I find the higher my top end speed is.. my mid range speed just feels alot more efficient..
when i was tapering for provincials (swimming).. one of the last workouts i did was 10*50 on 2.. best avg.. and i started on 32's, and went down to 28's.. from push(meters).. and it felt hard, but form was good .. and suprise suprise.. i pb'd my 1500.. (huge pb).. but the cool thing was just how easy my 1500 speed felt.. so i think its really important to work on all aspects of your "gears" all season to keep the top end form cause it definatly affects your lower end

Good post mate.

I too fall into the 'not enough gears' category.

I presume you just have to practise swimming at different speeds to get good at it.

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kiwipat

per ardua ad astra

Aztec,

Once again, i'm in the same slow boat with you in the water. I go right at pace, with just about the same spread (10 seconds) between my all out 50 interval & my 50 average on 1000. So, do we put on the fins to get the all out 50's faster, or maybe swim 25s all out ?? i don't know...

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what means this word 'change'? .....
Rappstar

Up untill this year I was a one gear swimmer.

This February I started working out with a tri coach and pushing my swimming a lot. The coaching has certainly helped me refine my stroke ( or develop a stroke ).

I would usually do a 100yd TT during the last 1/4 of my workout. In January I was just breaking 1:40 (yeah, I am slow). Currently I am hitting 1:24 and staying around 1:28 on a longer set of best average.

The other night I did a sustained easy set where I did 17 x 100 with just enough rest to hit the lap counter on my watch and was averaging 1:43.

I do not have a huge variation between fast and aerobic but the variation I do have I feel has come from both my coaching and the class enviornment. I push myself faster when there is someone younger and skinnier than me that I can beat. Is that so wrong?

alan

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Everbody looks good at the starting line.

I won't try and comment on what this means to the average triathlete but I have at my fingertips all the times for my kids 350 member age group team so I picked 2 swimmers' times to put it up here for you all to mull over.

Here is the pace spread for my daughter. She's 12 and has been swimming for several years. She's pretty average for a 12 year old which would mean she would probably be a FOP triathlete swimmer in a local sprint tri.

25 yd fr 14

50 fr 29.2

100 fr 1:04.8 (32.4 pace)

200 fr 2:20 (35.2 pace)

500 fr 6:17 (39 pace)

So, you have about a 10 seconds per 50 difference in pace from her 50 to her 500.

This next one probably does not have too much relevance to any tri swimmer but it is fun to look at. Here's a comparison with the fastest high school boy on the team. He's a distance specialist and one of the top swimmers in the state:

50 yd fr 22.13

200 fr 1:39.2 (24.75 pace/50)

500 fr 4:32.9 (27.2 pace)

1000 fr 9:38.5 (28.9 pace)

FAST as per page 11 means "As fast as you can possibly swim for the given distance."

That means that your 75's and 50's are swam all out and then you get to recover for the rest of the Swim Interval (SI)

I don't think this gives you "different gears" but it will make you a faster swimmer by giving you a chance to swim as fast as you can and then get a lot of recovery time.

Here is the full workout AE#5
warm up
300SW 300K 300PULL
200SW 200K 200PULL

Main set A
6X75 FAST 2:00SI
300 PULL
6X50 FAST 1:10SI
200 K
6X50 FAST 1:30SI

100 cool down

All this talk about 25s and 50s is crazy. Even for a sprint triathlon, you need to train for the swim as if you were a distance swimmer. Aerobic work is the way to increase your overall speed, especially for longer swims. An Olympic distance tri has a 1500 meter swim. That is equivalent to the longest swim that exists in pool swimming.

Swim like a swimmer, bike like a biker, run like a runner.

