Are days off sufficient recovery when swimming 3days/week?

I used to do a 50m around 35 just by pure brute pulling force, and you could tell because I would go around 1:30 for the 100. My 200 stroke was such an abomination that I won't bother giving the time! Get a 50 with a 25m split and a 25m all out. 35 is not too bad, but there is a fall off in your 100 (depends on your 50 split in the 100). At some point, you need to develop the muscles for fly endurance, this means shortening the rest in 25 repeats and then moving up to 50 repeats with alot of rest and then start reducing the rest in the 50 repeats. Then move to 75's by adding a 25 on short rest. etc. Work up to 75's on long rest (i.e. put a 100 recovery swim in there) and then reduce that rest period. Then move to 100's by adding a 25 on short rest....etc. Sounds fun doesn't it? I wish I practiced what I preached. Alot of people advocate swiming short distance with perfect form (more on that later), but I recommend a two fold apporach. If you give yourself a chance to rest (i.e. 25's with longer rest), your body might allow you to use poor form (why would it need to change? you are giving it a chance to recover?). Challenge yourself to longer distances and you will be forced to seek out rythm and ways to relax the body to allow it to finish. At least that's the idea. I think the things to concentrate on are breathe early and getting the head to lead (head back in line and face in the water prior to hand entry), having the hands enter shoulder width, keeping the hands and arms and elbows high relative to the chest, releaxing the arms on recovery, don't rush the pull to early (let the body dolphin dictate the pull timing, not the other way around). In addition to the fly endurance work, I do advocate ending a fly set, or any workout with imprinting perfect form. I call it "putting it away perfect". In other words end your workout with beatiful textbook form in whatever stroke you are doing. I try to make my last repeat perfect, I want the stroke, wall, finish, everything to be perfect. You need both, leave your comfort zone and let the stroke break down a bit to do it, but recover fully and then imprint in you mind the perfect feel just before leaving that stroke for the day. It is real hard to become a good flyer. Just look at the 200 fly entries in any Master's meet. Typically one heat.

....but when my 25s feels like uncoordinated junk there doesn't seem to be a point trying 50s. Maybe tomorrow I'll start concentrating on freestyle for conditioning and just check the fly every so often to see if I can get the flow going, and go back to free if I can't. Here's hoping that that will work better. Lindsay, I've always felt that you need to condition in every stroke you intend to swim. Doing free will make you good in free. Much like SDK's you have to push yourself beyond the initial discomfort and coordination concerns to give yourself time to get the feel of the stroke. Instead of just doing a 25, try a small pyramid, slowly working up your conditioning over time and practices. Start with 25,50,25. When that seems doable, increase to 25,50,75,50,25. And, of course, have someone spot you to provide corrective stroke technique as you build your distances.

I agree that 3x per week is less than ideal, I prefer to swim at least four days, preferably five. I'll recommend to the swimmers that they come in at least once on their own but I need to put together a training plan for people who only come to the three scheduled workouts. Rob, I haven't timed an all out 25 or 50 for quite a while, I'm still working on trying to establish a consistent stroke. I went to a Bill Boomer clinic and got some really good adjustments to my fly, and when they click in I definitely know it. My frustration is that I can't seem to get it to click in consistently. I do almost entirely sets of 25m for fly, the last I checked they would come in around 20s just at moderate effort if I've got the flow. I've been doing 500-1000m of fly when I do a 2 hour swim, most twenty fives with lots of rest. Right now I would be ecstatic if I could consistently do even 25s with good form. The team doesn't swim in the summer so I'm swimming on my own and going every other day for 1.5-2 hours. Probably I need to just forget about my bank balance and the environment and drive in every day until I've imprinted the fly. I'm actually starting to worry that I'll lose the new stroke entirely. I used to do a 50m around 35 just by pure brute pulling force, and you could tell because I would go around 1:30 for the 100. My 200 stroke was such an abomination that I won't bother giving the time!

Lindsay, in another thread here sometime in the past someone suggested swimming fly the last 25 yds of each rep as a way to build endurance in fly. For example if you are swimming 10 x 100 do 10 x (75 free/25 fly). You could even do odds all free and evens free/fly

If you have a day off between any two workouts does that give you enough recovery time such that you can you put in high intensity sets every workout? Yes, just swimming, I feel like I can fully recover between practices practicing every other day. Do three day a week swimmers actually need a recovery week or do they not get sufficiently broken down to need one? I don't think Masters swimmers ever need a planned recovery week. Unless your team is very dedicated and all focused on the same target meets, it doesn't really make sense. People will need different amounts of recovery at different points in the season and that is easily dealt with by them adjusting their own efforts or moving down a lane or two. On a slightly different topic, do people find it is more difficult to carry technique progress forward when only swimming every other day? Technique changes are difficult, and I think your approach is a hard way to make them. Less time more frequently would be my preference. The less time is to prevent overtiring that leads to incorrect practice.

The masters team I used to swim with offered 5 sessions Tue pm, Thur pm, Fri pm, Sat am, Sun pm, of which I usually swam 3 or 4. Our coach would have us swim endurance and intervals on the Tue, Thur, Sat practices, with the Sat am, being the hardest of all, then the Sunday was focussed more on technique and sprints, I guess a "recovery" from Saturday. I never felt as though I needed a rest week, and if I did, I would just skip a session or take it easy. The Fri pm was attended by the less competitive swimmers aka "Friday Night Ladies" and the workout reflected that......I would sometimes go for the social, but often not put too much effort in as the session finished at 9.30pm and the Sat one started at 6.30 am! As for the fly question.....little and often definitely worked when I was teaching my kids to swim......but I'm gonna be no help as I was never taught to swm fly.......I was asked to swim my first ever length at about 8 years old, did it better that most of the kids a couple of years older than me and its been my stroke ever since.......

Thanks for your comments Michael and Rob particularly. I think my current approach is probably not the right approach. I'm swimming a lot of flawed fly. Tomorrow all my visiting relatives head home so I will start swimming shorter workouts, or at least with less fly, with more consecutive days. In the past I have used Rob's approach of working up to longer repeats incrementally, that was what I've been meaning to do, but when my 25s feels like uncoordinated junk there doesn't seem to be a point trying 50s. Maybe tomorrow I'll start concentrating on freestyle for conditioning and just check the fly every so often to see if I can get the flow going, and go back to free if I can't. Here's hoping that that will work better.

My personal experience is that three days a week is insufficient. When I was doing 6X/week in the run up to the meet in Atlanta I was in much better shape and carried my progress much easier from workout to workout. I feel half dead now on 3 X/week.

our team also swims 3 times a week. On the off days ,I go to the gym for a 1 1/2 hour workout. It seems to work fine for me.

I swim mainly six days a week (never less than five) and this is how I typically break it up: Tuesday and Thursday is IM, Mon and Wed are free. Monday is aerobic, Wed is speed endurance. Friday is fast and is anaerobic, short stuff with lots of rest. Sat/Sun is OW in the summer or a killer pool workout in the winter. It is hard to keep intensity high on back to back to back days. You gotta back off some days, or on others modify the set to make it more difficult (swim some lengths fly). But like you ask, I think it is ideal to swim every day to, as you say, keep the feel, even if swimming easy for recovery. I really have not felt the need to take a week off. I think that would come from severe training at a high level, or when injury occurs. If you are only swimming 3 days a week, I would think they could all be very, very hard workouts of minimum 90 minutes. I don't see a need for a recovery week in the 3 swim/week catagory unless for some reason the body asks for it.