Intermediate Swimming Workouts - By Andy

I was asked by one of our forum members to go over the drills that we do. I will start with our freestyle drills for today's post and post our other strokes throughout the rest of the week. So, here goes: Freestyle Side Body Balance (SBB): work the on-axis swimming. This is essentially kicking on your side (45 degree angle) and familiarizing your body with that fully rotated position. If I were to kick on the right side, my right hand would be outstretched in streamline with my head facing down (bottom of the pool) and breathing to the side. 6 Beat Switch: Utlizing SBB, 6 kicks on one side with one pull at the 6th kick, work the proper shoulder/hip/ankle rotation and repeat on the other side Extended Catch-Up: Consistent stroke and kick that instead of just catching up and pulling, we concentrate on entry position of elbow, wrist, hand as well as the transition between rotations. So, essentially, it is catch-up, reach out, roll and pull. Finger Drag: Dragging the tips of the fingers on the top of the water close to the side of your body all the way up to a nice, high entry position. The concentration is on the close recovery with high elbow and high entry position. Zipper: Similar to the finger drag. We pretend that we have a zipper on the side of our body and zipper up to our shoulder, zipper down to our pocket and use a high elbow recovery into a single arm streamline position and repeat on the opposite side. 3 Touch: Our 3 touch places an emphasis on high elbow recovery with a high hand entry position. We do a full pull, touch on the hip, shoulder, temple and enter high and repeat on the other side. Streamline One Arm (SOA): One arm freestyle with the non-pulling arm in streamline position. Our concentration for this stroke is on the extension and catch phase of the stroke so they are exagerating the rotational movement. Kicking is consistent through the drill. We breath to our pulling arm. One Arm: One arm freestyle with the non-pulling arm down to the side of the body. The concentration is on the rotation of the hips/shoulders/ankles and the timing of the pulling arm. Kicking is consistent throughout the drill, and we breath away from our pulling arm. Gallop: 3 pulls one side, 3 pulls the other side breathing on the 3rd stroke. This drill is a modified SOA to concentrate more-so on the catch and pull phase of the stroke. Kicking is consistent throughout this drill. Distance Per Stroke (DPS): One of my favorite drills to work! Instead of re-typing what I wrote in a blog, read the article. Fist: Close down the hand and swim! Not exactly true with this drill. We want to take this drill slow so the swimmers get a "feel" for the water with their forearms. A great tool to use during this are Techpaddles. Basically, we are focusing this drill on an Early Vertical Forearm (EVF). Kicking remains consistent though at a slower pace. Quick Catch: This is a more complex drill that works on the speed and efficiency of the high catch (EVF). What we concentrate on is a slow pull phase of the stroke, relaxed recovery of the stroke, but you want to set up your stroke quickly. In order to do that, when you enter the water at full extension/rotation, say "quick" to yourself and in that amount of time get the forearm vertical and set yourself up for the pull phase. The catch is the only part of this drill that is quick. Kicking, of course, remains consistent. Fly kick: Pretty self-explanatory, but we do fly kick with our freestyle. Long Axis Combo (LAC): We modify this a little bit as this works both Long Axis strokes. This drill is 6 strokes free, 6 strokes back. Typically, we will only run this drill if there is a problem with our rotation and we need is over-exagerated. I hope this helps, and please (as always) let me know if you have any questions about the workouts, drills, etc! Happy Swimming!

Hi What happened to the silverfins?

Hi What happened to the silverfins? What silverfins are you referring to?

This is a nice Christmas workout that we had for our age-groupers just before the "holiday break". We called it the 12 sets of the Typhoons, and we ran no set intervals, but were on percentages and rest intervals...unfortunately, however, due to time we only made it through 10 sets! Wish we had more time!! Warm Up 1 x 1000 SKIPS 12 Sets of the Typhoons 1 x 500 Broken at 100's on :15 rest 2 x 400 Reverse IM on :20 rest 3 x 300 IM Order Drill Per 100 (no Free) on :20 rest 4 x 200 Free Relay on :10 rest 5 x 100 IM Sprint on :20 rest 6 x 75 IM Order (no free) on :20 rest 7 x 50 Choice Pull on :15 rest 8 x 50 Partner Swim (one in back kicks, one in front pulls) on :10 rest 9 x 100 Coach's Christmas Special (one line of swimmers. front swimmer sets pace at 75%, back swimmer in line sprints to front and sets pace at 75%, and repeat) 10 x 50 Mid-Pool 50's on :10 rest 11 Minutes of Vertical Kicking on :45 per stroke and :15 rest 12 x 25 SDK Underwater on :20 rest Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Yardage: 7200 Total Time: Variable based on pace Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!!!

