The Jazz Hands training log, an alternative swimming experience
Former Member
Whenever I mention something about how I train, somebody flips out and asks for clarification. "Jazz Hands," they say, "do you really bathe in ox blood before workouts?" Or, "Jazz Hands, how many grams of testosterone do you inject weekly?" I hope to answer these questions and many more in my training log. I'll be covering water workouts and weight workouts, and I'll answer questions about both, as well as questions about my nutrition and supplementation.
I hope my alternative swimming experience will give other swimmers ideas for their own training, and expand everyone's idea of just what kind of preparation a swimmer needs to go fast.
I typically list weights this way: weight x reps. I list swimming sets this way: reps x distance. They are kind of the reverse of one another, but each one is the standard for each particular activity.
I'll start with some recent workouts.
Evening weights
Saturday December 8, 2007
School mostly finished for me on Friday, so I decided to celebrate with some sumo deadlifts.
Warmed up with 135, 205, 275, 345.
Attempted 415, felt good and fast but something went wrong. I lost control of the bar and it swung and hit me in the right shin, leaving a big red rectangle.
Finished up deadlifts with a bunch of singles at 345, and a few more at 365.
Did a set of alternating negatives on the calf machine with 140.
Evening weights
Sunday December 9, 2007
Started with 90x4 on dips. I try to do dips as deep as possible.
Did several sets of 185 on bent-over barbell rows. Didn't count reps. I mostly focused on form: back flat and parallel to the ground, no jerking and swaying. My form improved with each set.
Finished with 90x5 on dips, a new personal best. My brother watched and said I went really deep on all of the reps.
Morning swim
Monday December 10, 2007
Started with 4x25 sprint flutter kick on my back, with several minutes rest. Went 19, 18, 16, 16.
Did a couple 25s sprint free, my mind was wandering though. I was thinking about how Paul Smith says I can't do a good 100. Why not start it today? Back in the day, I used to do a 100 fly from a push every week or so just to see if I could keep up my endurance while I was swimming mostly 25s. If I remember correctly, I did about a 57 at my best. Pretty cool considering my best time in competition (high school) was a 58.
So, 100 fly! I breathed every stroke, and finished in 59. The first 50 felt really good, but I died just about as bad as I ever had on the last 25. It felt like I was actually going backwards. My friend in the other lane watched me and said I split 26 at halfway. Twenty-six to 33 is not good, and I felt like I was going to throw up for the next half hour. I hope to improve on that a lot in the coming weeks.
Former Member
Have you considered that there might be something wrong with this alleged revolutionary sprint training program that causes you to almost puke every time you do it?
I always puke when I sprint a lot in a short period of time. It doesn't really have anything to do with my training. I've been on 5,000 yards a day and feeling very sick after the first two swims in a 6x100 @ 5:00. In fact, my last club coach had us doing that kind of set fairly regularly, and it was guaranteed to knock me out.
Actually a good plan. Relay swims tend to be fast because your team is there to push you.
I sensed you might be burned out on lots of yardage, gotta a son just slightly younger than you that could say the same thing, so I understand why you don't want to do it anymore. Some day you may need the destress that 2000 yards of peace and quiet in the pool can give you, but not now.
Not quite as old as Paul:bouncing: but do be careful with your uber heavy weights. Done the heavy lifting at your age, and it is cool to chisel the body, but it can cause stress that you dont realize until you are older.
Good luck, and I will read with interest, especially the weight lifting because I really love weight lifting.
I'm going on record as stating I believe this to be a hoax thread. It's too ridiculous to be characterized any other way. And, I will admit to being sucked in from my self imposed banishment.
I think you are a hoax person. No one could really be this mean spirited.
I am also curious: are you completely self-coached? Is there a good masters coach/team where you are? Maybe joining them once or twice a week, even for a short time, might not be a bad idea. Your choice, of course, but it is helpful to bounce ideas off others, or just turn your brain off and swim, not having to think of every little thing. (That's why God invented tapers.)
I swim at my school, and we have a club which competes in masters. I'm a member and I'm friends with a lot of the swimmers. We have a few who are very fast. The team only works out three times a week, on consecutive nights. That's just how the scheduling at our pool works. I like to swim with them once a week or so. Lately I've made Wednesday my designated night off from lifting when I go to a team practice. However, it's finals week right now so I don't know if there will be a practice, and there certainly won't be any during winter break.
I've been a bit rough on you, Jazz Hands, don't retain legal counsel please.
I guess for most of us this 200 yard workout is pretty foreign, and that is what is throwing us off. You seem to have a lot of swimming experience and you've put on 45 pounds in 18 months with weights and other stuff you have yet to divulge. You are also only 22. If you combine your swimming experience, obvious fitness improvements and a mature body now, it strikes me that you can't isolate your swimming improvement to weights only.
I suggest that as you age you will find to maintain peak swimming times you will not be able to do that by swimming a 200 as a total workout. Lastly, for those of us that enjoy swimming, hopping in the pool for 3 or 4 minutes would really not be much fun.
Jazz Hands, do you stretch at all?
A little. It's kind of ad lib. I sometimes do arm swings and other dynamic flexibility stuff before I swim or lift. Before I do my first set of chin-ups in a workout I usually do a shoulder stretch with the bar.
I think it's important to keep in mind that swimming and lifting are flexibility exercises. When I talk about going deep on dips, or doing chin-ups down to a full hang, those are both stretches. My leg workouts have a big flexibility component. Box squats and sumo deadlifts push the limits of my hip flexibility, as I discussed earlier with funkyfish.
Also, if you read my swim workout from this morning, you'll see that I did a flexibility-focused warm up.
Hey, that extra 500+ yards wasn't "garbage yards." Easy recovery swimming between sprints is important.
I agree, that's why I put it in quotes. If I really thought it was garbage, I wouldn't be doing it.
Bench press, pretty heavy. Many months of painful rehab ahead. He was probably the best conditioned swimmer on the team too. Definitely the fastest.
Same thing happened to Terry Laughlin. I think that is an exercise that is best avoided for avid swimmers.
