Working on 500 Free Time

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... I just abbreviated, but agree with your points. Every swimmer is different. What I know from my experience, when I devoted some seasons to training for the 1000 and the 1650, is that I almost never did race pace repeats in workout longer than 150. For example, the year I swam my best Masters 1000 and 1650 (excluding the rubber suit years '08 to '09), one of my favorite pace sets was a broken 1650 done as: 3 rounds of 3 x 50 on 0:45 2 x 100 on 1:25 1 x 150 on 2:05 Followed by an extra round of 3 x 50 I ended up going 17:07 that year and, when I look back at my training, my pace times on best efforts on the 150s on those miles, multiplied by 11, were right around 17:00. My 1000 time correlated pretty closely with my performance on the 100s of that set. My point is that you don't need to do long-distance repeats to swim fast on long distance events. That's why I prefer the 3 x 300 vs 3 x 500 ... it gives me a better idea of my 100 threshold pace and I spend more time doing 50 to 150 repeats at race pace. Also, if truth be told, I'm a pretty crappy workout swimmer as a Masters swimmer, relative to my ultimate racing speed ... which is more fun than being how I was in my youth - an exceptional workout swimmer and an occasionally good racing swimmer. YMMV

I've experimented with a number of different training regimens over the 8 years I've been coaching Masters--this past year, for my mid distance group I used a modified regimen from Bruce Gemmell. At the national USMS coaches conference last year, he talked about how he trained Ledecky in the leadup to 2016, showed some sets, and talked about the general training regimen... 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.

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.

I hate T-30s and T-3000s. Did them all through high school. Once a month it was a T-3000, and then 2-3 weeks later it was always 30x100 try to beat your T-3000 pace. It served no purpose for me (in my high school brain), because at the time I didn't extend much into middle distance, and I just fell asleep during a T-3000. So I never got much out of it because of course my 30x100 times would easily beat my T-3000 pace. I do prefer pwb's (and Salo's) 3x300 over 3x500 personally, but the goal is the same! EDIT: I also then swore I would never make any kids I coached do a T-3000. 30x100, that's one thing, but the T-3000 I expunged from my training and coaching repertoire!

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.

Awesome!!! Nice job!!

Yesterday I did a speed set of 4x50 on a 1:20 sendoff holding at least :46, repeat 4 times with an easy 50 and an additional 1 minute of rest between 200s. I didn’t have any problem completing this set; it’s recommended to do speed sets like this once every 2 weeks or so. The target goal of this set is to swim a 200 in 3:04, which is the time I’m trying to get down to in the 200.

I’m up to 7x50 on 1:10 holding :48. I’m trying to get to 10x50 for that set. Doing TRX rollout pushups and kettlebell swings daily in hopes that this will help increase my arm, chest, and core strength and therefore help me swim faster times in the 200 free.