Well...apparently I'm gonna be swimming distance from now on (in college) so...coming from a sprint background (past 14 years of 50-100-and a few 200 freestyles) I have a goal of becoming a pretty solid 500 swimmer
currently at a 5:30.03 (untapered, unshaved, first time in 3 years, on the 3rd day of a trials/finals meet)
I would like to go a 5:15...I think thats obtainable if I change the way I've been practicing all these years, and think more endurance and pace rather than balls the the walls and your done..like I have been doing for nearly 2 decades.
I'm not really sure what I should be doing in order to meet my goal other than working 100 repeat sets on tighter intervals.
Great thread, Ande.
My goal is a fast 50 free. My plan is heavy lifting and fast swimming. I'm doing something a bit different than last year's 1x50 plan. I want more sprinting time to consider my technique. Right now I swim every weekday morning. A lot of my workouts now look like this:
10x25 free sprint, no breathing @ 3:00
I also sometimes work on 50s and sprint kicking. It's all subject to change. I don't know what kind of workouts I'll be doing as Austin approaches.
I lift six nights a week, generally alternating upper body day and lower body day, focusing on just one or two lifts each day. Here's my current schedule:
Thursday: Box squats
Friday: Barbell bench press, weighted chin-ups
Saturday: Sumo deadlifts
Sunday: Weighted dips, bent-over barbell rows
Monay: Unilateral leg work
Tuesday: Dumbbell bench press, lat pull-downs
Just like the swimming, it's subject to change.
2:20 in the 200 SCM back/2:05 in the 200 SCY back
to acheive it I need to drop .50 per 50, while at the same time taking my 100 out 1 second slower. Didn't hit it this weekend at zones, but being sick during the last few days of taper didnt help.
I need to work more broken 200s, more over distance (225s/250s/300s). Any set of 200s from now on 2:40 I am swimming backstroke rather than freestyle.
I am going to hit the weights finally, first time ever on a consistent basis.
Am going to drop 15 pounds by SCY zones in April.
Just like swimming, one article at a time.
With any luck, earn the respect of influential media members and become part of a group that improves the swimming brand in the eyes of the general public... My ultimate goal is to become the Don Cherry of water sports. (only healthier)
Beginning in January, I'm going to re-focus on kicking and SDK work. Lately, I've been completely ignoring kicking and my flutter kick is awful. I think Paul Smith is right about this, and I'm going to do much more of it for 4 weeks.
I'm also considering spinning once a week. But then will depend on class times and whether it is too cold to run.
I'm going to start doing ankle flexibility exercises more often too.
Still mulling over times. No SCY meet until April (zones).
Hello everyone,
Usually I stay in lurk mode but I think setting goals, as specific as possible, is a great way to stay motivated.
They don't necessarily have to be time-based, either, but they ought to be something that you can translate into a training strategy. Examples: swimming a 200 fly or 400 IM or 1650 in a meet for the first time (or the first time in recent memory!) is very laudable. As an aside, I usually take my inspiration not as much from the elite swimmers -- as impressive as they can be -- but from the 70+ year old swimmers who tackle difficult events like these. I just swam a meet where a 70 year old swam a 200 fly in something like 5:30. Imagine swimming fly straight for that long a time...at 70 years of age. Pretty amazing.
If you set a time-based goal, make sure you break it down into the (realistic) splits necessary to do it and then base your training goals accordingly. If you want to break 1:00 in the 100 free but can't break 30 yet...well, you need to build the speed/power first before translating it to "easy speed." (In my experience, many masters swimmers have plenty of endurance but don't work enough on race-pace swimming in practice...much as Ande has been preaching.)
When setting goals, adjusting for age can, of course, be difficult; it may be different for others, but I can't come anywhere near my high school or college times. I have been tinkering with a rating system that can help with this; I freely admit to borrowing and refining the idea from a NEM home page (Great Bay Masters, I think). It is at
www.vaswim.org/.../rcalc.cgi
I plan on doing more work on it when I can spare the time over the next year, so any feedback would be appreciated. It is, of course, completely free for general use. I intended it exactly for this purpose -- goal setting -- but it can certainly be used for trash talking across genders and age groups...!
Happy swimming,
Chris
