I was wondering what types of swim workouts people suggest, intervals with rest, long distance without rest.
Most days I do:
50y-15 sec rest, 50y-15 sec rest, 200y-45 sec rest, 50y-15 sec rest, 50y-15 sec rest, 50y-1:15 rest (the whole set takes 10 minutes), repeated 3-4 times, which gives me 30 or 40 minutes of swimming and 1350 or 1800, I have been increasing how many times I've been doing this and will be able to do 60 minutes like this by the end of the month. I've found that I am able to stay interested in swimming with this workout, which was a major problem before (I would get bored either swimming a bunch of the same length intervals over and over). It also gives me breaks so my form doesn't break down too much.
Any suggestions out there?
Right now I am doing my swim in sets of 5. I warm up with 5 straight slow, reaching laps, then 5 straight arm drill (balance on my side), then I move into board work, where I do 5 laps with the pull bouey and 5 with the kick board. Then it's 5 catch up and 5 thumb/pit and finger tip drag. This usually takes me 45 minutes if I take my time on the drills and allow some short breaks. When I'm in the pool for a 60 minutes session I will add another 5 of swim golf and 5 of times laps with 15 sec rests. Then I finish it off with 10 laps straight swim.
I am going to use the workouts in triathlete magazine and put them in plastic sleeves so they don't get ruined. But for right now that's my workout.
Every thing is revelant to the distance you are going to race and how fast you want to swim. You have to decide on a time you want to do in the swim portion (your race pace for the distance).
We can not always do the same workout sometimes we do overdistance some times underdistance, variety is the spice of life.
Rest periods or time between reapeats should be lowered to help get the race pace put together eg 1:23 for 100y with 5 sec rest gives you approx 24 min mile.
As an unexperienced swimmer and teachin' myself basically all I really did was just get in the water and go. I would keep track of how many laps I would do in the period of time I would go (which would be 30min. or longer). I just wanted the endurance and to see if I would last that long as I would do in my races. All I did was sprint distances and I did okay in the swimming but I know that there is way more to do than just get in and go like I did. For a sprint workout (if that is what you call it) I would do 2 laps and rest 30 sec. rest, 2 laps and 20 sec. rest, 2 laps and 15 rest, 2 and then 10 and go back up the ladder. Does that work, it gave me a heck of a workout but I wasn't thrashin' about in the pool. I would concentrate on my body position, breathin' and made sure I was focusin' instead of lookin' more pathedic. (lol)
A good workout that I do focuses on strength and endurance.
100m warmup
100m (60% race pace) 45sec. rest
100m (70% race pace) 45sec. rest
100m (80% race pace) 50sec. rest
100m (90% race pace) 2min rest
50m kickboard
50m pullbouy
50m kickboard
50m pullbouy
50m kickboard
50m pullbouy
150m slow cooldown
for fun (if you can call it that) you can intertwine the 50m repeats within the 100m repeats, or repeat the workout twice.
I'm no expert but I use to swim when I was younger so I'm familiar with workouts. Nowadays I find my workouts online at various tri sites, books, and magazines. I've listed a few works that I've done on my site [url]http://www.triathletestuff.com/6.html[/url] and I'll list more as they come up. Follow at your own discretion ;)
thekeyplayer
Rather then use a kickboard why don't you just kick on the back, if you have a terrible kick this will help correct the kick better than useing a kickboard.
Thought you may like this training schedule, I love fartlek training.did it 55 years ago. [url]http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/triathlon/oeph3.htm[/url]
Throwing in a "countdown swim" every now and then is nice. Here's one I do:
700 warmup with difference focus drills
500 at 1:40 pace (for a 100)
400 at 1:35 pace
300 at 1:30 pace
200 at 1:25 pace
100 at 1:20 pace
300 warmdown