percentage of hard swimming?

I think I'm about at Allen's ratio. I don't swim more than 25% of my workout at true "race pace." How could you? As Ande notes, there is a big difference between true race pace and 80-90%. If you're at race pace, you need a serious rest interval to make it meaningful. It's effectively a timed swim. When I'm doing that kind of workout, I mix a lot of easy recovery swims and DPS swims in with the race pace sprinting. I might, for example, do 20 x 50 on 1:00 alternating easy, DPS, fast, easy, etc. A hard aerobic set is completely different than race pace swimming. Both have their benefits, although I'm a believer in quality over quantity. As for the question of hard swimming versus quality yards, I think you can have both or do them in alternating workouts perhaps. But if your stroke starts falling apart from hard swimming on a short interval, I'm not sure how productive that is. Yeah, it's very macho, but so what? Will that make you swim faster in a meet (assuming that's your goal)? I'll very occasionally bang out a hard set of 10 x 100s. But more often I'll descend 1-5 and 6-10 to get more bang for the buck and preserve technique and SDKs. I guess it depends somewhat on your event focus. And everyone trains differently and benefits from different training. Although I've read on the forum that race pace training can work for distance swimmers too. For me, among other things, I'm going to attempt to focus on race pace and timed swims more in practices this season. I'm convinced it's a good idea to time yourself from the blocks fairly regularly, although this is difficult if you swim alone or your team doesn't do this much. If there's no blocks, time yourself from a push off. And, wait a minute, you can't make 50 kicks on 1:05?! I think your 100 free would improve if your kicking improved!

I think I'm about at Allen's ratio. I don't swim more than 25% of my workout at true "race pace." How could you? As Ande notes, there is a big difference between true race pace and 80-90%. If you're at race pace, you need a serious rest interval to make it meaningful. It's effectively a timed swim. When I'm doing that kind of workout, I mix a lot of easy recovery swims and DPS swims in with the race pace sprinting. I might, for example, do 20 x 50 on 1:00 alternating easy, DPS, fast, easy, etc. A hard aerobic set is completely different than race pace swimming. Both have their benefits, although I'm a believer in quality over quantity. As for the question of hard swimming versus quality yards, I think you can have both or do them in alternating workouts perhaps. But if your stroke starts falling apart from hard swimming on a short interval, I'm not sure how productive that is. Yeah, it's very macho, but so what? Will that make you swim faster in a meet (assuming that's your goal)? I'll very occasionally bang out a hard set of 10 x 100s. But more often I'll descend 1-5 and 6-10 to get more bang for the buck and preserve technique and SDKs. I guess it depends somewhat on your event focus. And everyone trains differently and benefits from different training. Although I've read on the forum that race pace training can work for distance swimmers too. For me, among other things, I'm going to attempt to focus on race pace and timed swims more in practices this season. I'm convinced it's a good idea to time yourself from the blocks fairly regularly, although this is difficult if you swim alone or your team doesn't do this much. If there's no blocks, time yourself from a push off. And, wait a minute, you can't make 50 kicks on 1:05?! I think your 100 free would improve if your kicking improved!