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 seem to be making pretty decent progress swimming 2-3 times a week. I don't think it's a detriment but perhaps it would be if i was a distance guy.
Good point. A lot probably depends on what your events are.
Lindsay,
What is your all out 25 and 50 fly (with split) from a push when completely fresh? This is a good benchmark for evaluating form since you can only be so fast with lousy form in the 25 and with good form you should never rig up on the second 25.
If these times are good, then you need to work up your fly volume. What is your fly volume per workout? For starters it should be worked up to 300-500 yds per workout.
Former Member
Thanks Matt and Frank, I will try both of your suggestions tomorrow and see how it goes.
I was thinking that if the first half of a fifty is crap the second half probably will be too, but when I think back it is often the case that, at least with freestyle, I'll eventually find my groove. With freestyle of course if my stroke is off I don't have much choice but to work it out unless I want to just get out of the pool!
Unfortunately I don't have anyone to watch and give me feedback. Lately I've often thought that it would be really nice if there were a couple video cameras set up with a time delay so that you could swim a length and then watch it at the end of the lane.
Thanks again, I'm keen to get to the pool tomorrow and see what happens.
Former Member
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 seem to be making pretty decent progress swimming 2-3 times a week. I don't think it's a detriment but perhaps it would be if i was a distance guy.
You know, you could have your significant other, or a lifeguard videotape you!!
Personally, although I love swimming, and call myself a swimmer, I usually only swim 3-4 times a week - I've heard going from 3 to 4 days makes a huge difference. But I like to mix it up with other sports, i.e. cross training if you will. I play tennis too, and enjoy working out in a different venue....and after all triathletes have to juggle three sports, so what's the harm in only swimming 3 days a week if that's all you can do? We do have lives outside of the pool, don't we? I think that it depends on what you're swimming for; if you're training for some big meet, and have a goal to drop your times, then you'd better get yourself to the pool as many times a week as you can. If you're swimming for the fun of racing your friends at lunch, and maintaining your speed, three times a week is adequate, and you certainly ought to be able to recover between workouts. Some people think they actually swim better because they don't over train in the pool, and use running to rest their arms!
I will tell you though, while I was in graduate school, I could only swim 2 or 3 times a week, so I thought I'd make up for it by swimming farther on the days I could swim. Didn't help, I had to start swimming more to get better/faster. Had to wait til I graduated. Best wishes.
