Intermediate Swimming Workouts - By Andy

Your swimmers are about in the same range I am times-wise, but you seem to give them a lot of rest (at least compared to my normal intervals). Can you talk about that a little? I can absolutely speak to that! Long and short of it, I didn't add in the lane adjustments for times and I forgot to post the purpose/focus of the practice. I will make sure to have the adjustments made in the upcoming posts....all apologies! With regard to today's post (and the first day's workout), I write the workout to the slower swimmers that I have, and drop the intervals for the more efficient swimmers. That being said, I was dropping each of the intervals by ~:15. Our focus was on keeping between :03 and :04 or your race pace throughout the pyramid which forced me to give them a little more rest in order to maintain that steady time. Hope that helps you understand today's workout, and I will try to be a little more detailed in Monday's!

Today's focus was on stroke work and high intensity sets. My goal was to get them tired prior to going into our main set so that they were swimming tired and not "tired swimming". This means that I focused on their technique throughout the practice while they were focusing on making the times and getting the rest. It turned out to be a great combination! There wasn't much variation with regard to lane times, but alter as needed. Warm Up 200 Swim 200 Kick 200 IM 200 Pull 200 Swim Drill Set 4 x on 1:50 IM Order Drill *alternate 25's swim and drill (drill, swim, drill, swim) *2 100's per stroke Aerobic/Anaerobic Mix 4 x 100 on 1:45 Free 25 Easy, 75 Sprint 4 x 75 on 1:30 Free 25 Sprint, 50 Easy 4 x 50 on :55 Free Beginning of lengths sprint, end of lengths easy 4 x 50 on :55 Free Beginning of lengths easy, end of lengths sprint 4 x 50 on :55 Free Sprint within flags, easy walls 4 x 50 on :55 Free Sprint walls, easy between flags Anaerobic 4 x 50 on :50 Free Sprint In-water starts 4 x 50 on Race Pace :15 rest interval w/starts from block Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Yardage: 3550 Total Time: ~1 hour 20 mins

Today's workout was primarily endurance freestyle, but we did venture into some "speed" sets later in the practice. I didn't provide time intervals for the set, but percentages to the swimmer's max and rest intervals. This seems to work every now and then, and I use it to gauge who really knows their speed as well. Warm Up 200 Free 200 Choice 200 Kick 200 Pull 200 Free Endurance Set 4 x 300 @ 80% on :10 rest *breathing every 3 3 x 400 @ 80% on :15 rest *1st and 3rd 400 breathing every 5 *2nd 400 breathing every 3 Main Set 4 x 150 @ 90% on :20 rest 4 x 100 @ 90% on :25 rest 4 x 75 @ 95% on :30 rest 4 x 50 @ 95% on :30 rest 8 x 25 @ 100% on :15 rest Recovery 1 x 400 Choice Total Yardage: 5500 Total Time: ~1 hr 30 minutes Enjoy, and Happy Swimming!

We swam long axis strokes today and will most likely swim short axis on Monday, but we mainly focused on endurance today. The concentration for today was on turns, underwater, and breakout. We actually started each set (beside warm-up and recovery) at the flags and swam in to the turn. Warm Up 1 x 1000 (200 Swim, 200 Kick, 200 IM, 200 Pull, 200 Swim) Kick Set 4 x 100 w/fins on 1:30 * alternate free and back per 100 Main Set 10 x 100 on 1:30/1:40 *Odds = Free on 1:30 *Evens = Back on 1:40 20 x 50 on 1:00 Building *Odds = Free *Evens = Back *Build from 80% to 95% Recovery 1 x 400 Choice Total Yardage: 3800 Total Time: ~1 hr 10 minutes (includes :30 rest in between sets)

Today's workout was focused on working a negative split. We are heading into our "Winter Break" for Master's which means that we will be taking time trials in practice at the end of the week, and they have been getting burned out at the final 25 of the 100. That said, here is today's workout: Warm-Up 1 x 800 (at least 400 Free; 400 Choice) Drill Set 4 x 100 on 1:45 Free Drill * 50 drill, 50 swim Mid-Distance Work 5 x 200 on 3:20/3:15/3:10/3:05/3:00 Free Odds - Breath every 3 Evens - Breath every 5 Race Technique 5 x 100 on 1:45 1st 50 easy, 2nd 50 fast 5 x 100 on 1:40 1st 25 easy, 2nd 50 fast 5 x 100 on 1:30 Split :40/:35 Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Distance: 3900 Total Time: ~1 hr 45 mins Wednesday's focus will be more on mid-distance and anaerobic/sprint work with our time trials coming on Friday. Enjoy!

