Ultra Short Training At Race Pace

Say you want to go a 1:10 100 fly. Each 50 would be :34 to a hand touch - (your feet should hit at :35 as they would on a touch pad). So in this case your interval would be :54 - but I would round up to :55 to make it easier to see on the clock. For fly and *** your touch is always to the hand so you shouldn't need to add a second.

glenn, when you dont make 1 at your target pace, what do you do? rest for the 50sec intervaul or how long? do you rest more if you fail 2 in a row? what about 3 in a row? your total (if all completed and i realize its not supposed to be) is 3400+ thats a lot for some people. and with 3000 of that sprinting that is darn tough.

and with 3000 of that sprinting that is darn tough. It's not sprinting, though. It's 400 pace. Not to say that's easy, but it's not all out, either.

For fly and *** your touch is always to the hand so you shouldn't need to add a second. Yes, you are correct. I am a freestyler, can't you tell?

glenn, when you dont make 1 at your target pace, what do you do? rest for the 50sec intervaul or how long? do you rest more if you fail 2 in a row? what about 3 in a row? your total (if all completed and i realize its not supposed to be) is 3400+ thats a lot for some people. and with 3000 of that sprinting that is darn tough. When you miss your target pace ( :32 for me), you rest for one cycle, i.e. for one repeat. Then you pick up again on the next repeat. So if I start on the top (:00) and I go a :33, instead of leaving on the :50, I rest and leave on the next interval which would be :40. If you miss two in a row, that means that you missed one, rested, then missed one again. If that happens, your set is done, you are finished. That's why Dr. Rushall calls these sets self-limiting. When you can't make the interval you're done. It's not how many you do, it's the quality. Too many swimmers are concerned with YARDAGE. It's not about yardage, it's about quality and race pace. Your body needs to know what race pace feels like. The nice thing about this training is that when I get up behind the blocks, I tell myself "Just do what you do everyday in practice". The optimim rest for the sets of 50s, 75s or 100s is :20. Not :25, not :30, not :45 seconds. For the set of 40 x 25s the rest is :15. You don't break up the set into three sets of ten with extra rest. No Masters minute. You go, you push and make as many as you can. Your last sentence mentions total yardage. Forget about total yardage. Total yardage does not make you a fast swimmer. Quality swims at race pace make you a faster swimmer.

It's not sprinting, though. It's 400 pace. Not to say that's easy, but it's not all out, either. Knelson is right. These are not AFAP swims. I am training for the 400, not the 50 or 100. Although my 50 time in the meet was my fastest since the rubber suit era ended. Yes, a set of 30 x 50 on the :50 holding :32 is tough. It is supposed to be. If you were training for the 100 you would be doing sets of 20 x 50, also not very easy.

Sunruh, I have never calculated my yardage before but to give you a perspective, here it is for Monday: Warm up - 400 28 x 50 - 1400 EZ swim - 400 16 x 50 - 800 warm down - 400 The total yardage is 3400 of which 2200 is at race pace. I am pretty sure you won't get that much race pace training in any other Masters workout. Let me break down the 28 x 50. My first failure was at #14 (:34), my second failure was at #19 (:33), my third failure was at #24 (:35) and my fourth failure was at #28 (:37). After the fourth failure I stopped the set. I did an easy 400 swim and rested at the wall for about 5 minutes after the first set. The second USRPT set was 16 x 50 and went like this: First failure was at #6 (:33), second failure at #9 (:33), third failure at # 12 (:33) and fourth failure at #16 (:35). Then I swam a 400 warm down.

I do the 30 x 50 sets on Monday and Friday and the 2 x (40 x25) sets on Tue/Th. Wednesday I do 75's or 100s. The reason it is not boring is that I am always trying to get fewer failures and to push the first failure later and later. That is the challenge every single day. I also work on speeding up at the flags sometimes or counting strokes or hitting the turn faster. I never find it boring. I also have a measure from day to day and week to week as to my progress. I also throw in a time trial evry week or two. Sometimes at the end of the sets and sometimes at the beginning. Then I can compare my times against a rested time trial or a fatigued time trial. Glenn, You are doing the sets on :50 for freestyle. If someone was going to this set backstroke or fly, what interval would you recommend?

I don't see why a swimmer couldn't do a set of say 16 to 20 x 100's with 20 sec rest, holding a mile pace? 1. At true mile race pace for a typical middle-aged swimmer, that would be a tough set. 2. To scale up from Glenn's example, one would make the set even tougher by doing it twice, each set with 20-25 rather than 15-20 reps. 3. Lots of masters teams do sets like that occasionally. Very few masters swimmers and probably no teams do all of their training that way.