i have been swimming for about a year. 4000-4500 yards per swim 3-4 times a week, mostly 4 times. i have swam in 4 meets and have a scy meet coming up at the end of june. a three day meet, sat- mon. there is a lcm meet i want to attend one week before. will a swim the week before hurt my performance the following week?
the 3 day event i will be swimming 200, 100 and 50 free, 200 im, 100 bk and 50 back.
at the vegas lcm, one day meet i am thinking about doing the 50 fly, 100 back, 50 free and 200 im. fly and ind med are not my best events so i want the practice.
i am now starting to cut my yardage to about 3000-3500 yrds per session. trying to push faster and keeping the repeats heavy at 120 yards some 200 and a few 40-60 yrd sprints. 45% back 45% free 10% fly and ind med work. after a year i can't believe how poor my endurance is. should i stop playing racquetball and stop lifting or just cut back? i think i am over analyzing this stuff but i do want to be fast.
this tapper thing i do not fully grasp. what else should i be doing?
I've read (and anecdotally experienced) that you should rest (i.e. taper) more for sprints vs. distance swims. For what it's worth, maybe for comparison, I've done best on 2-3 weeks of tapering, cutting my yardage down to 1/2 or 1/3 of what I regularly swim, then 1/4 the week before. I'll do a mix of race-paced swims, coupled with really ez swim downs, like I'd do in a meet. Lots of rest between the race-paced swims. I'm a drop-dead sprinter, so I haven't seriously raced anything over 100m. One taper set for me might be 100yd free sprint, rest :30, ez swim 150yds, then rest 6:00-8:00 and repeat for 3-4 times. For 50s I might rest 4:00-5:00.
Just what I've found works reasonably well for me. Another thing that seems to help is to be sure and go all out on the sprinting during the taper, as in trying to recreate that wonderful whole-body burning sensation that I seem to experience during a race.
:bliss:
I've read (and anecdotally experienced) that you should rest (i.e. taper) more for sprints vs. distance swims. For what it's worth, maybe for comparison, I've done best on 2-3 weeks of tapering, cutting my yardage down to 1/2 or 1/3 of what I regularly swim, then 1/4 the week before. I'll do a mix of race-paced swims, coupled with really ez swim downs, like I'd do in a meet. Lots of rest between the race-paced swims. I'm a drop-dead sprinter, so I haven't seriously raced anything over 100m. One taper set for me might be 100yd free sprint, rest :30, ez swim 150yds, then rest 6:00-8:00 and repeat for 3-4 times. For 50s I might rest 4:00-5:00.
Just what I've found works reasonably well for me. Another thing that seems to help is to be sure and go all out on the sprinting during the taper, as in trying to recreate that wonderful whole-body burning sensation that I seem to experience during a race.
:bliss:
