Does anyone know of a blog link to a successful Masters swimmer's personal training progression?
What I am looking for is a swimmer who, like many Masters swimmers, was out of the sport for a while, then came back to it having to start over.
My curiosities are:
- How long from getting started did it take to become competitive again. Competitive meaning you aren't necessarily breaking records, but are winning your age group a reasonable amount of time and when not winning, still finishing with the pack.
- During the progression, what was the workout schedule? Was it every day evenings + morning workouts? Only evenings? Saturday practices?
- Did your diet change, are you now eating more or less, different composition?
- Were you slim already or did you have to lose weight as part of your training?
I am trying to figure out how hard to train. I have been back in the water off and on for about 9 months, mostly casually 1-3 coached evening workouts a week (about 3500m each workout). I know I need to ramp it up if I want to compete. I am less concerned about winning, more concerned about just making swim meets worth the time to register and drive, etc. If this means morning and evenings and diet changes, I will do them, but dont want to burn out either, so would be nice to see what successful Masters swimmers have done.
If you are such a swimmer, and want to either share here or have a email conversation, just send me a message.
Me:
- Swam school and club teams from age 6 through a year in college. (Best time was something like 20.63 in 50 free yards in high school.)
- After college, didnt really do any kind of workout program until now.
- Age 32 (33 in a few months)
- My focus is on sprint events 50's and 100's.
- Height: 6'1", Weight: 218 (have lost about 20 lbs since I have started swimming again, hoping to lose another 20, but not shedding them as quickly with the same workout/diet as the first 20)
I went from being really fat and "starting from scratch out of shape" in late 2007 to recently making, although preliminary, getting my first SCY Top Ten in my age group. I do more distance stuff since I have no sprinting ability.
When I got back into training, I started only doing 1500 yds, 4x week. Then, got to 3X, Then, moved to 4K 5 or 6 times a week. Now, I do about 5K 6x a week with an occasional age group practice thrown in there. Some weeks, I do 7 days but I will do a recovery day.
Here are some examples of my progression.
200 SCY fly
2008-2:40
2009-2:10(20 minutes after a 400 IM)
400 SCY IM
2008-5:28
2009-4:44.95
200 ***
2008-2:51
2009-2:31.99
I went from being really fat and "starting from scratch out of shape" in late 2007 to recently making, although preliminary, getting my first SCY Top Ten in my age group. I do more distance stuff since I have no sprinting ability.
When I got back into training, I started only doing 1500 yds, 4x week. Then, got to 3X, Then, moved to 4K 5 or 6 times a week. Now, I do about 5K 6x a week with an occasional age group practice thrown in there. Some weeks, I do 7 days but I will do a recovery day.
Here are some examples of my progression.
200 SCY fly
2008-2:40
2009-2:10(20 minutes after a 400 IM)
400 SCY IM
2008-5:28
2009-4:44.95
200 ***
2008-2:51
2009-2:31.99