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John Kenny, Pro Triathlete, USAT Certified Coach - http://www.frenchcreekracing.com
Philly Masters and Open Water
Swim and Multisport Events

This is an easy one. In order to know what it feels like to swim fast in a race YOU MUST PRACTICE SWIMMING HARD WHILE WORKING OUT. These days swimming is not about quantity but quality. The Australians have this down to a science. Grant Hackett and Ian Thorpe aren't busting out 20,000 swim sessions a day to go as fast as they are right now. Nope. They are, at max, doing 14,000 per day. But, included in those 14,000 meters are some sick sets. I read that one set was 8 x 400 on the 6:00 (LCM). Where Thorpe started out at around 4:00 and ended up around 3:50 on his last one. That's the trick. You have to train your body to know what to expect in a race. I am certainly not saying that you need to do this for all of your workouts. Heck no. Aerobic training has been proven to have its place. But, in order to know what swimming fast feels like you have to do it. Train your weaknesses, race your strenghts! Bruce Gennari

even the distance swimmers (1500 guys, 800 women) work on sprinting. Just like the sprinters do some endurance work. Speed and endurance are both important.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

There are a whole lot of swim coaches that would dissagree with you.

Distance swimmers allways swim short intervals during their practices. At least the 50 of them that I know.

jaretj

Agreed. Note however that even Maglischo (sp?) mentions that distance swimmers MUST practice faster repeats now and then, as swimming long pace sets will erode one's upper end speed.

So I'm not suggesting that I'm suddenly going to start doing only <100y repeats, but rather that by completely skipping shorter stuff with a proportionally harder effort, I think I might've not developed at all. My longer pace is faster, but my shorter duration speeds are unchanged.

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Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

Yup, that's the one! I still hold back a little during FAST repeats. My stroke changes (for the worse) when I go 100 all out. Keeping just a tiny bit in reserve still leaves me wiped out at the end. I need ALL of that 1:10 and 1:30 to recover. The good news was that I was only maybe 1sec slower with the 1:10 SI rather than the 1:30 SI.

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**************
Too f@ckin depressed from various injuries to care about having a signature line.

Sponsored by Blue Shield PPO.

I'm glad you posted this....

As recommended in the "High Elbow" thread I did a hard short workout last night with very poor results of course.

I did a Warm up a few drills and then 5 x 50.

First thing I noticed is doing a hard 50 is hard, and likely pushing 50's right now for me is just to long. I slowed considerably in the last 5-10 yards. Result was my 50's were coming in around 54-57 seconds, yeh I suck.

After the 5 50's I went to 25's. Of course I don't know what I'm doing but the 25's "felt right". At an "All out" effort I started to feel some fatigue after 5 or so and with the longer rest was able to do 15 25's without teh time falling off. I probably could have done more but ran out of time. The frightening thing was that the 25's maxed out where only coming in around 25-27 sec. IOW my slow 25's where nearly the same as my 50's.

Absolutely nothing I tried, short stroke, pull hard, kick faster etc etc made my 25's faster. I did find that forcing a quicker turnover via early recovery made me slower, the 27 sec repeats and really reaching and pulling quickly, made me faster....24.8 secs....whooo hooo!.

At this point I'm fairly conviced I simply lack the endurance and power to get a fast enough turn over to be faster. I'm guessing the only way to get there i swim faster and more....

~Matt

That one kicks my butt too.

I think the object of the workout is to work on your anerobic engine and to get good at swimming fast.

I started following the workout schedule in the beginning of the book last summer, I was very surprised at my gains with a lower total volume. I feel that it was the combination of the workouts rather than the total yards that helped me the most.

jaretj

Every two weeks I do an hour of just 25 sprints. Keep them on the 20 seconds for a half hour and then do them on the 25 for the next half hour. Concentrate on keeping form and really feeling the catch. It always lead to me feeling faster and better connected on my long swims.

Good job man.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

OK, that's just mean.

Congrats on rearing a fast swimming gal. Mine are just starting swim team (9 and 11) and their times are no where near that now; how long did it take for your daughter to go under 30 for 50? Are those race times and from a block start?

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Mr. Uncaptured External Costs

Fossil carbon is planetary poison.

you can't expect much improvement from one 5x50 /250 yd speed set. you should just consider it a baseline. keep it up 4-5x a week for 6 months and you'll see improvement. try swimming with zoomer type fins. I started swimming 1-2 sessions a week with zoomers and have definitely seen improvement since starting. the increased speed gives you better feedback and a stronger kick helps me rotate.

