Fun, and Fast

You know, I don't really see a distinction between swim-for-fitness and the elite performers. I don't think there SHOULD be a difference, agreed. For example, although there can be a diverse range of intervals, the workouts that I post are given to the entire group and that includes swimmers who have little interest in competing and have little background in swimming. They might compete in the meet that is held in our own pool, but that's it. And yet they participate in "test sets" (eg 5 x 100 or 5 x 200 off the blocks with lots of rest) that are perhaps the most challenging thing we do and can be daunting even to seasoned competitive swimmers. For example, we did a test set this week (5 x 100 on 4:00). One swimmer, whose kids swim and who is very fit, but without a background in competitive swimming, really went after it. Her fastest repeat was her first one and she added 0-2 seconds on every one thereafter. She was completely spent by the last one and clearly had given it her all. I, on the other hand, held all five around the same time (maybe the last two were 1 second slower) and -- although I too was very tired by the end -- probably played it "safer" than she did. Other "experienced" swimmers descended the set; clearly they were conserving energy on the first couple. So I greatly admire this "fitness" swimmer who really went after it. And, in fact, I believe this kind of set is a great way to help develop/maintain fitness: you need to mix in the high intensity efforts along with the longer, more endurance-based training. HOWEVER, I think there are too many fitness swimmers who only swim at a slower pace and furthermore do almost all swims at roughly the same pace. They may reason that they don't intend to compete and so don't need to do those high-intensity "race pace" types of swims. I disagree. ******** My workout today was longer, aerobic stuff. Since I don't really have time for cycling during the academic year, this sort of workout takes its place and I consider it valuable both to build CV endurance and (hopefully) to keep the weight off. Others may have heard me say this before: I believe in working out in all the "training zones" from 1 (warmup-level intensity) to 5 (all-out sprint). This keeps me from getting bored and allows me some versatility in events. IMO even pure sprinters should do this, although they would possibly spend proportionally more of their time in zones 1 & 5 than I do. (Today I swam with the age-group club in the second-fastest senior group. But, although perhaps longer than typical -- mostly due to the excessively long warmups that USS teams seem to like -- the workout could easily be adopted to a more typical masters practice, perhaps by replacing butterfly with freestyle or another stroke of your choice and by cutting the warmup in half. Of course, adjust the intervals as you like. I didn't do anything very hard, keeping below lactate threshold in zones 1-3 today; it was as much a recovery workout as anything.) 400 easy freestyle on 6:00 4 x 100 kick on 1:45 with board 2 x 300 IM kick/drill/swim by 25s, on 5:00 rest 0:30 2 x the following: 2 x 400 with paddles and pull buoys, on 5:00. Concentrate on DPS and use bilateral breathing. On the second round, negative split the 400s while keeping the same number of strokes per length (which should be 10-14). 3 x 100 kick with board on 1:40. I alternated fly and free kick by 50s. rest 1:00 200 free on 2:25, aerobic 3 x 100 fly on 1:15, descend these (I couldn't manage that, I held them steady though) 3 x 400 IM on 5:10, maintain good average That was it for me, I did a 200 warm down and got out because I was starting to feel tired (more weary than tired, really) and this was supposed to be more of a recovery workout for me. However, the kids did 2 more rounds of the above, substituting first backstroke and then breaststroke on the 100s. They were supposed to descend their 400IM averages too. Then they were going to do 10 minutes of "wall kicking" of varying intensity off the coach's whistle.

You know, I don't really see a distinction between swim-for-fitness and the elite performers. I don't think there SHOULD be a difference, agreed. For example, although there can be a diverse range of intervals, the workouts that I post are given to the entire group and that includes swimmers who have little interest in competing and have little background in swimming. They might compete in the meet that is held in our own pool, but that's it. And yet they participate in "test sets" (eg 5 x 100 or 5 x 200 off the blocks with lots of rest) that are perhaps the most challenging thing we do and can be daunting even to seasoned competitive swimmers. For example, we did a test set this week (5 x 100 on 4:00). One swimmer, whose kids swim and who is very fit, but without a background in competitive swimming, really went after it. Her fastest repeat was her first one and she added 0-2 seconds on every one thereafter. She was completely spent by the last one and clearly had given it her all. I, on the other hand, held all five around the same time (maybe the last two were 1 second slower) and -- although I too was very tired by the end -- probably played it "safer" than she did. Other "experienced" swimmers descended the set; clearly they were conserving energy on the first couple. So I greatly admire this "fitness" swimmer who really went after it. And, in fact, I believe this kind of set is a great way to help develop/maintain fitness: you need to mix in the high intensity efforts along with the longer, more endurance-based training. HOWEVER, I think there are too many fitness swimmers who only swim at a slower pace and furthermore do almost all swims at roughly the same pace. They may reason that they don't intend to compete and so don't need to do those high-intensity "race pace" types of swims. I disagree. ******** My workout today was longer, aerobic stuff. Since I don't really have time for cycling during the academic year, this sort of workout takes its place and I consider it valuable both to build CV endurance and (hopefully) to keep the weight off. Others may have heard me say this before: I believe in working out in all the "training zones" from 1 (warmup-level intensity) to 5 (all-out sprint). This keeps me from getting bored and allows me some versatility in events. IMO even pure sprinters should do this, although they would possibly spend proportionally more of their time in zones 1 & 5 than I do. (Today I swam with the age-group club in the second-fastest senior group. But, although perhaps longer than typical -- mostly due to the excessively long warmups that USS teams seem to like -- the workout could easily be adopted to a more typical masters practice, perhaps by replacing butterfly with freestyle or another stroke of your choice and by cutting the warmup in half. Of course, adjust the intervals as you like. I didn't do anything very hard, keeping below lactate threshold in zones 1-3 today; it was as much a recovery workout as anything.) 400 easy freestyle on 6:00 4 x 100 kick on 1:45 with board 2 x 300 IM kick/drill/swim by 25s, on 5:00 rest 0:30 2 x the following: 2 x 400 with paddles and pull buoys, on 5:00. Concentrate on DPS and use bilateral breathing. On the second round, negative split the 400s while keeping the same number of strokes per length (which should be 10-14). 3 x 100 kick with board on 1:40. I alternated fly and free kick by 50s. rest 1:00 200 free on 2:25, aerobic 3 x 100 fly on 1:15, descend these (I couldn't manage that, I held them steady though) 3 x 400 IM on 5:10, maintain good average That was it for me, I did a 200 warm down and got out because I was starting to feel tired (more weary than tired, really) and this was supposed to be more of a recovery workout for me. However, the kids did 2 more rounds of the above, substituting first backstroke and then breaststroke on the 100s. They were supposed to descend their 400IM averages too. Then they were going to do 10 minutes of "wall kicking" of varying intensity off the coach's whistle.