Question on training schedual

This summer i'm looking to deffinatley swim the 200IM and possibly the 400IM, i've read on here that it was a good idea to concentrate on certain strokes at a time but maybe not 1 strokes for 1 day?, I'm really just looking to stay in shape for a couple of weeks until our teams training begins again... I honestly don't know what type of work outs to be doing i usually search for them on one of these 2 sites www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/.../ www.ruthkazez.com/PreviousSwimWorkouts.html I find ones that involve some sprints, kicks,drill work. and do anywhere from 1800 to 3000 SC meters in each of the hour workouts. I find it hard to push myself sometimes, especially when doing fly, i have very little endurance in it it might be because of my technique? i can complete a 50 but barley and i'll need plent of rest before the next one. I'm really excited to start swimming on a team again but until then i'm just trying to do as much as i can on my own, are you an IMer? if so what do you do for workouts?

Keith, I would be interested to know what distance IM you are planning to swim? And even though you say you swim an hour each workout, how is that hour swum? Are you doing sprints, 100 repeats, interval work, drills? I think it may be more advantageous to have a better mix within each workout, not just dedicate a workout to a particular stroke, and I would add more freestyle interval work to build conditioning and stamina. My point is swimming an hour of breastroke may help you psychologically, but how is that stroke being broken down over the course of an hour? And I would like to see a little more IM work within each workout; say for instance, fly to back sets, back to *** sets, etc. Give us a little more information on these workouts so we can help critique it. donna

Thanks for the replys guys, but i'm still confused on what i should be doing each day, I know you say to change it up but how so? do you mean if you do a long sprint set one day the next day you should do mostly drills?

Keith, I am now a distance swimmer, and I used to be a backstroker and 400 IMer. If your fly is weak and we can't see your form, you have to build stamina in that portion and there are many ways to do this. A drill we used to do pre-Olympic days was Under/Over. What this means is: you swim dolphin kick underwater with arms overhead and your head squeezed inbetween them and you surface when you need air, take some breaths, and finish the length doing the same thing. When you reach the end of the pool, you start kicking backstroke, arms overhead, to finish that length. With a little rest, you start the process all over again. This builds the kick and your ability to swim with little oxygen. I would also be doing transitional sets: 1 or 2 lengths fly followed by the backstroke; rest; then backstroke/breaststroke; then breaststroke/free to get used to these sections. Another set you can do is a 50 fly followed immediately by a 50 free; rest and repeat. There are a lot of combos you can do but stamina and conditioning are imperative for doing the IM. You don't want to just survive the fly, you want it to be as strong as you can make it. It sure would be great to see your fly so if you could video tape it and put it on YouTube it would help. Also, start timing your 100 IMs and swim lots of them to get used to how they feel as you work toward the 200 IM. You can also perfect your turns during this time.

A couple comments - First of all, you probably shouldn't swim every day unless you are in really great shape and have been swimming a long time. I'm a college student, and even I can't handle swimming every day. 6x/week is probably just as good or better, since your body gets a day to recover. Also, it may be better to mix it up a little more. Maybe work on technique for a certain stroke for half the workout and do sprints and/or endurance for the other half, and some days do more hard swimming or more technique work. The distance you are training for is also very important. A 100 IM is basically an all-out sprint, the 200 requires a little pacing, and the 400 requires much more endurance and pacing. If you are training for a 100 IM, do sprint sets like 4x(25 all out, 75 easy), doing one sprint each stroke. If you are training for a 400 IM, do more endurance work, like 50's or 100 IM's on an interval.