100 fly

Kevin....those are awesome fly times...especilly for workout. Personally I rarely if ever swim 100 fly in practice...lots of drill work, fin work, build 50's, fast 25's....that sort of thing. As fr how you split it....depends on what type of swimmer you are...drop dead...more back half capability? For the most part on a 100 you want to try and keep your 50 splits within 2-3 sconds. So to go 55 you should be something like 26/29....

Since you swim with a team, I would tell your coach your goal, and let him/her suggest set modifications you can do to help you reach it. I can't imagine a coach not wanting a swimmer to request more fly! Perhaps on a similar set of 100s, you could do the last lap of each one fly, teaching yourself to still do fast fly when tired. Or maybe your coach would prefer you to slide down a lane and do them all fly with slightly more rest. You could also ask your coach to let you do a 100 fly for time at the end of a practice so you could see how you split it in practice before trying it in your first race. Finally (and perhaps obviously), on any kick or swim sets where you get to do choice, opt for fly. It definitely sounds like your goal is within your reach. Good luck!

I've told my wife to slap me every time I start talking about doing a 100 fly.:joker: So far it's worked. I've only swam it (miserably) twice. But maybe I should make a serious attempt at it now that my 50 has become comfortable. Then I'll challenge a certain someone who doesn't like 100's and kick her butt. :thhbbb: :thhbbb: :thhbbb:

Splits will depend on the type of swimmer you are but for the 100 Fly I'd say you need to plan on a :25. for the 50. Anything slower than that will make it real hard to hold for a 100, especially the second 50. This would put you in the :26. first 50 range leaving a :29. second 50 to reach the :55.

Yeah Kev I'm 37...just learnning fly I do a 20sec 25. Half of it is underwater and my SDK stinks too. You'll be doing great. I say lots of 50's and reduce rest intervals but I'm a novice. It has helped me on my 100 and 200 *** though.

Great feedback. Paul, I like suggestion of working the 25's and 50's. Seems to me that most good flyer rarely swim a lot fly beyond 50's in work out. Especially for masters swimmers. If I were to guess why, I'd say its because swimming fly tired with poor form provides little return other than for torture. Chlorini, I done some 75free/25fly 100's in practice before. I usually just end up swimming survival fly or drill. Anyway, my first chance at it will be in april when we host a SCY meet. Between now and then I may to a Pentathlon where I can get a 50 fly time. I'm excited to give it a shot. Swimming is way more fun when you have a goal. BTW Paul, is that a Viszla in your Avatar?

You people are way out of my league. I will begin fly training on March 19th and my goal is 350 yards of it, non-stop and no turns, straight ocean. I hope to complete it in 30 minutes, if I can complete it. Donna

I use to do a lot of fly in practice...but I got to a point where I platued (?). then my shoulders went bad and I had to not swim fly for a few months. when I came back to fly I did a lot less yardage full stroke fly. In practice this year I did hardly any full stroke fly besides 25's (10x25 fly o-work on your SDK e=work on your full stroke @25---real good heart pumper fly set) and a few 50's here and there. One coach told me that as soon as you feel like your fly is becoming more of a survival fly, stop doing it. You can either change to 1 arm, 1-1-1-3-3-3-or2-2-2 but don't try to continue just full stroke because thats what leads to injuries and it isn't helping you to be swimming it completly wrong. Obviously you don't want to not practice fly when your tired though because that defeats the point of training it, so my coaches often would have flyers do sets of like 4x3x100 (1=25fly/25free 2=25free/50fly/25free 3=25fly/50free/25fly and repeat that cycle 4times) Instead of say the backstrokers who were doing 12x100back...but this way the flyers are practicing every part of the race fly...still getting the workout/yards but not necessarily killing your shoulders. Suprisingly, or maybe not so suprisingly, when I started working fly like that my times dropped for the first time in years and have been more consistently dropping since. Good luck... in terms of your race strategy...my coach always talks about the 3rd 25. I don't really listen to that theory in my 100free-i just rip it out as fast as I can without thinking, but in the 100fly, I feel I either am too cautious and take the first 50 too slow, or too cocky and take that 1st 50 to hard. Either way my time suffers, so I have began to break it up into 4 25's in stead of 2 50s like most people do. I try to build my race. That first 25 is a long rhytm setting lap, then I try to get some more arm speed into my 2nd 50. My third 50 is my mental 50--things are starting to hurt, you have that feeling of "oh god I have to do that all over again?" so I really try to think about making that my strongest lap, a lot of people can't break that mental barrier and they end up either conciously or unconciously saving some energy for that last lap, but either way, if you can take it as hard and stong as possible, your gonna have a good time and a good race. That last lap is a balls to the wall lap. Just go for it, one lap left....doesn't matter how much more you make it hurt, because its over! Thats my 2cents.

Also any advice on how to train for the 100 fly when your work outs don't really have a lot of fly in them. I tend not to swim much more than a 50 of fly at a time in practice. It has paid off - in the last two years, my nationals times in the 50 and 100 have been PBs. But what I will do is any set where we have some 25s and/or 50s where we're doing monotonous freestyle garbage yardage, I will swim something fly instead of free, or do 50s fly/back.

I put this on another fly thread, but I'll repeat just because I think its a good strategy. We've done a number of broken 300's fly, varying over a few months. Starting with 12 X 25, then 6 X 50. Then some ladders, starting with 25-50-75-75-50-25. Then progressing to a reverse ladder: 75-50-25-25-50-75. The idea on the reverse ladder is to descend your pace per 25 on the way down, then hold that pace (or descend compared to first swims) on the way back up. You could work out the interval based on your ability. I usually do this at a 30 or 35 sec per 25 interval.