Hi everyone
I’ve set a couple of swimming goals for the end of March. Thats exactly 12weeks. I’m going to put my goals and subsequent prep here so as to hold my feet to the fire. If there’s any opinions etc on any sessions, or my plans etc PLEASE go ahead!
The target is a LCM meeting in 12 weeks. I really want to focus on my straight speed. My goals are (in order of priority)
100m LCM free < 1:00
50m LCM free < 28:00
50m LCM fly < 30:00
A supplementary goal I have is to get < 80kgs by the day BEFORE race day. Currently I’m at ~87kgs as these last few months have been poor diet wise (understatement). For some perspective I have done both 2. and 3. in SCM (but not LCM) and just missed 1 (1:00:2) a few months ago. In the lead up to that meet I did ~10wks of directed training towards the 100m/50m free. My starts/turns/underwaters are relatively good so I’m expecting to lose 1s-1.5s moving to LCM. So to achieve these goals I’ll need substantial improvement.
For a variety of personal reasons (xmas holidays, and moving house) the next few weeks are likely to be pretty disjointed and keeping an exact plan will be difficult. I plan to keep a similar session plan to my last prep - that is
an endurance session, which tends to be ~1hr, ~2.8-3.0km, and tends to be repeats of middle distance reps (200m’s, 400m’s etc etc)
a speed endurance session ~1hr, repeats of 25m’s, 50m’s, 100m’s etc.
a max speed and technical session I do on my own. I practice my underwaters, turns, break outs etc, and do max speed / power work.
a kick sesssion ~1hr
I’ll start the thread with this morning’s session, which was typical of a ‘max speed / technical’ session. Again input is VERY welcome. If you have any swim goals targets you’re working towards please let me know too - keen to hear what else you are all working on / towards. OK lets do this!
Max effort and technical work session. The ‘dead start’ drill I have very recently started doing, because I realise I have an issue where when I hit 100% on my stroke my kicking kinda dies off. It feels like a a coordination issue. So in that drill I have a brief start where I am JUST doing max effort kick, then add in my arms and try to retain the kicking.
10 x 15m push start ME (max effort) UWK (under water kick). Repeat on 1:00
(i) 5 x 15m max effort UWK but start swimming from the flags into the turn. Focus on fast tight turn and perfect streamline off the wall. Repeat on 1:00.
(ii) repeat 2 (i) above
(iii) as above but also include breakout - 6 ME strokes
10x what I call ‘dead starts’ with snorkel and paddles. start 15m from the wall
lying flat. First start ME kick for a couple seconds, then add ME stroke into the wall.
Might I suggest you post this in the monthly fishes forum on the main page. You will get a lot more looks and feed back from guys that can actually do those times and better, and some of us that do them with our age group handicaps…
how old are you and what was your best swim times from college or other time periods in your life??
Hardly anyone looks at these minor threads, it was my first visit in weeks…
im 40. i havent swum lessons / squads since primary school but tbh i’ve spent a huge amount of time at the beach my whole life. ive never done pool races before this year (i did my first in august, which was maybe 4-5 months after starting to work on my swimming specifically). my surf swimming is pretty good and gets relatively better the bigger / rougher the surf. i did a 58:xx at busselton in 2022 and 27:xx at huskisson in feb this year which is a big local half distance. those are my best tri swim times. so i think i have some natural ability for swimming well, but in my tri experience that was always more than ruined by my terrible running… ive had a rough couple years of work and travel so feel quite a way off the kind of … but thanks ill switch it over now!
thats a good point. i guess if very directed swim threads need to move to main page these sub-threads have no hope. what i might do is change my original thread to a more generic ‘post your event / date specific swim target and update everyone on how your prep is going and how the event went’. ill add mine at the top. if the swimming page never takes off well so be it i guess. right now im suffering from three straight days of disgusting over eating / drinking … i think i can get back to my plan tomorrow