Are days off sufficient recovery when swimming 3days/week?
Former Member
The club I swim with and help coach only swims three days a week. As I read the literature on daily and season planning the need for rest between high intensity workouts mostly deals with two workouts a day swimmers. 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?
Likewise in season planning you often see a few weeks of hard training and then a week of recovery training. Do three day a week swimmers actually need a recovery week or do they not get sufficiently broken down to need one?
On a slightly different topic, do people find it is more difficult to carry technique progress forward when only swimming every other day? Because I have a long drive to the pool I've been swimming longer workouts every other day and I'm getting rather frustrated with my lack of progress with butterfly. I improve through the course of a workout but then when I come back two days later I seem to be back at square one.
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.
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.
