Hi, I just joined USMS last month. I swim for fitness, and I have been doing this for a long time. I am working on lowering my time in the 500 free because I would like to swim in meets someday. I train on my own almost exclusively, except for an occasional workout with a masters team. I have 2-3 hours a week to practice except during the summer months when I have a lot more time to train due to having summers off from my job as a teacher. My current time in the 500 free is 8:40. My goals are to bring this time down to under 8 minutes by the end of the year and to under 7 minutes by the end of next year. I am 6'1" and weigh 193 lbs. Any suggestions that will help me reach my goals are appreciated!
From a coaching standpoint, for those who're really training for the 500 and/or 1000...or *those* people who train for the 1650, I think doing 3x500 as the threshold set works better than 3x300 for masters swimmers *in general*.
Over the years I've been coaching, it would probably take all the fingers on both hands and all my toes, if not more, to count the number of swimmers I've had who would throw down pretty drastically different avg 100 paces from a 3x300 set vs a 3x500 set.
Going off on a bit of a tangent--I've got one swimmer who, when he did the 3x500 in February, had a ~:5 dropoff in his avg 100 pace from the first 500 to the second one, then a ~:7 dropoff in his pace again for the third 500, giving him an overall average of a 1:32 pace, if memory serves...yet I've seen him easily hold sub-2:40 on 200 repeats. On the flip side, for my one true distance swimmer, there'd probably be less than a :5 delta between her average pace if I gave her 3x200 or 3x3000.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to the physical conditioning and ability of the swimmer. Speaking as a swimmer, I'm confident enough in my own mid distance capability that I'd probably have pretty close results doing either 3x300 or 3x500. Speaking as a coach, given the wide range of abilities, I like 3x500 as a more universal set than 3x300, since I think it would give more accurate data for a wider range of swimmers.
From a coaching standpoint, for those who're really training for the 500 and/or 1000...or *those* people who train for the 1650, I think doing 3x500 as the threshold set works better than 3x300 for masters swimmers *in general*.
Over the years I've been coaching, it would probably take all the fingers on both hands and all my toes, if not more, to count the number of swimmers I've had who would throw down pretty drastically different avg 100 paces from a 3x300 set vs a 3x500 set.
Going off on a bit of a tangent--I've got one swimmer who, when he did the 3x500 in February, had a ~:5 dropoff in his avg 100 pace from the first 500 to the second one, then a ~:7 dropoff in his pace again for the third 500, giving him an overall average of a 1:32 pace, if memory serves...yet I've seen him easily hold sub-2:40 on 200 repeats. On the flip side, for my one true distance swimmer, there'd probably be less than a :5 delta between her average pace if I gave her 3x200 or 3x3000.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to the physical conditioning and ability of the swimmer. Speaking as a swimmer, I'm confident enough in my own mid distance capability that I'd probably have pretty close results doing either 3x300 or 3x500. Speaking as a coach, given the wide range of abilities, I like 3x500 as a more universal set than 3x300, since I think it would give more accurate data for a wider range of swimmers.
