One topic of great interest to us all is
"What do you need to do to have a major swimming breakthrough?"
"What do you need to do to significantly improve your swimming times in the days and weeks left in THIS season?"
What I'm looking for are specific, nitty gritty type suggestions.
I think it's really easy to fall into a rut,
to just show up and go through the motions
rather than seizing the moment while we train.
Does anyone have any thoughts on
what we need to do to significantly improve?
I thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss
Ande
-- Work on endurance fly.
While I am by no means writing off the 100s, I've decided that the events I enjoy the most are the 200 back and 200 fly. For the latter, I think I need to have an easy/fast fly. Like probably most masters swimmers, I have a hard time "cruising" fly without getting too tired (unlike the case for the other strokes, ie back and free). So I'd like to get to the point of being able to do, say, 100s fly on a decent pace without getting very tired...at one point in my life doing butterfly was no more tiring than doing freestyle and, while I won't ever recapture those days, I'd like to at least get a glimpse of them. So I resolve to do some longer fly sets, with less rest, and not to fear them too much.
One possibility: on sets designed to be fairly low-rest freestyle, alternate repetitions of butterfly (good pace) and free (cruise, active rest), without too much time on the wall.
Another possibility for fly endurance is to swim free at a moderately hard pace to get tired, and then switch to fly and work to keep tempo up. An
example would be:
10 x 100 1:30 75 moderately hard free/25 fly
These help you to practice swimming fly when tired, but not so tired that your tempo or stroke suffers. I find them most helpful in the early season.
You can also do 200's, last 50 fly, and as you get stronger swim more fly.
-- Work on endurance fly.
While I am by no means writing off the 100s, I've decided that the events I enjoy the most are the 200 back and 200 fly. For the latter, I think I need to have an easy/fast fly. Like probably most masters swimmers, I have a hard time "cruising" fly without getting too tired (unlike the case for the other strokes, ie back and free). So I'd like to get to the point of being able to do, say, 100s fly on a decent pace without getting very tired...at one point in my life doing butterfly was no more tiring than doing freestyle and, while I won't ever recapture those days, I'd like to at least get a glimpse of them. So I resolve to do some longer fly sets, with less rest, and not to fear them too much.
One possibility: on sets designed to be fairly low-rest freestyle, alternate repetitions of butterfly (good pace) and free (cruise, active rest), without too much time on the wall.
Another possibility for fly endurance is to swim free at a moderately hard pace to get tired, and then switch to fly and work to keep tempo up. An
example would be:
10 x 100 1:30 75 moderately hard free/25 fly
These help you to practice swimming fly when tired, but not so tired that your tempo or stroke suffers. I find them most helpful in the early season.
You can also do 200's, last 50 fly, and as you get stronger swim more fly.
