I think most masters who work out with a team tend to swim about 3-4 K per work out. But what I want to know is what percentage of that is hard swimming? And by hard I mean race pace effort.
For example, last nights work out was the following.
4X200 warm up. (EZ swimming)
10X100 - odd on 1:35 (EZ) Even on 1:20 (hard)
3 rounds of the following
200 on 3:00 Build (EZ/moderate)
3X100 on 1:40 (25 hard/25 EZ...)
4X50 kick on 1:05
Warm down 200
2750 of this was EZ or moderate swimming. And only 950 was hard swimming. About 26%. For the high intensity/quality yards fans is this about right or is it a little light?
Kevin
Parents
Former Member
I think it is really important to have at least two practices a week where you go race pace in all your competitive events. I usually only do one repeat of each event at race pace (usually the last in a set). The others might be at 90% or less. Or I might descend in a set. For instance in a 10 x 50m crawl I might go 31,30,29,29,28,28,27,27,27 and 26. If I am doing a set like that I usually don't time the rest intervals and give myself enough rest to allow myself to descend on the next one. That probably means an average of 90 secs - 2 mins rest between each. I do the same for 100's trying to get as close to or under 60 secs on the final one.
In fact I hardly go one practice a week without timing myself in some event or another. Whether it be a 50, 100 or 200. I have never timed myself over a 25 (except for kicking or SDK'ing). It is just too short and I have never raced that distance anyway. I do this mainly because I train by myself and if I don't compete against the clock I have no idea how fast I am going. I even time my warm up! I try to do my 500m warm up in under 7m30s. I feel a brisker warm up leads itself to a quicker practice. Also, if you are constantly cruising along at 3/4 pace in practice you will, no doubt, cruise along at 87% pace in a race. But if you go 100% in practice perhaps you could go 110% in a race!
Syd
I think it is really important to have at least two practices a week where you go race pace in all your competitive events. I usually only do one repeat of each event at race pace (usually the last in a set). The others might be at 90% or less. Or I might descend in a set. For instance in a 10 x 50m crawl I might go 31,30,29,29,28,28,27,27,27 and 26. If I am doing a set like that I usually don't time the rest intervals and give myself enough rest to allow myself to descend on the next one. That probably means an average of 90 secs - 2 mins rest between each. I do the same for 100's trying to get as close to or under 60 secs on the final one.
In fact I hardly go one practice a week without timing myself in some event or another. Whether it be a 50, 100 or 200. I have never timed myself over a 25 (except for kicking or SDK'ing). It is just too short and I have never raced that distance anyway. I do this mainly because I train by myself and if I don't compete against the clock I have no idea how fast I am going. I even time my warm up! I try to do my 500m warm up in under 7m30s. I feel a brisker warm up leads itself to a quicker practice. Also, if you are constantly cruising along at 3/4 pace in practice you will, no doubt, cruise along at 87% pace in a race. But if you go 100% in practice perhaps you could go 110% in a race!
Syd
