What is the best time to time yourself?

Since I swim mostly for health, not as often as some, but usually I start getting a time once a week for the month leading up to a meet, and always at the end of workout. If I'm tapering, I'll get different "warm-up lengths" as the yardage descends toward the meet date.

I get timed sporadically in practice, and probably should do it more. When I get a time it's usually at the end of practice, and usually just for a 50 free. If you want to keep on top of your times I'd suggest anything but option 1 for injury prevention reasons. I'd probably also try to stay consistent with when you are getting timed relative to your workout so you can compare apples to apples. :2cents:

With only dryland or a short warm-up, you risk injury. If you only swim for time after practice, you may be mentally and physically tired and not give it your best effort. Also, a swim for time after a long, hard workout is not likely to be as fast as a swim after workout that focuses on recovery or stroke drills. I vote for getting up for a fast swim after a nice, long, warm-up with a little speed work thrown in at the end. Then you can get in plenty of warm-down when you resume the practice......

Not a problem for me. Usually once a year (the one annual LCM meet held in Ottawa every February and which I'll miss this year as it's being replaced by the Provincial. Therefore, I'm looking forward to February 2010). I swim Unattached. The 50m pool has only a couple of morning LCM sessions (while I'm at work, naturally) the rest of the time it's two 25m pools and starting off the blocks is not allowed even if I got a lifeguard (or a pretty woman swimmer) to time me.

Just recently (today to be exact) I've decided to have one workout a week where I focus on doing timed swims for various events and distances that I like to swim in a meet. I've decided to do this because I feel I lack the self-discipline to push myself beyond what I perceive to be 80% max effort in my workouts. I figure that if I timed myself with plenty of rest between timings then I'm more apt to push myself. Here's what I observed today: I timed myself for 3 100yd freestyle swims with about 4:00 rest in between (I should probably rest more but I was pressed for time this afternoon). On my first swim I came in on a 1:03, the second was a 1:01 and the 3rd was a :58.5. I planned to do two more but ran out of time. These were from a push off the wall as our pool has no starting blocks and they frown on people diving in. Long story short I guess it took me a couple of "warm up" swims to get into a groove. Sad thing is, I was still about 6-7 seconds from what I can swim in a meet, so I probably still need more practice pushing myself in practice. Oh well. :banana:

I don't mean to make it complicated but you pose a great question that has at the heart of it, the concept of baseline training. The sooner you start timing yourself in the various training aspects the sooner you'll see how effective your training regime really is. If you'd like more information on "baseline training" just holler. In trying to answer your question; it depends upon what you're trying to accomplish. If you are going to swim a specific number of events and at different distances, you'll want to time yourself at rest intervals that closely mimic the meet (i.e. your 1st event, 2nd event, 3rd etc.,). That means you'll want to warm-down after your first timed set, rest an approximate amount of time then warm-up like you'd do before a meet, then time the next event and repeat the process again. If you're focusing on only one event then time yourself after a warm-up (keep it the warm-up the same). The most important thing when timing yourself is consistency (try to keep the variables the same). Variables include, what you're wearing (drag suit or not), day that you time yourself (should mimic days the meet will run), training regime (days when you exercise and when you exercise), time of day you're timing yourself should resemble meet conditions, and others you feel are important. Do this every other week (once) and if you're training correctly your times should drop test to test. Swimmers who are more serious should have baseline times for most of the aspects of their training. If you're not timing yourself at consistent periods during your training and your training seriously, you're missing a critical evaluation tool. Good luck, Coach T. A mushroom walks into a bar, sits down and orders a drink. The bartender says "We don't serve mushrooms here." The mushroom says,"Why not? I'm a fun guy!"

-How often do you time youself/get timed? -When? before/during/after practice? At least, twice a week. After a medium warm up. I always do a basic 500 warm up. Then it would depend on the distance I was going to do a time for...if it was a 200 free, I would do a set of 5 and descend 1 and 3 (1 about 50% effort, 3 about 65 - 70% effort). 2 and 4 would be slow recovery swims focusing on technique. Then I would take a good 3 to 4 minute rest and do 5 all out for time. If it were a 100 then I might descend 3 or 4 before going for time. For a 50 I might descend 4 or 5. I do the repeats at no particular intervals. When I feel rested I go. Might even have a chat to someone in between. I like to ease myself into race pace.:) When I am done, I carry on with my regular practice. Do you train on your own or with a team? Popov's coach felt it important that his swimmers be prepared to swim race pace at any time and to that end he would sometimes have them go all out for time right at the start of practice with no warm up at all. So that is something to think about as well.

Definitely not #1. You should test out options 2 and 3, and see which consistently work for you. I've had fast times both mid-practice, and at the end. It depends a lot on what you've done so far, but also how motivated you are. For me, that motivation factor works best. Our coaches will offer up things like not doing the last round of a set, a better interval, or something, and I almost always deliver. 2 weeks ago, our coach pulled us out of the water and challenged us to swim at our fastest in-season speeds, and I went a time that I would be absolutely thrilled with if that were in a meet.