This is more of a question of curiosity than anything.
I mainly swim freestyle in practice. When we do IM sets, I will do the fly, and sometimes the back parts, but if I am trying to keep up with my lane's interval, I usually skip *** stroke. I have noticed the more fly I swim, the better my cardio feels for longer free sets. So I want to do more fly.
I grew up a freestyler, 50, 100, 200 mostly. I also swam IM, but not the 400. I grew tired of swimming and switched career sports, so I never learned the answer to my question (below).
For individuals who compete in the 100 or 200 fly, or the 400 IM, what kinds of fly workouts do they do?
When I do 15 x 100s freestyle as set, do fly swimmers do 10-15 x 100s fly? That just seems painful to me. I am not sure I could even do 5 100s fly, maybe with fins.
Thanks for the replies.
Parents
Former Member
For individuals who compete in the 100 or 200 fly, or the 400 IM, what kinds of fly workouts do they do? Interesting question. I don't know if my approach can be used as an example but anyway. Here's what I've done so far.
In preparation for the Autumn swim season (which began few weeks ago) I spent the whole summer making sure I could swim repeated longish BF intervals. That brought be to be able to perform sets of 200s (BF full stroke) at slow to moderate pace. I could hold 1min/50m easily. My best 200s (meters) would be booked little under 3:45. At this pace, my butterfly looked like this:
YouTube - Base endurance Butterfly - Full stroke (Side View)
Doesn't look nice, but at this pace, I know I won't die. That work was done alone, not in a squad.
Now that I swim in a squad, I won't join the fastest lanes. But in the mid speed lanes, I can do all *choice* or *specialty* or *best stroke* sets at butterfly without being dropped from the set. So far in the season, I managed to book volume in excess of 1000 to 1500 of butterfly. For instance, our last workout was as follow:
600m @ 100relax/50m distance per stroke (free style x 2, and butterfly x 2).
2 x the following block (first block = specialty; second block = freestyle)
- 4x25 off 35sec
- 100 kick, 100 progressive, 100 fast
2 x the following block (first block = specialty; second block = freestyle)
- 4x50 choice off 1min
- 200 Stroke
Warmdown
So in this example alone, I booked 1100m of butterfly (roughly).
Again, it worked for me, don't know if that would work for all. Bottom line, I first made sure that I could lower the energy expenditure of swimming base endurance butterfly (that was a technical challenge more than a fitness one) so that I could perform tons of miles of my favorite stroke.
For individuals who compete in the 100 or 200 fly, or the 400 IM, what kinds of fly workouts do they do? Interesting question. I don't know if my approach can be used as an example but anyway. Here's what I've done so far.
In preparation for the Autumn swim season (which began few weeks ago) I spent the whole summer making sure I could swim repeated longish BF intervals. That brought be to be able to perform sets of 200s (BF full stroke) at slow to moderate pace. I could hold 1min/50m easily. My best 200s (meters) would be booked little under 3:45. At this pace, my butterfly looked like this:
YouTube - Base endurance Butterfly - Full stroke (Side View)
Doesn't look nice, but at this pace, I know I won't die. That work was done alone, not in a squad.
Now that I swim in a squad, I won't join the fastest lanes. But in the mid speed lanes, I can do all *choice* or *specialty* or *best stroke* sets at butterfly without being dropped from the set. So far in the season, I managed to book volume in excess of 1000 to 1500 of butterfly. For instance, our last workout was as follow:
600m @ 100relax/50m distance per stroke (free style x 2, and butterfly x 2).
2 x the following block (first block = specialty; second block = freestyle)
- 4x25 off 35sec
- 100 kick, 100 progressive, 100 fast
2 x the following block (first block = specialty; second block = freestyle)
- 4x50 choice off 1min
- 200 Stroke
Warmdown
So in this example alone, I booked 1100m of butterfly (roughly).
Again, it worked for me, don't know if that would work for all. Bottom line, I first made sure that I could lower the energy expenditure of swimming base endurance butterfly (that was a technical challenge more than a fitness one) so that I could perform tons of miles of my favorite stroke.
