After I started swimming twice a week, I quickly got bored with just going back and forth for 30-40 minutes and went looking for some pre-planned workouts in the hope that it would make the swimming more interesting. It did! It helps a lot to have several different parts, each with their own discrete goals. Instead of thinking, "OK, when can I stop this?" I find myself thinking, "Hey! I'm on my last lap! How'd that happen?"
A triathlete friend asked me today about how I structure my swim workouts. I'm flattered, seeing as how I've never competed in a triathlon and it's not exactly one of my goals (for now; I'm saving it for if I need a motivation jumpstart in the future). I'll share my resources here, with the caveat that I really don't know whether the structure I'm following is particularly good or particularly bad. Probably some serious swimmer out there could suggest some better ideas.
First off, the three information sources I've been using to try and wrap my head around how to swim better. I think I mentioned them in an earlier post but they bear repeating.
Two useful books have been Fitness Swimming by Emmett Hines and Swimming for Total Fitness by Jane Katz. If you click on those Amazon links and scroll down to "Customers who bought this item also bought..." I think you will find a number of other books that look pretty good. Don't take my word on which books to buy or borrow; read the customer reviews and decide which sounds good to you. The third resource for me has been the articles at H2ouston Swims, a Masters swimming program in Houston, Texas.
Now, what are the specific workouts I am using right now? I got them from a useful site called beginnertriathlete.com, where you can find some true-beginner swim workouts, with workouts as short as 400 yards (or meters, whatever your pool is measured in). The writer of the article was in the same boat (cough) as I: When I got back into the pool to start training for triathlons (after a substantial fourteen year break from lap swimming) I found a few “beginner” workouts online and, without stopping to consider how much my abilities may have declined in those fourteen years, I headed to the pool for a 1600m workout. I found that I could barely swim 50m continuously – including recovery time I was swimming between 4:00-5:00 per 100m! ...Realizing that this was probably not going to be the path to improving my swimming; mainly since I could not complete the shortest set (100m) in the workout; I went back online. I assumed that in my ignorance (or overconfidence in my swimming abilities) I had missed the secret stash of true beginner workouts. But after several more searches, I still had trouble finding any workout that was not over 1200-1600m. ...However, over time some of my online searches paid off and that, combined with suggestions from the forums here at BT, finally started to yield some improvement. The workouts that are included are by no means my own – I am only attempting to compile a number of my favorite workouts so that you do not have to waste as much time as I did finding workouts that would work for your swim level. These workouts are all designed for beginners and range in length from 400m to 1200m – hopefully providing some useful workouts until you are able to tackle the 2000m+ workouts that are easily found online. These workouts are not designed to take the place of a coach or masters swim class; rather, they should help on the days when you have to figure out your own workout.
Even at the beginning I was fit enough to complete the 100-yd sets, but I swam pretty slowly to begin with. So I started with the 400-m workout (really it was 400 yds at my local Y) and quickly worked that up to the 800-yd workout by substituting longer sets for shorter ones here and there. For a while, swimming 800 yds used up the full 40 minutes I can allot for my workout. As I get a bit faster and more efficient I am lengthening the workout gradually. I now swim 950 yds in 30-35 minutes and spend the final 5 minutes stretching.
Incidentally, I swim the whole thing in the front crawl, except I sometimes do the kicking drills on my back because it's easier to breathe. My current goal is to swim 1200 yards in 40 minutes. When I reach that goal, I plan to reward myself with a set of swimming lessons or maybe a private stroke clinic. I still haven't gotten the hang of the breaststroke! But I'm glad I've spent all the time on the front crawl because I can tell that I've gotten a LOT better at it.
If you go to the workout links, you'll see that there are three workouts (endurance, form, and speed) for each of three workout lengths (400, 800, 1200)(yards or meters). I only do the endurance and form workouts because I only swim twice a week. I've increased the 800-yd workouts to 950 yds as follows:
- for endurance, add another 100-yd set to the middle of the ladder and change the 2x25 sets in the drill to 3x25
- for form, increase the 3x50 swim to 6x50 or 3x100.
Comments