devashish_paul wrote:
ericmulk wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
B_Doughtie wrote:
To bring it back on course, I think it was a podcast in Nov or December with LS who said one of the 2 biggest improvements he saw in the swim was because of masters/group swim training and swimming 1st workout of day. The interesting thing about that is that I think the group environment is more effective than the swimming first. Atleast for the developing pro that i've worked with recently, she swims alone and she said she swims better after a 30 min spin session in the early AM versus just driving to the pool and swimming (even if she does band stretches as part of her warm up). So I think a lot of it is motivation and training environment. I actually for 2 months made her swim first and then on a few hard swim sessions we tried an new approach of doing 30 min spin at home basically after waking up. She said she felt more connected in the water after the bike (even when swimming alone) then she did when she swam 1st thing but did it alone.
Hi Brooks, I am glad to hear your feedback. The rolling out of bed and "drive to the pool" routine has always resulted in a poor swim for me at least for the first 30 minutes. It's fine if the swim is 90 minutes, but if the swim is 45 minutes, then it feels like loosing 2/3 to "getting into the groove". Like your athlete, if I get out of bed a touch earlier and sit on the spin bike at low intensity to be completely awake and warmed up before driving to the pool, then I will have a good swim. A few time on biz travel, I have a 20 min walk to the pool and that works too. It's a no go, doing bed to car to pool. I definitely agree with ajthomas that my swim workout are best when I am full of energy for them. I also do some weekend late day "easy swims" that are 45 minutes after 3-6 hours of training first thing in the morning. Those swims kind of suck, but they set me up better for tomorrow. They tend to open up my hips and core for the next day that might be all jammed up from all that aero position riding or riding in the drops.
I think you guys are coming at this from a bike-centric viewpoint; no swimmer would warm up for a workout on the bike. The time expenditure is same so would it not make much more sense to warm up the exact swim muscles rather than just your cardio system??? Make it an 1:15 swim workout instead of 30 min spin and 45 min swim.
Erik, just read properly rather than inject your biases. I clearly said that I can't go from wake up into the car, or into the pool. I need to do something else before pool to get my blood flowing and muscles warmed up. Sitting on a spin bike to wake up is convenient. Walking 20-30 min to the pool is fine too (I gave that example). Walking and then jogging a bit would be fine too. If I spent 20 minutes stretching in the sauna or a hot shower it would be OK too. Just can't go bed--->car--->pool. Did you even read my posts rather than make accusations of being bike centric? It's got nothing to do with the bike and everything to do with warming up and waking up and being alert.
Back when I was a poor college student living off campus, I didn't own a car. To get to morning practice, I had to either walk or ride my bike (usually chose to ride, even in the middle of winter. They were all side streets with no traffic.) Worked as a good warmup before practice started.
Swimming Workout of the Day: Favourite Swim Sets: 2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly