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 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.
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.