Andy It looks like you have a great program going here. Keep an eye open for the Groundhog Meet in Westport in January!!

Today's workout is gearing up for our time trials on Friday. Since we are going to be swimming all strokes I wanted to focus on all four strokes. So, here we go: Warm Up 1 x 500 Pull Set 4 x 75 on 1:45 Per 25's: 1 = Easy, Easy, Fast 2 = Easy, Fast, Fast 3 = Fast, Fast, Easy 4 = All Fast Endurance 4 x on 1:45 IM Order Main Set 8 x 100 on 2:00 Per 25's 1 = Fly, Fly, Fly, Back 2 = Fly, Fly, Back, Back 3 = Fly, Back, Back, *** 4 = Back, Back, ***, *** 5 = Back, ***, ***, Free 6 = ***, ***, Free, Free 7 = ***, Free, Free, Free 8 = 100 IM Race Tempo 10 x 50 on :50 Free at Race Pace Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Yardage = 3900 Total Time = ~1 hr 15 mins Enjoy, and happy swimming!

We did modified T-30 tests today (the first time we, as a club, have done them). The modification was down to 5 minutes (I know this isn't a good sampling, but I needed to get through quite a bit of testing in a very short amount of time). If you haven't done a T-30 test before, it is structured as a "strong paced" swim for a defined period of time without stopping. Following the testing, we did a quick race tempo set for our race pace trials on Monday. It's interesting to see the drops/improvements that they have made thus far after 1 session! With that said, we had 2 in the intermediate lane today and here were the pace times: Warm Up 1 x 1000 (200 {Swim, Kick, Choice, Pull, Swim}) Free Swim 100 = ~1:18 200 = ~2:40 300 = ~4:04 Free Kick 100 = ~1:50 200 = ~4:00 Free Pull 100 = ~1:24 200 = ~2:50 300 = ~4:17 Back Swim 100 = ~1:25 200 = ~3:00 300 = ~5:00 Back Kick 100 = ~1:50 200 = ~3:55 Back Pull 100 = ~1:40 200 = ~2:50 300 = ~4:17 Total Yardage for Warm Up: 1000 Total Yardage During T-30 Testing: 1850 Total Time for T-30: 30 mins Race Tempo Set 6 x 75 on 1:10 10 x 50 on :50 Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Yardage for Today: 4100 Total Time: ~1 hour 10 mins (depending on rest between T-30's)

Andy It looks like you have a great program going here. Keep an eye open for the Groundhog Meet in Westport in January!! I am just now registering our team for the 2009 season! I plan on having two of my swimmers (at least) at that meet! I don't know, due to age-group coaching, if I will be able to attend or not, though!

This morning's swim (as I mentioned in a previous post) was our sprint trials to get our times before the holiday break. The swimmers did fairly well with their swims (500, 200, 100, 50), and it gave me some good information on what we need to work on in the next couple of months! Following the time trials we did a moderate hypoxic set: Breathing (Hypoxic) 2 x 200 on 3:15 Free *1st 200 breathing every 3rd stroke *2nd 200 breathing every 5th stroke 2 x 100 on 1:45 Free *1st 100 breathing every 5th stroke *2nd 100 breathing every 7th stroke Recovery 200 Choice With regard to their Freestyle time trial results: 50 = ~34.00 100 = ~1:14.60 200 = ~2:40.83 500 = ~7:00.00 All the best, and happy swimming! Have a great holiday, everyone! I'll post more workouts after vacation (Friday)!