Weekly Swim Workout #6

A Guiding Principle

At Steele Coaching, we believe in deliberate practice: being systematic, purposeful, and attentive to details.

When you do this, you focus your attention on specific goals that will improve your overall performance.

Deliberate practice opens the door for you to focus on the process rather than the outcome.

When you do this on a regular and consistent basis, the outcome takes care of itself.

We help you focus on the little things so that you can improve your performance and finally achieve the BIG things.

Weekly Workout: 5 Descending “400s”

Note: the workout is listed above; what follows is the why / purpose as well as descriptions of workout components and drills

Main Set

The primary Goal of the Main Set is to work on descending pacing throughout the 400s. In total, you’ll swim five 400s; however, 400s #2-#4 are broken up to develop your descending pacing for the final full 400.

This workout is designed to encourage mindful swimming with intense focus on pacing.

With distance swimming, a good analogy is that you have a wick to burn throughout the workout. If you go out too fast early on, you’ll burn too much of the wick to effectively execute the final 400. Ideally, as you go into the final two rounds of this workout, you should have about a third of your wick left to burn for the final two 400s.

The pattern of the Main Set is as follows for each Round:

3 X 50 drill 
1 X 100 kick 
6 X 25
1 X 400

3 X 50 Drills
Hip Rotation Kick Drill: keep your hands at your sides (by your hips) and simply kick a 50 while focusing on rotating your body — driven by your hips — from left to right. Take note of how your shoulders follow what your hips do.

Right/Left Drill: 12.5 kicking on your right side — right arm out front in streamline position, right hip to bottom of pool, right shoulder to bottom of pool, and head down in streamline position; 12.5 kicking on left side — similar to above. Follow the same pattern on the second 25.

1/10 Drill: similar to the above drill, you’ll kick 10 times on your right side, take a stroke and then kick 10 times on your left side. Cycle through this pattern for a 50 with a focus of driving the rotation from your hips.

3-Point Touch: this is a build on to the 1/10 Drill. As you’re kicking on your side, you’ll bring your arm through to a high elbow recovery position. A good touch point (#1) is to touch your armpit with your thumb. From here, while continuing to kick, you’ll move your arm backward through the recovery phase and touch (#2) your hip (i.e., back to your original position). Finally, you’ll go through the full arm recovery motion and rotate to your opposite side when your hand touches (#3) the entry point of your recovery.

1 X 100 Kick
Don’t hold back early on. Your first 1 X 100 kick should be an all-out effort on a very generous interval. The 100 is broken down (2 X 50s; 4 X 25s) as you move through the Main Set with the focus being to match of beat your pace on the “100” from the earlier rounds.

6 X 25s
These are designed to set you up for the 400s. Each round you’ll subtract a 25 from either the cruise 25s or the build 25s and add those to the pace 25s. The pace 25s should target your goal pace for the upcoming 400.

1 X 400
Set your pace on the first 400. Then, as you move through the Main Set, try to descend your pace, by focusing on your 50 pace, for each subsequent 400. The 400s cut the distance in half each round to build a 400. The final full 400 should match your pace that you set during 50s #5–8 of “400” #4.

Warm Down

Because this is a heavy distance freestyle workout, your Warm Down will focus on doing something opposite with your shoulders by alternating between a 50 backstroke and a 50 backstroke drill of your choice for at least 10 minutes.