percentage of hard swimming?

I guess the drawback with working out on a team is that we rarely do a true sprint set, or atleast one that is greater that a 1:1 rest to work ratio. I think 25's on :30 is about as close as it gets. Any more rest and the other swimmers complain and want to shorten the interval. At least now after looking at the link Knelson provided I understand why it is important. It's difficult to do this type of training with a team that has different swimmers with different training/meet goals. I do most of my sprinting and race pace training on my own. If it's aerobic work I want, I'm better off with my team. Although sometimes my team has a great sprint set or will have two main sets -- one for sprinters/strokers and one for distance free. Then everyone's happy.

My coach doesn't include "race pace" until the last month or so of the season and it is usually broken swims. The RP set might be something like 4x25 on :15 following by 200yds easy recovery, then repeated one or two times. Race pace to my coach is max effort swims. He will time the broken pieces and use it to predict a race time unbroken. A race pace set may last 15-20 minutes, no longer. These sets leave my muscles drained for a long time even if if my heart and lungs return to normal. The lactate production sets are usually very hard with long rest, but I wouldn't describe them as race pace. These sets become more common in the latter part of the season, and could be something like 6 x 100 (yds.) free on 2:30, swum very hard. I know saving the lactate sets and race pace swimming for the latter part of the season is the conventional wisdom. But is that necessarily right (assuming you're not out of shape when the season begins)? I agree with Quicksilver's last post. That's why I don't do 200s.

I swim 4 times per week, occasionally 5. Distance is in the range of 2800-3300 meters. Warmup is very consistent at about 800. The meat of the workout varies. Mondays are usually aerobic threshold work, Tuesdays recovery, Thursdays V02max or Lactate production, Fridays something else. My coach doesn't include "race pace" until the last month or so of the season and it is usually broken swims. The RP set might be something like 4x25 on :15 following by 200yds easy recovery, then repeated one or two times. Race pace to my coach is max effort swims. He will time the broken pieces and use it to predict a race time unbroken. A race pace set may last 15-20 minutes, no longer. These sets leave my muscles drained for a long time even if if my heart and lungs return to normal. The lactate production sets are usually very hard with long rest, but I wouldn't describe them as race pace. These sets become more common in the latter part of the season, and could be something like 6 x 100 (yds.) free on 2:30, swum very hard. Most workouts also include at least a bit of sprinting - usually 25 sprint, 25 easy 50s. Then warmdown.

I swim 3 to 4 times a week, 3K-3.5K meters a workout. My workouts are 3 types: weekends I do sprint sets (nearly 50% of the workout at 90-95% effort level), weekdays one workout focused on drills (15-20% on 90-95% effort level) and the other one endurance (80% of the workout at 85-90% effort level). Sometimes I choose a program from Kevin Williams in this forum. Now I started dryland training 2 times a week plus 3 times 2.5-3K meters of swim. I need dryland exercises to be stronger.:fish2:

Re: percentage of hard swimming? I try not to do any, it would be embarassing wearing a speedo and all. Usually cold pool water keeps things in check. AJ

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 My 2 cents... This is a good workout for a sprinter. You probably do well with the 50 and the 100. And the workload is just right in terms of pace and a little bit of sprint. In my humble opinion...this formula might leave you a bit ill prepared if you ever planned on the 200 or greater. And that said...a bit more yardage could only help your stamina on the 100. I was a 100 free swimmer in college...and went out fast for the first 75. The third turn was always brutal no matter what. That's where the weight room and a bit more endurance training really paid off. Maybe on a non sprint day...see how many 100's you can do at the 1:10 rest interval. If you can manage around 10 or so...you'll be investing money in the bank.

This is an interesting discussion. When I hear "race pace" I think time trials. We do time trials once a trimester on our team, and it is brutal. I go 100% for all of the events (say 5 events). With a 500 warm up and 200 warm down. I cannot imagine a workout of 1000+ yards of race pace where you absolutely bury yourself--for me 3000 per hour is about max so 30% of my workout as race pace would be a huge effort . Once a week on Fridays maybe. I was not a high school or college swimmer though. I guess there are whole schools of training on race pace efforts EVERYDAY (!), ala Santa Clara Swim Club with Jochems as coach. It sounds like hell.

I agree there is a big difference between race pace and effort especially for us that are new to swimming. The workout I get from my coach seem to have a lot less warm up/down than the ones I see posted here (usual workout is 2200-3000M with 500 being a long warm up and 200 being a long cool down). My hard workout 85-100 percent of max (based on a max heart rate of 182) is at least 50% and as much as 75% which is a HR of 155 and up. I'm guessing from this thread that that may be too much. I know by the end of my workout, my "race pace" is slower than my EZ and form breaks are common, but my HR is near 100%. Good news, hydration isn't a problem since I'm drinking half the pool.

I know saving the lactate sets and race pace swimming for the latter part of the season is the conventional wisdom. But is that necessarily right (assuming you're not out of shape when the season begins)? I agree with Quicksilver's last post. That's why I don't do 200s. There are different kinds of lactate work....Some are intended to create large amounts of lactate, like high effort, but short sprints. Other sets might be designed to teach your body to tolerate high levels of lactate - "lactate threshold" work. These sets are high intensity, more rest than an aerobic threshold set, but shorter overall duration. I do these about once a week. I also do a few long rest sprints every week. My point is that the race pace broken swims are later in the season, but I swim "fast" throughout the season. Very important for me since I never race anything over 200 yds!

Wouldn't it be great if we did not have to think of all the words lactate, Vo2max etc. etc. and train how we felt. Guess what I only train how I feel. I want to swim hard today. I want to swim steady today. Today I want to do technique = opps I do technique all the time. I want to swim long or I want to swim short. Do I really need to be told what to do. When I train I know when it is time for me to quicken the pace and when to back off. Simple for me I only do 50s and 100s.