at what point is it about swimming the yardage
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Anton posted 1 year ago.
I follow a guide for IM swims that I picked up back in '03..It still works for me.
At least one swim a week of 300 to 800 meter warm up, 5x500 meters on an interval that gives you 15 seconds rest:
As the article says..."Swim these at race pace effort each week add another 500 until you are up to seven or eight x 500. This is real swimming!" Cool down is 500 to 1000 choice.
If ya want to swim long...you have to swim ...well, long!
"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" - Vincent Van Gogh
My Blog: http://agingsuperhero.blogspot.com
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UFTriGator posted 1 year ago.
There will always be room for improvement in your stroke. As you get faster, the improvements will be more subtle and result in less time being dropped, but the times will improve nonetheless. More swimming will help your cardio and your muscle development (this is the first thing to go when you're no swimming). A coach is probably the best way to improve technique if you can get someone to help.
It looks like you've been dropping some serious time already, so I'm sure your stroke has gotten much better. If you're swimming 15 sec for sprints, there's probably still some technique to work on. Technique and muscle development should be able to take you down to around 13 sec or so. After that, more specific training will get you faster, but your time is probably spent better somewhere else for triathlon training.
In order to get to that point, you'll definitely need to be doing LT stuff....repeat 100s are great, but don't forget that triathlon training needs distance stuff, too. A typical workout for me looks kind of like this:
1000 WU (some drill at the end)
10 x 100 on 1:25 @ 1:10-15
4 x 400 on 5:40 @ 1:20 pace (desperately trying to improve this part)
4 x 50 on 1:00 @ :25
300 CD
I'll throw in some IM (individual medley, not ironman) stuff here and there for balance a couple times a week, sometimes some longer stuff (1000 tempo, etc.). But that's a pretty typical workout structure: WU, opener, main set, sprint, CD. You should adjust the yardage so that you don't rip your shoulders out (trust me...I have the rotator cuffs of a 90-year-old) and build up slowly to about 4000-5000 per practice (could take a year....no worries:D)
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-Matt
Not fast enough.
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rob6118 posted 1 year ago.
TriGator-
So that's why everyone likes 100 repeats lol. They make you wanna puke....
Was shooting for a low easily achievable goal of 2:00 repeats on 1:30 so I had lots of rest. I started with 1:30 went up to 1:55 but kept leaving on the 2 minute mark and then the last 2-3 100 yard sets I got back down to 1:40 or so.
I did 17 100 repeats in total so just under a mile. My thoughts were: I have really crappy endurance when it comes to swimming, that the before mentioned fact makes sense cause all my endurance is running related, and wow this is what it feels like to have sore shoulders.
So I think that is pretty much my favorite swim workout of all times. I'll try to work up to your workout including the warm-up and cool down and 50 yrd sprints and 400 yard sets, but with too many shoulder dislocations in the past, and a current average workout of 1500-1800 yards I figured I'd take it easy.
Rob
Forgot to mention Anton: my normal workout now consists of just straight 1500-1800 yard swims with 2 a week being race pace and 1 a week being recovery, normally something along of 1500 race, 1600 endurance / recovery, 1800 race. The problem is that a) these are boring and b) that the times are pretty consistent. I have a hard time trying to make any of these workouts a faster one. Normally I intend to increase my race pace for the first 10 laps or so, and then I burn out and resume my 'normal' race pace for the remainder and peter off at the end. I hear ya if you wanna swim distance then you have to swim distance, but distance isn't my problem. I'm greedy and want to swim a HIM faster then a 32 minute pace. I think I could comfortably swim 3,000 yards straight at about a 35 min mile pace, but so far my training regime has only built up to a 2000 yard swim workout in any one day. I'm in week 7 of the place with 1 recovery week (next week) before my build phase.
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Riverbrady posted 1 year ago.
If you want to work on speeding up a particular distance - repeats
Take that 1600, break it into 8x200, swim those 200s at a pace faster than you swim the 1600...not sprinting faster, just pace faster, and toss in a short rest inbetween.
Don't have time at the moment to figure out the math as I'm running out the door. Will try to remember to revisit this tomorrow.
"Care more than others think is wise, risk more than others think is safe, dream more than others think is practical, expect more than others think is possible."
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Ironmom posted 1 year ago.
I'm going to hazard a guess here that you may be kicking way too much in your distance swimming. There's a signifigant difference between a distance swimmer's stroke and a sprinter's stroke, and much of that difference is usually in the kick. If you're seeing that big of a discrepancy between what you can sprint at and what you hold for distance, it could be that you're still kicking too much in your distance swimming form and thus using too much oxygen for your legs, which shouldn't be giving you too much of your momentum for distance swimming.
I could also guess that body position might play into it as well. If your feet aren't consistently on the surface of the water when you're swimming longer distances, you're incurring a lot of drag that might be contributing to your slower distance times because you have to overcome that drag with strength. Most folks (especially men, with greater upper body strength) can power past a feet-low body position in a sprint by kicking more, but that same feet-low position will really cost them at a distance.
My advice would be to really examine your stroke (especially if you can find a good distance swimmer or better yet a coach who will take a look at it) and make sure you've got an efficient and effective stroke for distance. Stroke count isn't necessarily a predictor of good distance swimming because it's easy to get a good stroke count by kicking more than you should. Again, this won't cost you in a sprint, but will at distance.
I'm not sure I would necessarily do more drill work, but would focus on developing a distance technique - more reach, legs on surface, very little kick (2 beat kick vs. a 6-beat which is more common for sprinting). You can use a pull buoy to help you get the feel of your feet on the surface and very little kicking. You should be able to lower the large discrepancy between your sprint and distance times. I'd say that 22 - 23 seconds per length for distance should be within reach for someone doing 15 seconds at a fast pace.
Blue Skies, -Robin-
http://ironmom.blogspot.com/
I've come a far ways in my technique lowering my swim time from 45 min mile swims to 32-34 min miles. My question is at what point is it no longer my technique and just swimming more miles.
I swim between 15-18 strokes a 25 yrd length and take anywhere between 15 and 30 seconds depending on fatique. My long swims (1 mile or little longer) I average 18 strokes a length and 30 seconds. I'm told this isn't horrible especially when I can do 15-16 strokes at a solid 15-18 second time on my sprints.
Does this mean my stroke is no longer the limiting factor, and instead its just cardio fitness? Should I be doing lots of long base swims at an aerobic pace, or should I be doing lots of intervals to build up my threshold so I can go faster longer???
I'm happy with my progress but I want my half ironman swim to be at a 23 min mile pace, not 33 min mile pace and I'm not really seeing easy progress anymore.
I'm currently following a HIM training regime but I feel a lot of the swim time is wasted on drills and I don't really think my technique is the issue. I think the issue is just threshold, I can sprint great, but I can't translate that into a fast mile time.
Rob