Here is our New Year's practice for our age-groupers (since we don't have "organized" Master's practice this week): Warm Up 500 Choice 12 Months in Year 12 x 100 IM Order @ 80% on :15 rest *strong technique 4 Weeks In A Month 4 x 200 IM @ 85% *1 & 4 on :20 rest *2 & 3 on :15 rest 7 Days In A Week 7 x 100 on 1:40 @ 90% on :20 rest *Odds = 7 SDK's *Events = 5 SDK's 24 Hours in a Day 24 x 50 *1 - 10 on 1:00 *11 - 15 on :55 *16 - 20 on :50 *21 - 24 on :45 60 Minutes in an Hour 60 x 25 on :45 @ 100% New Year's Resolution 4 x Your Favorite Race @ Race Pace on 2:00 Rest Recovery 200 Choice Enjoy, and have a great new year!!

Andy, When you define 'race pace' on the 50s what do you mean? 50 pace, 100 pace, 200 pace? If it's 50 pace, that's a LOT of race pace work on relatively short intervals. 20 50s at 50 pace on 1:00 or less? Ouch. I wouldn't worry about your swimmers as I doubt any of them would be able to climb out of the pool after that.

Today was a huge anaerobic day for the swimmers. I think they all wanted to drown me after this: Warm-Up 1 x 500 (100 Swim, 100 Kick, 100 Choice, 100 Pull, 100 Swim) Mid-Distance 3 x 300 on 4:30 Freestyle @ 85% *1 = Every 3 *2 = Every 5 *3 = 4 SDK's Main Set 2 x 125 on 2:15 Freestyle @ 90% 10 x 50 on 1:00 Freestyle @ Race Pace 10 x 50 on :55 Freestyle @ Race Pace 4 x 100 on 2:00 Freestyle @ 97% 6 x 75 on 1:30 Freestyle @ Race Pace 10 x 25 on :40 Freestyle All Out Effort Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Yardage: 4100 Total Time: ~1 hour 20 minutes Wednesday's focus will be endurance so we'll see how they are feeling!

Andy, When you define 'race pace' on the 50s what do you mean? 50 pace, 100 pace, 200 pace? If it's 50 pace, that's a LOT of race pace work on relatively short intervals. 20 50s at 50 pace on 1:00 or less? Ouch. I wouldn't worry about your swimmers as I doubt any of them would be able to climb out of the pool after that. Yeah, there's no way that they would be able to catch me on dry-land after that workout! It was a huge focus on anaerobic (lactate tolerance) work which explains the high intensity and low rest. Today's workout was a little more ("little" is an understatement) aerobic development/mix day....

A little off topic, but it's funny what Connecticut considers a snow storm! I grew up in Upstate NY where a snow storm was 3 - 4 feet spanning in a two day period of time. Then, and only then, would we ever have a delay (or NY school systems forbid...a cancellation)! In Connecticut this morning, we got what Upstate NY'ers would refer to as a "light dusting" and everything shuts down from schools to businesses. I just don't get it! That being said, we only had 2 swimmers this morning for our endurance work: Warm Up 1 x 500 (100 Swim, 100 Kick, 100 Choice, 100 Pull, 100 Swim) Kick Set 2 x 100 Build to 90% per 25 on :15 rest Main Set 1 x 300 @ 80% on :15 rest 1 x 400 @ 80% on :15 rest 1 x 300 @ 85% on :20 rest 1 x 400 @ 85% on :20 rest 1 x 300 Building per 50 to 95% *Final 50 pace @ ~35 1 x 300 Building per 100 to 95% *Final 100 pace @ 1:18 1 x 300 Broken @ 150 *1st 150 @ 90% (100 pace @ 1:18) *2nd 150 @ 95% (100 pace @ 1:15) Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Yardage: 3200 Total Time: ~1 hour 10 minutes

I apologize for not posting Friday's workout; we had an age-group meet that I was setting up for...hectic and chaotic is an understatement! Either way, here is this morning's workout while we worked on technique and swimming tired (not tired swimming). Needless to say (after you read the workout), this was a very challenging day for them! I have to say that they truly worked hard throughout...they all held their race pace for the 4 100 sprints, and consistently hit about 2 second above race pace on their 50's! Huge improvement from about 2 months ago when we did a similar set and nobody held steady! So, great job to them...enjoy the workout! Warm Up 1 x 500 (100 Swim, 100 Kick, 100 Choice, 100 Pull, 100 Swim) Drill Set 2 x {4 x 50 on 1:15 IM Order Drill *1-4 Choice Drill *5 - 8 Coach's Drill Main Set 10 x 100 Free *1 = Easy 75, Fast 25 on :10 rest *2 = Easy 50, Fast 50 on :15 rest *3 = Easy 25, Fast 50 on :30 rest *4 = Sprint *5 = Sprint *6 = Sprint 25, Easy 75 on :10 rest *7 = Sprint 50, Easy 50 on :15 rest *8 = Sprint 75, Easy 25 on :30 rest *9 = Sprint *10 = Sprint 6 x 75 Broken :10 at the 50 on :20 rest *Sprint 50, Active Recovery (AR) 25 1 x 200 Drill *Switch drill per 50 Sprint Set 10 x 50 on :50 4 x 50 Three Turn 50's on :15 rest *Sprint 3 strokes before turn, sprint breakout, easy up Recovery 1 x 200 Choice Total Yardage: 3800 Total Time: ~1 hr 15 minutes Happy Swimming!