I think you have discovered the problem that Sheila Taormina wrote about in an article that was critical of Total Immersion. http://www.slowtwitch.com/...nter/propulsion.html

TI, drills, body position, high elbows, bi-lateral breathing, etc. may all help you develop a better stroke, and may even make you a little faster, but speed comes from the propulsion portion of your stroke! If you don't push against the water harder, you aren't going to go faster. Arm Recovery, Catch, Shoulder Roll, Hand Position, etc. all just put you in better position to make the strongest and most efficient pull possible, but if you don't actually pull, you won't go anywhere.

"200 fr 1:39.2 (24.75 pace/50)"

Ok well...that sucks. This High schooler is doing a pace for 200yds that is exactly 2X as fast as my ALL OUT 25yd sprint pace....god I suck. Congrats to him though.

I always find it a tad depressing when I look up at the 8-9 yr old girls pool records on the while when I'm swimming. Typically I'm no where near their pace.....But I'd crush them on the run. Well or so I thought until a friend of mine's 11 year old son ran a 20:21 5K a couple weeks ago. Luckily I was doing the 10 miler that day.

~Matt

Our masters share the pool with the kid's club. I always swim on the opposite side of them so I don't have to be humbled by little squirts passing me.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

I wasn't expecting an improvement from one workout, I was just surprised that there was little to no difference between my 25 and 50yd pace.

In fact I will use this workout as a "Baseline" 3-4 months from now I hope to god I'm able to go faster and farther than this.

~Matt

I feel ya: I find it very difficult to swim really easy or really hard.

As in 500 at 1:25 pace feels quite easy while 100s under 1:15 with a ton of rest is exhausting. I also want to spread out my swim pacing, so this is a good thread.

In running and cycling my range is much bigger, pace-wise. Still trying to figure out the swimming part.

The difference between a top pro cyclist and the average guy is not only his top speed, but also his ability to almost instatnly change speeds, and do it over and over. The best pros will attack and attack again and again and so on util the last guy with him can't cover the attack. It is this change in speed that breaks the loosers down.

Swimming is no different, you need to be able to swim fast to swim fast, that really is the bottom line. The only way to get fast is to swim fast in your W/O's. I do at least one speed W/O a week. Last night was the night. Here was the W/O

W/U- 200 EZ

8x100 on 1:30 Alt Swim or Kick/Drill by 25's

6x50 25 build, 25 swim :10 sec rest

10x 150 on 2:45 (lots o rest) first 100 fastest possbile avg speed, followed by 50EZ

W/D 8x50 Drill 25 Swim 25

On the 150's my first 100was nearly all out, but not a full sprint, remember fast possible average. One other thing i notice about "non" swimmers it that in general they have no clue what time they held for a set. Learning to watch the clock and remember your times is an important training tool. Here are my 100's from last night.

1:02, 1:00, 1:00, :59, :59, :58, 1:00, 1:00, :59, :58

Notice two things- first I didn't plow straight into the set, my slowest one was first, then I eased into a 1:00-58 second range and held. Second my total range was only 4 seconds difference from my slowest to my fastest. A set like this is great for learning to swim fast and be able to maintain that speed. Just to point out the range of speed at play here. If I were just cruising with minimal effort i would hold 1:15's, Bump it up a bit and you get the 59's i was holding on 150's, and for a full out sprint I would guess I could crank out a 50.xx right now. That ammounts to a 25 second difference per 100 between cruising along and full on sprint or abour 33%.

It is also helpful to do a set of all out swims- something like 8x50s on 2-3 min interval or 6x100 on 4-5 min. These should be All Out vomit on the last one fast. In this case don't worry about holding an average, the idea is to suffer and learn to swim while fatigued, which will eventually build swimming strength.

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I'm just a 10 cent rider on a $2,500.00 Bike