Working on 500 Free Time

Thanks so much for posting this. I am definitely going to try working this into my training plan. The threshold set is similar to what Salo uses, but the zones and their definition seem more intuitive and easier to implement in training than other methods where people are trying to use heart-rate to estimate zones (which is easy to do when running with a watch, hard to do swimming since HR monitors still don't work well in the pool). I really appreciate you posting this. Yeah, Salo came up with the original training zone scheme. Gemmell made some slight modifications to it, and then I codified the percentages when I adapted it to my masters group. Various sources out there online had different percentages, especially with the per-50 increase in target pace (I saw anywhere from a 1.15% to a 7% increase when I was doing my research), so I went with a 4% increase per 50 across the board. One of the things I ran into when doing my research was that you can find quite a few similar charts out there, all based on Salo's system, but none of them have comprehensive documentation on the methodology behind the numbers on the chart. I spent a weekend just crunching numbers and reverse engineering the formulas to see how they came up with their numbers, then combined all of it and adapted for my usage. The key variable in my chart is the 4% increase in time per 50 at a given training zone--tweak that % in the formulas as needed if you're a rock solid mid distance/distance swimmer and don't have that much fall-off from one 50 to the next over a given distance, or if you're naturally a shorter distance swimmer and tend to have a steeper decline. ETA: I really like this kind of training because it ignores heart rates entirely. Every now and then I've had my swimmers check their HRs after a set and the results can be all over the place, even when the perceived effort is more or less the same across the board. Giving a data driven time goal, in my opinion, is a much better way to establish and hit training targets. Heck, just speaking for myself, my :10 HR check can range from ~23 to 38 from warmup to a fairly challenging set, and my max :10 HR check back in the day was well into the 40s. HR zones for me are garbage, but I can sink my teeth into quantifiable time zone training. In terms of the threshold set itself, the 3x500, I believe the ideal is something like 3x1000, or alternatively a T-30, but I cut it down simply because our practices are only an hour and we wouldn't be able to do the full thing along with warmup and cooldown given that constraint. If you've got the time for the full set, by all means go for it. You'll likely get better data for the threshold 100 pace and be able to decrease the 4% fudge factor in the equation.

Thanks so much for posting this. I am definitely going to try working this into my training plan. The threshold set is similar to what Salo uses, but the zones and their definition seem more intuitive and easier to implement in training than other methods where people are trying to use heart-rate to estimate zones (which is easy to do when running with a watch, hard to do swimming since HR monitors still don't work well in the pool). I really appreciate you posting this. Yeah, Salo came up with the original training zone scheme. Gemmell made some slight modifications to it, and then I codified the percentages when I adapted it to my masters group. Various sources out there online had different percentages, especially with the per-50 increase in target pace (I saw anywhere from a 1.15% to a 7% increase when I was doing my research), so I went with a 4% increase per 50 across the board. One of the things I ran into when doing my research was that you can find quite a few similar charts out there, all based on Salo's system, but none of them have comprehensive documentation on the methodology behind the numbers on the chart. I spent a weekend just crunching numbers and reverse engineering the formulas to see how they came up with their numbers, then combined all of it and adapted for my usage. The key variable in my chart is the 4% increase in time per 50 at a given training zone--tweak that % in the formulas as needed if you're a rock solid mid distance/distance swimmer and don't have that much fall-off from one 50 to the next over a given distance, or if you're naturally a shorter distance swimmer and tend to have a steeper decline. ETA: I really like this kind of training because it ignores heart rates entirely. Every now and then I've had my swimmers check their HRs after a set and the results can be all over the place, even when the perceived effort is more or less the same across the board. Giving a data driven time goal, in my opinion, is a much better way to establish and hit training targets. Heck, just speaking for myself, my :10 HR check can range from ~23 to 38 from warmup to a fairly challenging set, and my max :10 HR check back in the day was well into the 40s. HR zones for me are garbage, but I can sink my teeth into quantifiable time zone training. In terms of the threshold set itself, the 3x500, I believe the ideal is something like 3x1000, or alternatively a T-30, but I cut it down simply because our practices are only an hour and we wouldn't be able to do the full thing along with warmup and cooldown given that constraint. If you've got the time for the full set, by all means go for it. You'll likely get better data for the threshold 100 pace and be able to decrease the 4% fudge factor in the equation.