I’m doing about as much swimming as I can without getting my shoulders injured (had problems in the past) and I’ve settled at about 12-15km a week. My 400m time is 6:30, but a month ago I managed 6:15. I’d really like to get below 6 minutes for 400m. Can anyone advise me what sort of plan I could follow to achieve this? I probably only do about 1500m of 50-200m fast reps at the moment during the week, with the rest made up of endurance swims and drills.
So, if I could swim Mon-Fri for 90 minutes each day, while minimising my chance of injury, what could I do? Perhaps Mon,Wed,Fri hard and Tue/Thu recovery/drills?
4-5 x 400m split 200/200. stop, check clock and do the second one faster. long strong strokes… I’ve done 4;36 for 400m. its all about stretching and relaxing
I’m doing about as much swimming as I can without getting my shoulders injured (had problems in the past) and I’ve settled at about 12-15km a week. My 400m time is 6:30, but a month ago I managed 6:15. I’d really like to get below 6 minutes for 400m. Can anyone advise me what sort of plan I could follow to achieve this? I probably only do about 1500m of 50-200m fast reps at the moment during the week, with the rest made up of endurance swims and drills.
Only 10-15% of your swimming is “fast reps”? Way too little. I did 2600 yards this morning, and 1500 of those were intervals.
(1) 10 x 100, as hard as you can while taking less than 10 seconds rest between each 100,
(2) 5 x 200, as hard as you can with less than 20 second rest between each interval,
(3) 4 x 400, with anywhere between 30 and 90 seconds between each 400.
If you are swimming for 90 minutes, maybe do two of those sets with something easy in between.
Every couple of weeks do a set like 5 x 100, with no more than 90 seconds rest, when you sprint as hard as you possibly can.
This is unfair… I barely manage to do 6:50-7:00 on 400m… I’m also stuck at 1min38-1min42 on 100m for more than a year…
We were only 2 at the masters this morning, so the coach helped me a lot and gave me some tricks to glide, be longer in the water, and be patient. I did 100m on the same pace as I usually do, but I felt like I didn’t push (but my puls were +/- the same). What do you think of that? Did anybody has the same issue? Being slower for a couple of weeks, and then breaking the plateau? I swam only 2x/week last year, and I will swim 3x this winter/spring.
Ok, so it seems I’m taking it too easy. I really don’t think my shoulders can take 2000m of intervals every day though. So perhaps I’ll try 50-75% intervals on Mon,Wed,Fri and then take it easy on Tue,Thu. I’ll try this for a couple of weeks and see how I hold up.
For starters, some longer faster repeats like 4 x 400 desc :15 rest… get in 1600-2500 m of good distance freestyling.
20 x 100 :05-:10 sec rest is a good anaerobic threshold set… a little bit of that might help… also, try some fast 100s or 200s on no interval As Fast As You Can Go. Like, off the blocks and pretend you’re racing. When I add those type of sets into my workouts it usually helps.
Lastly, how are your flip turns? If you can do those well it’s free speed - no breathing on the stroke before the wall or the stroke after the turn, make sure you’re streamlining out past the flags…
Start doing stretch cords to work your external rotators, and get someone to look at your stroke and figure out why your shoulders are hurting…
if you have 90 min *5, then increase your milage so your getting at least 20k in/wk, just swim more…
as you increase your mileage, increase your interval amount…
start doing at least 500 m of fly a week… ideally more, and add in band only work… i like 20*25 on 30 band only, going hard, but also do 200’s and 400’s long this smooths out your stroke and increases power/feel!
I was swimming ~10k/wk this summer doing 3 workouts wk, but each of them had about 2k of HARD threshold swimming, now that i’ve increased my swimming I’m up to 25-30k w/k with a fair amount of it slower then before, but the strength/feel for the water is so much better that on doing less absolute intensity I’m faster then before…
people (Triathletes) in general do to much drill/long easy swimming, swimming is interval based, and should be done fairly fast … if your arms are tired, kick more, and learn to do dolphin kick on your back!
