Weekly Swim Workout #11

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: Fatigued Fast Swimming

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

Warm Up

A long warm up this week cycling through the following: 50 free, 50 non-free, 50 kick, and a 50 light build. The Main Set is demanding and non-stop so the Warm Up is designed to help you jump into hard(ish) pacing early on in the Main Set.

The purpose of the non-free, as always, is to get your shoulders and body used to doing something different—ensuring that your muscles are warmed up for various movements throughout the workout. The kick in the Warm Up is essential as the Main Set is leg-driven, so you want to make sure your legs are adequately warmed up. Use the light build to find a bit of speed in the Warm Up and also slightly elevate your heart rate.

Pre-Set

A little extended Warm Up this week designed to prep your body for fast swimming. Variable sprints consist of the following pattern over four 25s: easy/hard, hard/easy, all easy, sprint.

The Main Set involves fast freestyle swimming and fast kicking. So, for the Pre-Set, Round 1 is freestyle and Round 2 is kicking. Use the Pre-Set to find your different gears and to also get your body ready for more anaerobic work in the Main Set.

Main Set

The Main Set includes four Rounds of the following pattern:

1 X 400 pull
4 X 50 descend
Decreasing number of 50s kicking
Increasing number of 25s sprinting
1 X 50 reset

1 X 400 Pull
The pacing for each “400” stays consistent throughout each Round of the Main Set; however, the 400 is broken up in each successive Round, with the final Round consisting of 8 X 50. The purpose of the “400” pull is to find your pacing after hard, sprint freestyle swimming. This can be especially hard as the fatigue starts to set in.

4 X 50 Descend
Use the first 50 to actively recovery after the “400” from above and then turn the crank on each successive 50 to work toward the targeted effort. The targeted effort changes for each Round. On the first Round, you’ll work down to an 80% effort swim, and then add 5% each Round so that on Round 4 the final 50 is done at 100% effort.

Note: pay attention to the clock here to make sure that your times are reflecting your effort. Your fast 50 should be the final 50 of Round 4.

50s Kick
These should be hard and they are purposely placed to tire your legs out before you go into sprinting. Round 1 pushes you right into the hard efforts by starting out with 4 X 50s all out effort. However, each Round you’ll subtract one 50 as well as 10 seconds from the interval. Therefore, by the time you get to Round 4, you will do one all out 50 kick on the 1:00.

Goal: strive to match you kick times throughout the entire workout.

25s Sprint
These should be leg-driven—use your legs to drive the speed here to avoid spinning your arms when you get tired. Round 1 starts off relatively easy with two 25s; however, by the time you get to Round 4, you’ll swim 8 sprint 25s.

Of note, make sure that your odd 25s are from a push and done on an interval of 40 seconds. When you touch, get out of the water so that your even 25s can be done from a dive. Work your starts and your breakouts—your times on the dive 25s should be faster than those from a push.

1 X 50 Reset
Use the generous interval here to float a 50 and set you up for your “400” pull.

Warm Down

An easy 10 minutes of swimming here cycling through a 25 freestyle, 25 backstroke, and a 25 kick without a board. Use the kicking to help flush the lactate out of your body and pay attention to getting a good stretch/reach on your backstroke to help stretch out your body from the fast freestyle swimming.