We’ve covered so much on technique and strength, but ultimately, we need fitness to get even faster.
Here are the steps you can follow to increase and maximize your swim fitness.
Establish Your Threshold
Sprint / Short Distance Swimmers:
– 3 x 100 (:20RI – Rest Interval) keeping each 100 within 5 seconds of each other.
Olympic/Half (Medium Distance Swimmers)
– 3 x 300 (:30RI – Rest Interval) keeping each 300 within 15 seconds of each other.
Ironman/ Long Distance Swimmers: 1000 Time Trial:
** Your average 100 speed for any of these tests gives you your Threshold Pace (T-Pace).
Train the Energy Systems
Endurance Form:
These sessions are kept easy with form as the main focus.
- Warm-Up: swim, kick and pull sets (5-10minutes) ie: 200 SW/ 200 K/ 200 P
- Main Set: Drill and Swim followed by a distance swim to feel the effects of the drills.
- 4 x (25 Right Arm Only, 25 Left Arm Only, 50 Swim)
- 200-600m Tempo Swim
- Repeat the sequence with Fist Drill, then Drag and Tag Drill.
- Cool-Down: mixed stroke (back, breast) – 5minutes
Muscular Endurance:
The primary goal of these sessions is to improve fatigue resistance.
- Warm-Up: with swim and drill sets (5-10minutes) ie: 200 SW/ 50 Single Arm / 50 Swim/ 100 SW
- Main Set: Incorporate effort sets with short rest intervals.
- 6 x 100 @ T-Pace (:15RI) or 10 x 100 @ Race Pace (:15RI)
Alternate Main Sets that promote muscular endurance:
- Pyramids – 100/ 200/ 400/ 200/ 100 with varying but short rest intervals (RI) such as (:15/ :30/ :45/ :30/ :15)
- Descending Reps – 8 x 200’s getting faster every 2 sets.
- Cool-Down: mixed stroke (5min)
Force Sets:
These strength-producing workouts use paddles, fins, pull buoy, or other devices to promote more drag or increase resistance in the water.
- Warm-Up: With swim and kick sets ie: 200 SW/ 100 K/ 100 P/ 100 SW
- Main Set: Swim steady-state to tempo followed by speed.
- 200-300 Pull (with pull buoy only)
- 4-6 x 50 Pull Fast
- 4-8 x 50 Pull with buoy and paddles
- Cool-Down: mixed stroke (5min)
Skills Development
Skills and strategy give us the final components for ultimate performance.
Pace and Draft:
Pacing Workouts:
- 10 x 100, 6 x 200, 4 x 500, teach us how to evenly pace. If we start out too hard we fizzle out. We can train some lactate clearance but ultimately it’s proper pacing that utilizes our energy as evenly as possible through an endurance event.
Negative Splits:
- Start out slowly and build speed through the second half of the efforts, another great racing strategy.
Mix It Up:
It’s worth noting that the concept of glide and pull carry over to all swim strokes. Even though freestyle is the fastest stroke (hence used for open water swimming) the other strokes incorporate multi-planar movement and reinforce great technique and feel for the water.
Backstroke offers the opposite rotation in the shoulder than freestyle. In backstroke, the shoulder externally rotates during entry and recovery phases. Like freestyle, it incorporates the transverse (rotational) plane which compliments the dominant sagittal (forward and back) plane of most other sports especially cycling.
Breaststroke emphasizes movement in the frontal (side to side) plane, particularly the lower body. Our bodies really benefit from changing it up.
Moving our bodies through the water offers us an entirely different approach to movement, taking us back to our original environment. Swimming can be an absolute joy and recovery tool, suspending and immersing us in liquid. Outdoor pools, lakes, and oceans are by far my favorite places to swim because I am taken back to summers as a child when my father would play games with me and my sisters, teach us how to dive through ocean waves, and inadvertently gave us the skills to navigate and appreciate swimming. I hope the concepts and tips presented here help impart that joy to you also.
