I have been swimming consistently for almost 2 years. I made some good improvements and can swim 1:20/100m all out, and keep 100 interval at 1:55. But I am stuck here for a while. I swim 3/wk for 1hr each, one of which is OW (I am a triathlete). I do lots of drills but tend to take it easy on the interval or any kind of speed work during the tri season. How can I get to the next level? Should I take some more lessons? Should I spend more time on a longer interval or shorter interval? I would like to get faster in a tri swim (800m~1.2mile) but I also would like to improve my time at meets (50~400m).
Another question - My back starts hurting after while when I swim in a wetsuit. Does this tell you anything about my body position and what I should do to eliminate this?
Thanks.
I think there's nothing wrong with taking an "active break" from a certain type of training during the year, especially to do a different type of training. Now, during your "active break", which I assume you are at right now since it's the middle of tri season, I wouldn't be shocked if you don't see big improvements in speed. You might fine tune effort and endurance but unless you show up and work the the interval training, you won't get "faster, faster" (using Ande's words). However, once you switch to swimming season, I would think you will step up and do more sprints, and will probably start seeing time drops again. Come to think of it, you mentioned interval drills, but are there ANY sprints in there? Building sets where you get faster each interval?
There are some good suggestions out there on how to choose intervals, one on the NEM master's website.
www.swimnem.org/.../chartguide.html
I think there's nothing wrong with taking an "active break" from a certain type of training during the year, especially to do a different type of training. Now, during your "active break", which I assume you are at right now since it's the middle of tri season, I wouldn't be shocked if you don't see big improvements in speed. You might fine tune effort and endurance but unless you show up and work the the interval training, you won't get "faster, faster" (using Ande's words). However, once you switch to swimming season, I would think you will step up and do more sprints, and will probably start seeing time drops again. Come to think of it, you mentioned interval drills, but are there ANY sprints in there? Building sets where you get faster each interval?
There are some good suggestions out there on how to choose intervals, one on the NEM master's website.
www.swimnem.org/.../chartguide.html
