The Butterfly Lane

1) work with your coach to work on your form, and then especially, try to hold good form and tempo when tired. 2) sets where you swim some fly/some free are really nice to get stronger. One doesn't want to train fly when your stroke is falling apart - it doesn't help. 3) if the end of a 50 is starting to hurt, do 25's in practice and start with getting at least as much rest as you take to swim it. So, if a 25 of fly takes :15, do them on the :30. If you start to lose your ability to maintain good form, then it's time to rest more or you have done enough repeats. 4) slowly build up to doing more and more fly in practice and then add some 50's in - 25 free/25 fly to start and then 12.5 free/37.5 fly, etc. 5) training alone gives you more space and the ability to swim as much fly as you want - take advantage of it! Have fun! This is an excellent post. People shouldn't be discouraged by descriptions of long fly sets in this thread; they aren't the norm in masters. Even if you never intend to swim (say) 200 fly in a meet, I think that doing fly in workouts gives you the most "bang for your buck" in terms of conditioning and building fitness in limited time. That's assuming your shoulders can handle it, of course. And it IS a beautiful stroke; when it comes together, nothing beats it. (The opposite is also true, as most people know: when you die, nothing hurts quite so badly. "Reach for the sky," and all that.) Doing fly/free is a great way to build endurance fly; I particularly like the set described earlier about the 300s done as 100 fly/100 free (active recovery)/100 fly (try to go faster). This sort of thing can be easily modified based on your abilities: -- 200s done as 75 fly/50 free/75 fly -- 100s done as 50 fly/25 free/25 fly sprint -- etc. You can also do broken swims. About the only part where swimmj and I disagree is the last point. It is true that you have more room by yourself...but I often lack the self-discipline to do hard fly sets when training alone. If I announce to my lane-mates or coach that I am doing a set fly, I feel some pressure to complete the task even as the pain comes. When I am by myself, it is too easy to rationalize cutting the set short or decreasing the amount of fly ("my HR sure is pretty high, I think I've already done a lot today, I think this should be more of a recovery workout, etc"). But others may be less wimpy than I.

1) work with your coach to work on your form, and then especially, try to hold good form and tempo when tired. 2) sets where you swim some fly/some free are really nice to get stronger. One doesn't want to train fly when your stroke is falling apart - it doesn't help. 3) if the end of a 50 is starting to hurt, do 25's in practice and start with getting at least as much rest as you take to swim it. So, if a 25 of fly takes :15, do them on the :30. If you start to lose your ability to maintain good form, then it's time to rest more or you have done enough repeats. 4) slowly build up to doing more and more fly in practice and then add some 50's in - 25 free/25 fly to start and then 12.5 free/37.5 fly, etc. 5) training alone gives you more space and the ability to swim as much fly as you want - take advantage of it! Have fun! This is an excellent post. People shouldn't be discouraged by descriptions of long fly sets in this thread; they aren't the norm in masters. Even if you never intend to swim (say) 200 fly in a meet, I think that doing fly in workouts gives you the most "bang for your buck" in terms of conditioning and building fitness in limited time. That's assuming your shoulders can handle it, of course. And it IS a beautiful stroke; when it comes together, nothing beats it. (The opposite is also true, as most people know: when you die, nothing hurts quite so badly. "Reach for the sky," and all that.) Doing fly/free is a great way to build endurance fly; I particularly like the set described earlier about the 300s done as 100 fly/100 free (active recovery)/100 fly (try to go faster). This sort of thing can be easily modified based on your abilities: -- 200s done as 75 fly/50 free/75 fly -- 100s done as 50 fly/25 free/25 fly sprint -- etc. You can also do broken swims. About the only part where swimmj and I disagree is the last point. It is true that you have more room by yourself...but I often lack the self-discipline to do hard fly sets when training alone. If I announce to my lane-mates or coach that I am doing a set fly, I feel some pressure to complete the task even as the pain comes. When I am by myself, it is too easy to rationalize cutting the set short or decreasing the amount of fly ("my HR sure is pretty high, I think I've already done a lot today, I think this should be more of a recovery workout, etc"). But others may be less wimpy than I.