Weekly Swim Workout #12
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: Let’s Fly!!!
Note: the workout is listed above; what follows is the why / purpose as well as descriptions of workout components and drills
Warm Up
This week’s workout is butterfly focused. Therefore, the Warm Up includes butterfly drills to help set you up for the Main Set. A description of the drills used in this week’s workout are outlined below.
For the Warm Up, cycle through a pattern of freestyle, kicking, and butterfly drills. Use the single arm butterfly drills in the Warm Up to help focus your attention to the undulating motion of butterfly while also attending to the timing of your arm cycle with your kick. Be sure not the rush the drills in the Warm Up—your body is at it’s freshest point here so use this to build good muscle memory for when you body starts to fatigue.
Main Set
The Main Set includes three Rounds of the following pattern:
6 X 100 descend freestyle
1 X 50 reset
4 X 50 butterfly drills
4 X 25 underwater dolphin kicking
25s all out dolphin kick
2 X 25 all out butterfly
6 X 100 Descend Freestyle
The aim here is to help you work on controlled pacing. Pay particular attention to your times to ensure that you are descending each 100. Note that the interval drops by 10 seconds each Round.
These are purposely integrated into this week’s workout to create accumulated fatigue over the course of the Main Set. As fatigue builds, it is easy for your form to falter. Therefore, what follows in the Main Set, are drills to help you focus on your butterfly form while you are tired.
1 X 50 Reset
Use this as active recovery to bring your heart rate down before jumping into the butterfly drills.
4 X 50 Butterfly Drills
Flow Drill: The focus here is on body undulation. You want to aim to get your whole body into the movement of the butterfly stroke. On the surface of the water, with your arms shoulder-width apart (think 1 o’clock and 11 o’clock), work to undulate your body from your fingertips to your toes. Start the undulating motion by focusing on pushing your hands down and then work to get your entire body to follow along the same line. In essence, aim to mimic a dolphin. We highly recommend using fins and a swim snorkel to help you isolate your focus on this drill.
Single Arm Butterfly: This is build on the Flow Drill and, in short, is a broken version of swimming butterfly. Using the same undulating motion from the Flow Drill, add in a single arm butterfly stroke per every two dolphin kicks. With this drill, pay attention to kick timing. You should notice that there is a more exaggerated dolphin kick during your arm cycle followed by a more relaxed or “light” dolphin kick during your arm cycle. For this drill, swim a 25 using only your right arm followed by a 25 using only your left arm. As with the drill above, we recommend using fins and a swim snorkel.
2s (2–2–2–2): Building off the last drill, swim two full butterfly strokes, followed by two strokes with your right arm, followed by two strokes with your left arm, and then complete the cycle with two full butterfly strokes. In theory, you should complete a full 25 after one cycle. We recommend using fins with this drill.
Fists: This is a particularly challenging drill and is performed to help you find surface area in your pull when your hands are taken away. In short, make fists with both hands as you swim butterfly. Aim for a high elbow catch to ensure that your forearms are positioned properly to “grab” as much water as possible as you pull through the water. We recommend using fins with this drill.
4 X 25 Underwater Dolphin Kicking
Work your streamline here. As you cycle through the Rounds, you will change the direction that you are facing. The purpose is to help you maintain form while engaging your core in different ways and, more importantly, help your body to build muscle memory so that you learn to work with the water rather than against the water.
25s All Out Dolphin Kick
You’ve had time to work on form and now it’s time to put things together for some fast swimming. Grab your kickboard and kick 25s as hard as you can. Notice that each Round you will add 2 additional 25s; however, you’ll gain 5 additional seconds of rest. The purpose is to build lactate in your legs and tire you out before you go into the final—hypoxic—component of the Main Set.
2 X 25 All Out Butterfly
Just fast butterfly swimming here with a particular focus on your form as you’ve worked so hard on it up to this point. Of note, fight to not breathe on the 25. Swimming is as much mental as it is physical—stretch your comfort zone here.
Warm Down
Given the heavy butterfly focus throughout this week’s workout, the Warm Down focuses on getting your arms to move in the opposite direction to give your shoulders a rest. Simply cycle through the following pattern each 100: double arm backstroke, left arm only backstroke, right arm only backstroke, backstroke. Use the double arm backstroke to open up your chest and then the single arm backstroke to work on good body and shoulder rotation.
