lots of commute time can diminish how much pool time one can handle also.
Former Member
I used to do weight training on a regular basis, and one of the recommendations I was given when I started was to do it 3 days per week. The rationale given for this was that bodybuilding requires a combination of exercise, food, and rest: The exercise stimulates the muscles to grow, food provides the raw materials, and it is during rest that they actually grow. So the intervening day of rest between each workout was considered to be an important component of the training. It was noted that some weight trainers prefer to workout every day, and give their muscles time to rest by alternating a day of upper body exercises with a day of lower body exercises.
To the extent that swimming workouts make our muscles grow, the same principle will apply. But one of the goals of swim training is also to build our skill in moving efficiently through the water, and for this goal, there may be a benefit in working out more frequently. If you do this, I would suggest that you don't do the same workout on successive days. You might, e.g., concentrate on the long axis strokes (freestyle and backstroke) on one day, and concentrate on the short axis strokes (butterfly and breaststroke) the next day.
