Favorite Workouts and sets

I am no expert, and I frequently tend to wing it, however... One thing I like to do is set a workout distance, then break it up into even swim/kick/pull chunks, doing something different for each chunk. For example, if I planned to do 4500 yds I would do 5 x (300 S/K/P). The first chunk would be warmup. The second chunk might be 4x75 swim, 4x75 kick, 4x75 pull as a pre-set. I'd combine the next two S/K/P somehow as the main set (maybe two 300's swim, 4 150's kick and a 600 pull), then use the last S/K/P as a bit of hypoxic swimming and a kick set and cool down with an easy 300 pull. I'm not claiming there's any rhyme or reason to the idea. It provides a sometimes helpful constraint to planning the workout though. Skip Montanaro

Dennis, when I was coaching Snow Mountain Masters in Granby, I wrote up many (most) or the workouts we did and left them around the pool for people not in our group to use. I now have them posted on my personal web site: meldyck.home.comcast.net Hope you can use them!

We publish all of our sets and we'll also write custom workouts for swimmers that contact us through our website. It's all right there in the search workouts function at Dynoswim.com Hope this helps.

A set that I first started doing in the early 1980s as a h/s swimmer, continued in college, used as an age-group coach for years, and am now doing again myself as a masters swimmer: 10x 100, all free or all same stroke, on 3:00. Start from a push or from a dive. 50-100 easy in between. Swim each one at 100%, and record your time. When finished, calculate your average time. Swim this set every week, and note your progress. This set was always viewed with a mixture of anticipation and dread ("can I lower my average / will I puke (again)?" This one is guaranteed to generate some lactic acid, so don't eat too soon before the workout...

Here's my workout that I do 4 days a week 200 free with drills; 100 pull;100 kick; 5x100 on the 2:20 that's warm up. 6x50 kick with fins on a 1:10; 6x50 swim with fins on a 1:10 that's the main set. My cool down is 200 easy and then 100 easy. Last night it took me from 6:30pm-7:45pm to accomplish my workout. Plus, I run 3-4 miles a day. Sincerely, Swimminggirl

If you're looking for something to mix things up, and you have willing participants, relays are always a fun set, and they're good for sprint work. You can split people up to make evenly matched teams and do free, medley, or "funny" relays. As a swimmer I always enjoy getting to swim with new people from the other lanes. It helps build comraderie and is a fun break from the usual workout. Have fun!

This is an all freestyle workout that my buddy and I do when we can't think of anything else to do. We call it 5-4-3-2-1. The object is to descend time per 100 yards in everything so that you're going all out on the last set. Wherever we finish on the pace clock, we start the next set on the top, unless it's less than 15 seconds. The 100 sets are on 1:30. We usually start at around 1:17 pace starting on the 5 x 100 and descend from there to give you an idea on how much rest you'd get. Adjust according to your speed. The non 100's also descend. They aren't easy/rest swims, only a few seconds per hundred over the 100's speed. It's 3200 yards with a 200 warmdown. 500 swim (warmup) 5 x 100 400 swim 4 x 100 300 swim 3 X 100 200 swim 2 x 100 100 swim 1 x 100 all out 200 or ??? easy

Hey Dennis, Remember our U. of U. trip to Hong Kong? Late night rickshaw races on the Kowloon peninsula. The monsoon outside while we were swimming. I don't know how old your swimmers are, but here's a little suggestion that used to break up the monotony @ my club practices back in the day. Our coach would bring out a vertical roulette-like wheel w/15-25 choices of swim sets posted on it. He would pick one of the swimmers from the group to spin the wheel (especially when the group appeared tired or bored). The wheel's activities ranged from all out sprints for time to a 1600 IM, & everything in between. Where the wheel stopped, the group would have to do that activity. No matter where the wheel landed, the thrill of chance would make the group more enthusiastic & excited about the upcoming set or activity. The group would talk about this for days after sometimes. LOLO forums.usms.org/.../icon6.gif

I here are some of my favorite sets Long Course (back in the college days) 4x300 @ 3'30" 2x600 @ 7' 1x900 @ 11' 1' rest 1x900 @ 11' 2x600 @ 7' 4x300 @ 3'30" That was one of those feel good sets! Another one that was the 10 to 1. I love the descend as the distances got shorter. Long or short 1000 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 This one was short of a challenge too. Long Course 800 @12' Fly 1000 @ 12' Free 800 @ 12' Back 1000 @ 12' Free Repeat the set

Here is one with lots of variety that exercises the mind too, with mental gymnastics to keep the time intervals straight. 10x(broken 200 on 3:00, all free) #1: 200 hard/3:00 #2: 175 hard/2:35, 25 easy/0:25 #3: 150 hard/2:15, 50 easy/0:45 #4: 125 hard/1:55, 75 easy/1:05 #5: 100 hard/1:30, 100 easy/1:30 #6: 100 hard/1:30, 100 easy/1:30 #7: 75 hard/1:05, 125 easy/1:55 #8: 50 hard/0:45, 150 easy/2:15 #9: 25 hard/0:25, 175 easy/2:35 #10: 200 easy/3:00 A more challenging option is to replace all of the "hard" swims with a non-freestyle stroke of choice.