Cesar Cielo is fastest swimmer in the world -- 25 yards in 8.88 to the foot -- he was just trying to "maintain" on the second 25...
There are 3 ways to swim faster in any given race:
1) Improve your technique -- if you become more effecient in your technique, your times will drop across the board
2) Maintain a pace as close as possible to maximum speed -- You can hold your maximum speed for 6-8 seconds. There are no swim races of that length - so when training for any swimming race (50 up the mile), you are trying to maintain a pace as close to your maximum speed as possible.
3) Get Faster = improve your maximum speed
I would say on average, Masters swimmers (and age-groupers) spend their in the water workout season according to the following breakdown (rough guess):
1) Improving technique = 20-30%
2) Maintaining close to max = 65-79%
3) Improving Max Speed = 1-5%
Think about it -- if you swim 4-5 times per week, that equals about 20 hours a month. Did you spend more than a full hour in October on maximum speed ?
This Thread is all about Category 3 -- Improving your Max Speed --
Parents
Former Member
Sprintasizing a Masters workout -
If your home workouts are anything like ours, all the sets are more fit for an open water or distance swimmer than an actual sprinter. Sprinters HAVE to change the workouts according to their needs. Sure - this may not make you popular with the coach or your lane mates - but they are also not going to help you on the blocks at the end of the season trying to reach your goals.
Here was our workout last Wed - long-course for our fast group:
400 warm-up
4x100 stroke / Free
6x50 2 on 45 / 2 on 40 / 2 on 50
Main set:
3x200 Free + easy 200 Kick and Free (easy 200 always on 4 min)
3 rounds total = 2400 meters: Round 1 on 3:00 / Round 2 on 2:50 / Round 3 on 2:40
The lane average is about 2:30 swims on a set like this - so you can figure out the according intervals / rest for your speed.
Sure - I could swim the set - pound out 9x200 with an easy one as rest -- but that will not help me with my speed -- actually I think it would be a big negative to do too many sets like this.
This is also my time to work on my aerobic conditioning - but I want to 1) stay technically clean and 2) swim my 100 or 200 stroke instead of going towards my distance stroke.
So here is a way to adjust:
Round 1: 200s= 25 kick fast / 25 swim fast / 50 easy > twice
Round 2: 200s= IM (only 25 Fly though)
ROund 3: 200s= fast with Pd and Pb
I was still fresh on the last round - swimming 3 strong 200s with very clean technique. I would have swam without Pd and Pb, but we had 13 people in our lane and the pool gets very choppy - tough to swim clean.
So here are some guidelines to adjust the workouts - if needed:
- Never change the set or the interval - just adjust the intensity
- Move one lane down - or swim last in your lane (I spend a lot of time at the end of our lane)
- always add in some sort of kick / swim with short sprints
- figure out which part of the set you will swim fast - maybe it's only 1 or 2 swims; maybe it's one round. Plan everything around that round.
On the set above - maybe you need much more time to recover - so just swim every 3rd 200 fast, maybe you won't last the entire set -- then swim always the first 100 clean and fast + an easy 100 stroke. If you start breaking down, you stop or move down another lane and swim stroke.
Sprintasizing a Masters workout -
If your home workouts are anything like ours, all the sets are more fit for an open water or distance swimmer than an actual sprinter. Sprinters HAVE to change the workouts according to their needs. Sure - this may not make you popular with the coach or your lane mates - but they are also not going to help you on the blocks at the end of the season trying to reach your goals.
Here was our workout last Wed - long-course for our fast group:
400 warm-up
4x100 stroke / Free
6x50 2 on 45 / 2 on 40 / 2 on 50
Main set:
3x200 Free + easy 200 Kick and Free (easy 200 always on 4 min)
3 rounds total = 2400 meters: Round 1 on 3:00 / Round 2 on 2:50 / Round 3 on 2:40
The lane average is about 2:30 swims on a set like this - so you can figure out the according intervals / rest for your speed.
Sure - I could swim the set - pound out 9x200 with an easy one as rest -- but that will not help me with my speed -- actually I think it would be a big negative to do too many sets like this.
This is also my time to work on my aerobic conditioning - but I want to 1) stay technically clean and 2) swim my 100 or 200 stroke instead of going towards my distance stroke.
So here is a way to adjust:
Round 1: 200s= 25 kick fast / 25 swim fast / 50 easy > twice
Round 2: 200s= IM (only 25 Fly though)
ROund 3: 200s= fast with Pd and Pb
I was still fresh on the last round - swimming 3 strong 200s with very clean technique. I would have swam without Pd and Pb, but we had 13 people in our lane and the pool gets very choppy - tough to swim clean.
So here are some guidelines to adjust the workouts - if needed:
- Never change the set or the interval - just adjust the intensity
- Move one lane down - or swim last in your lane (I spend a lot of time at the end of our lane)
- always add in some sort of kick / swim with short sprints
- figure out which part of the set you will swim fast - maybe it's only 1 or 2 swims; maybe it's one round. Plan everything around that round.
On the set above - maybe you need much more time to recover - so just swim every 3rd 200 fast, maybe you won't last the entire set -- then swim always the first 100 clean and fast + an easy 100 stroke. If you start breaking down, you stop or move down another lane and swim stroke.
