Today's workouts are aimed toward gaining yardage and endurance. If you're training for a distance event, or using these workouts for a bulk week, make sure you're still focusing on technique and keeping your head in the game. Distance does ~not~ equal garbage yardage, and varying your sets, intervals, and reps with an intended purpose helps you get faster on top of adding yardage. Distance also doesn't mean you get to turn your brain off and stop paying attention to your pace and technique.
I've included several workouts below to cater folks goals, swimming abilities, and time constraints. If you have questions about a workout, or would like more specific to your needs or abilities, don't hesitate to email hello@swimwildwaters.com. Although this week's workouts aren't written with drills, you're welcome to add some into your warm up, recovery, and cool down.
There are some sets with non-freestyle in some of the workouts. For those of you who know how to do other strokes, but don't like it, I recommend incorporating some IM or non-free, despite your objects. For those of you who only swim front crawl and don't know other strokes, you're approved to switch those sets to 100% freestyle. Varying your strokes, if you're able to, is a great way to add muscle strength to similar or adjacent muscle groups and give your shoulders a break from the freestyle arm motion.
On-Deck Warm Up
Regardless of your abilities, you should always warm up before getting in the pool. A quick full body on-deck warm up I like to do is:
2-3 minutes of shoulders - keep arms at or above shoulders like you're directing a plane to land. Watch this video for a full routine
30 seconds of giant hip circles or full body twists to warm up hips and back
30 calf raises, either raising heels off the ground together, or alternating feet
Deep breaths - in through the mouth, out through the nose
Note: several of these workouts have the term "base" to calculate your interval. You can determine your base interval with a test set (typically: 10 x 100 or 10 x 50 on the fastest interval you can maintain). Most swimmers do this test set monthly to recalibrate and maintain progress. Example: Suzy does a test set of 10 x 100 and is able to make all 10 on the 1:30. She knows she wouldn't have made them on the 1:25, and she would have gotten a lot of rest on the 1:35. For a set where the interval for a 200 is defined as base + :10, her interval is calculated as finding the base interval for a 200 (3:00) and adding 10 seconds, so it would be 3:10. More info and a pace chart available through USMS.
Short Workout
WARM UP
400 SKIP (100 swim, 100 kick, 100 IM, 100 pull)
4 x 50 free descend on rest :15
SET 1
3 x 300 on rest :20
#1 is build slow to fast
#2 is fast
#3 is unwind fast to slow
Cool down: 100 easy freestyle
Total: 1600
Medium Workout
WARM UP
400 SKIP (100 swim, 100 kick, 100 IM, 100 pull)
4 x 100 free descend on rest :15
SET 1
8 x 200 as:
descend 1-4, 5-8
on base + :05 [this is your (100s base x 2) + 5 seconds]
start slow enough to just make it; learning how to pace yourself so you have steam left for #4 and #8
100 easy recovery
SET 2
4 x 100 IM on rest :10 moderate, with a 25 fast:
#1 - fast fly
#2 - fast back
#3 - fast breast
#4 - fast free
Cool down: 100 easy
Total: 3000
Long-ish Workout
WARM UP
400 SKIP (100 swim, 100 kick, 100 IM, 100 pull)
4 x 100 free descend on rest :15
SET 1
8 x 200 as:
descend 1-4, 5-8
on base + :05 [this is your (100s base x 2) + 5 seconds]
start slow enough to just make it; learning how to pace yourself so you have steam left for #4 and #8
SET 2
3 x 300 on base + :10
#1 is build slow to fast
#2 is fast
#3 is unwind fast to slow
100 easy recovery
SET 3
4 x 200 IM on rest :10 moderate, with a 50 fast:
#1 - fast fly
#2 - fast back
#3 - fast breast
#4 - fast free
Cool down: 100 easy choice
Total: 4300
Loooong Workout
WARM UP
500 SKIPS (100 swim, 100 kick, 100 IM, 100 pull, 100 swim)
4 x 100 free descend on rest :15
2 x 200 IM on rest :15
SET 1
8 x 200 as:
descend 1-4, 5-8
on base + :05 [this is your (100s base x 2) + 5 seconds]
start slow enough to just make it; learning how to pace yourself so you have steam left for #4 and #8
SET 2
2 x [3 x 300] on base + :10
#1 is build slow to fast
#2 is fast
#3 is unwind fast to slow
1 minute rest between sets of 3
100 easy recovery
SET 3
5 x 400 on base - :05
Try to stay consistent on pace
SET 4
4 x 200 IM on rest :10 moderate, with a 50 fast:
#1 - fast fly
#2 - fast back
#3 - fast breast
#4 - fast free
Cool down: 200 easy choice
Total: 7800
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