I need a great!! speed workout.

Thanks to all of you for helping me find my way down this path to sprinting again. I have copied your suggestions and will incorporate them into my training. What I've gleaned from your information is that a sprint workout twice a week is adequate for sprint training. Form should not be sacrificed for power and turnover. Excellent technique is necessary for a sprinter and needs to be continually targeted. A fast kick is mandatory. A rest interval that allows the heart rate to drop to a moderate level before beginning another sprint is something to figure out. The volume level on sprint focus days can drop. Utilize strength and flexibility training. Does it matter what kind of training I do on the other 3 days, other than focus on technique? Do you have any particular strength training exercises that you've found benefit sprinting? I have been swimming with tubing - so far, about 8 times as far as I can go in a certain number of strokes. Again, thanks to all of you and any future suggestions will be most welcomed. Nancy

Nancy, Working with tubing is EXCELLENT for sprinters. You can really get a quality workout. I did my best times one season after doing sprint sets with tubing at the end of workout. Be careful though! It will wear you out very quickly. Quality not quantity. Make sure you rest about 30 - 45 seconds between them. Fix the tubing at a length that you have to work very hard to reach the wall (25 yards) then grab the wall and swim the way back with the tubing assisting you. VERY FUN! Try to keep your turnover fast for the whole 50. The tubing keeps you efficient on the first 25....or else you won't go anywhere! I workout at Swimatlanta and used to see Amanda Weir use the tubing all the time. It definitely works for her!;)

Nancy- I have lots of sprint workouts I am happy to share. The best set though is 6 to 10 50s (25 easy kick/25 blast out hard sprint swim) with 15 seconds rest at the end of each practice. Jacki

Jackie, I'd be most grateful for any sprint workouts you'd like to share. Currently, I'm using 3 that capture principles I've learned so far. I started out with 4 x 2 x 50 + 2 x 100 with 40 seconds rest. I haven't done that one in a long time, I see. The main sets currently are 1) 6 x 100 on 3 minutes, 2) 3 x 2 x 50 + 2 x 100, the first one sprint, the second one recovery, and 3) 3 x 1 x 75 on 1:30 + 3 x 25 on 35 on 6:15 interval [includes 100 ez). I don't usually go much over 3,000 yards in a sprint workout. Thanks so much for your help! Nancy

Simply do this. Warmup. Include a few easy sprints to get the muscles awake. 8-12x25 yard sprints. Full recovery between each, so no interval. And I mean full recovery - each repeat should be absolutely full out as if you were swimming a race. Go as if the Devil himself were chasing you! If possible do each one off the blocks. Buy a cheap finger stop watch to get accurate times if there isn't a coach around. If you want to do a fast 50, that requires a lot of very intense, short, 100% efforts. A lot of folks think they are sprinting, but their training pace is around 75-90% of their best times. That won't do the trick in my opinion. You must train your body to go full out.

There is a gap in those splits. Your 25 meter free is much faster, comparatively speaking, than your 50 meter free. With a 25 free like that you should be going no slower than 25.0 I think. By comparison, I rarely go below 12.0 on my first 25, but I almost always do 26's in my 50 SCM free. Is the 11.3 handtimed? If so, it might not be accurate. Or, you might have no problem with speed and what you really need is speed endurance, or lactic acid tolerance, to bring home that last 25 fast. I think Fred Bousquet went out in a 9.2 and came home in a 9.4 when he swam that 18.74 50 yards.

I agree with Paul. If you are going to focus on sprinting you aren't going to get it from most of the masters workouts I 've gone to. You need to focus on strength (not just dryland but also in the water), speed, and breathing. Strength, I am talking about workouts where you break out the torture devices and stuff like that. I remember doing 2 workouts a week where all I would do was strap a belt on that was hooked to a weight rack. Push off and swim as hard as you can pulling the weight until they hit the top of the rack and float back. I would do 3 sets of 10 reps on like a minute. Stuff like that is what is going to really make you pop. You can't get that at a masters workout. You can't get that many places. But if you really want to be a "sprinter", you need something like it. Speed, lots of speed work with fins. sets of 25's usually breathless on 30 where you come in under 10. Tubes connected to belt with partner pulling you. Things where you get the feel for flying. Breathing, my favorite set was 10x50 @1:00 no breaths trying to come in under :25 for each. The fact is you have to want to hurt yourself in a different way than the D freaks want to hurt themselves by doing countles 500's. Good luck. I can't sprint (came in and registered to find some swim specific dryland ideas) because of too much tri specific swimming but after this season I plan to splash around a little more. This is what I plan to do. But not expecting anything spectacular. I am old.

I have become a sprinter almost by default because I am terrible at anything above middle distance. I was not a sprinter 25 years ago. I have done some reading of Maglischo's Swimming Fastest and my coach is tailoring my overall workout for speed on 50s and 100s. One thing I do consistently is sprint sets with long rest intervals, sometimes with active rest. The sprint part, sometimes as short as 15 yards, is always 100% effort. Sample sprint sets: 6x50 on 2:30, 25 sprint, 25 easy 8x100 on 3:00, 25 sprint, 75 easy 4x50 on 2:30, 15 sprint, 35 easy Sprint sets aren't very useful at the end of a workout when all your glycogen is depleted either. So sometimes move the sprint work earlier in the workout. Maglischo points out that traditional endurance sets serve very little purpose to sprint speed, especially for 50s. Your energy sources for a 50 are not improved by swimming hard long sets of 200s or 500s. Easier basic endurance sets have value for base endurance plus they provide the stroke repetition.