Workouts for the Aspiring Fish

Because of tight pool time, my 12&Under Pre-C/C group has been reduced to 4 workouts a week (3 on meet weeks) with an hour in the pool at each workout. 4 hours is what I swim in a single practice session! There is pool time immediately after practice is over (about 8:30 o'clock, longer than we can keep them) and 3 open lanes before. Some of those who aspire to become faster will come early or stay late will come and swim. Eventually, due to them not really knowing what to do without guidance, I started compiling workouts for them. Remember, these are the slower 12 year olds with C times and most of them are girls. They have two practices in a row. It takes most of them 1.25-1.5 hours to finish the sets, but I expect that an adult would take about an hour or slightly less. Things I have to say to anyone in the girls' situations: 1) Bring food and water. Leave 10 minutes before the team practice and eat something (most eat one or two granola bars) and refill your water bottle. You should have this at the end of your lane. 2) Know when the curfew is. Here, the 11&Under curfew is 9 PM and the 12-14 curfew is 10 PM. 3) If you need a longer interval, add 5-10 seconds at the end of each set but no more. These are aerobic sets, they are hard, they are meant to challenge the girls, but to keep them aerobic you need to be constantly swimming. 4) Flip turns are awesome. Do them. Seriously. 5) If you get tired, fins/kick/pull/easy swim. Don't just sit at the end of the lane. The 12&U C-group practice is about 3-3.5k a day. The sets posted here range from 2.5 to 3.5. Occasionally we have a week where we build up to 4. So, combined for them, it's 5.5k to 7k. Oh, also, no set will be posted on a day with no practice. There are four sets a week except for meet weeks. Gear includes pull buoy, fins, and kickboard. So, without further ado, Sunday, December 16, 2012 - Total Distance 2600 Yards Warm-Up (2x): 1x100 Easy Free, 0:15 Rest 1x100 Easy Back, 0:15 Rest Build-Up Set (1x): 6x25 Back with Fins, 0:10 Rest 6x25 Free Kick, 0:10 Rest 6x25 Back Pull, 0:10 Rest 6x25 Double Arm Back with Fins, 0:10 Rest Main Set (1x): 5x100 Free, 0:15 Rest 8x50 (1st 25 Free, 2nd 25 Fly) with Fins FAST 0:10 Rest 5x100 Pull, 0:15 Rest Cool-Down (1x): 4x50 Easy *** Easy sets all around this week - last week we built up to 4,000 and we did fly sets (400-600 broken every day). Honestly the above set is the easiest we've had in maybe two months.