So my swimming is going well, and I attend 2 Master classes a week and 1 lone swim. I have been thinking as I progress to tri season I might change my single session to a interval style where I focus on swimming at CSS. I would refer you to this swim smooth page to see what I mean.
Has anyone have any input on using this “CSS” as your interval pace guide?
Anyone have experience with a Tempo Pro trainer?
Anyone like Mayo on their burgers? With or without relish?
S
Anyone have experience with a Tempo Pro trainer?
Anyone like Mayo on their burgers? With or without relish?
Tempo pro Trainer is a great little device for lone swimming in my humble opinion. Helps you keep the pace you want to be training at, and can be used to develop stroke count if you need to.
Mayo is full of horrible things. Stick to relish which is only partially full of horrible things.
Important things first. Mayo only goes on a burger if it has bacon, lettuce and tomato. Relish only belongs on hot dogs, not burgers. Burgers need pickles.
I’ve looked at the CSS stuff before, but I don’t remember what it said. I’ll have a look and see how it lines up with what our masters coach dishes out…
I was thinking it would be a nice training aide.
Relish is where it is at. I never put mayo on my BBQ burgers, which my wife mixes up and they are awesome.
There is more than 1 kind of relish. The sweet green relish is made for a good burger. I will also have it on a hot dog.
Do you use a Temp trainer?
There is more than 1 kind of relish. The sweet green relish is made for a good burger. I will also have it on a hot dog.
Do you use a Temp trainer?
I’m familiar with about 20 different kinds of relish, it doesn’t matter. Relish is for dogs, not burgers. Unless you are out of pickles (yum-yums are preferred…), then relish is a somewhat acceptable substitute.
I’ve never used the tempo trainer. One of the guys I swim with has used it in the past, but I don’t think he’s using it anymore. I know RealAB uses one…
Hmmm, maybe someone on this site has a used one for sale?
Anyway, I think I am going to give it a shot. At the very least it could help me with learning to pace. Which I still find difficult as I often go out a little too fast on my initial 25. This was also a huge problem with my biking, until I got a power meter.
So my swimming is going well, and I attend 2 Master classes a week and 1 lone swim. I have been thinking as I progress to tri season I might change my single session to a interval style where I focus on swimming at CSS. I would refer you to this swim smooth page to see what I mean.
Has anyone have any input on using this “CSS” as your interval pace guide?
Anyone have experience with a Tempo Pro trainer?
Anyone like Mayo on their burgers? With or without relish?
I’ve used the Tempo Trainer on and off and I like it for some stuff. Shorter intervals I don’t really like using it because if you set it to beep every 25m/y then you either have to reset it after every interval, or take a full beep of rest, which in most cases is way too long of a rest (say you’re doing 1:40/100, then it beeps every 25 sec in a 25m pool, and a 25s rest is just huge for a 100 or 200m interval imo) I used it for 400m intervals but I don’t do those very often 
I did find it useful in performing 1000m TT’s. I would have a rough idea of what I was capable of, converted that to 25m beeps, and then made sure to stick to that for at least the first part of the TT. Helped me prevent overpacing. It also has a different mode where it can beep to a stroke rate, which I should do more often, but it really isn’t something I can do for a very long time.
Ketchup, mustard, onion, & tomato. No mayo or relish.
Mark
So my swimming is going well, and I attend 2 Master classes a week and 1 lone swim. I have been thinking as I progress to tri season I might change my single session to a interval style where I focus on swimming at CSS. I would refer you to this swim smooth page to see what I mean.
Has anyone have any input on using this “CSS” as your interval pace guide?
Anyone have experience with a Tempo Pro trainer?
Anyone like Mayo on their burgers? With or without relish?
I tried it for a while but didn’t like it very much. Swimming at CSS all the time got boring and I plateau’d. When I used the tempo trainer I had it beep on every stroke. I found sometimes it would help me not overglide, but other times I would rush the recovery and still glide too much. That said it might work for others and I enjoyed the first 6-8 weeks because the training approach was different.
Beef, turkey, veggie burger? If a chicken burger, mayo is a no brainer.
I don’t think I’d like the tempo trainer to set stroke rate. I’d probably just use it as a “pace per 50” on longer swims to see if I’m ahead of or behind a target pace.
Best burger I’ve had…
lettuce, tomato, cheese, bacon, peanut butter.
Simply awesome…
http://www.thecoast.ca/halifax/best-burger/BestOf?oid=1641484
CSS, some of the original work done by Wakayoshi et al. in 1992 and Enid Ginn in 1993. Ginn’s writing on the matter can be found here…
http://www.tpesportscoaching.com/Ginn_1993b.pdf
This is worth the read!
It is a far simpler test to administer and also monitor… (the old adage of if you aren’t measuring you are managing…). Mathematically it is pretty simple…
CSS (m or yds/sec) = (400 - 50) / ( 400 time in secs - 50 time in secs)
From my work with adult onset swimmers and a very high familiarity with critical power/pace concepts, like Ginn I found a small discrepancy between the two, CP being roughly 102% of CSS.
Why is this relevant?..
Well if you felt you wanted to base swim sets around training zones (I don’t nor do I agree with this) then you might be more keen to know your CP and work off zones of paces from there.
If you felt “hardwiring in” the stroke mechanics with technique under load IMHO you’d be more interested in CSS. Because it is this pace that you should/could base hold pace sets off.
My take would be the reason Swimsmooth apply a slightly different CSS protocol is to try to bridge the gap between CSS and CP in a convenient manner.
Regards,
David
CSS, some of the original work done by Wakayoshi et al. in 1992 and Enid Ginn in 1993. Ginn’s writing on the matter can be found here…
http://www.tpesportscoaching.com/Ginn_1993b.pdf
This is worth the read!
It is a far simpler test to administer and also monitor… (the old adage of if you aren’t measuring you are managing…). Mathematically it is pretty simple…
CSS (m or yds/sec) = (400 - 50) / ( 400 time in secs - 50 time in secs)
From my work with adult onset swimmers and a very high familiarity with critical power/pace concepts, like Ginn I found a small discrepancy between the two, CP being roughly 102% of CSS.
Why is this relevant?..
Well if you felt you wanted to base swim sets around training zones (I don’t nor do I agree with this) then you might be more keen to know your CP and work off zones of paces from there.
If you felt “hardwiring in” the stroke mechanics with technique under load IMHO you’d be more interested in CSS. Because it is this pace that you should/could base hold pace sets off.
My take would be the reason Swimsmooth apply a slightly different CSS protocol is to try to bridge the gap between CSS and CP in a convenient manner.
Regards,
David
Can you expand on the bolded statement?
I use the tempo trainer when I’m doing intervals, say 20x100s. I will also use it on a continuous swim. It is a good training aid as most of my swimming is done alone. It’s pretty easy to setup and operate. You don’t have to wait for the beep on a rest interval. I will simply attempt to remember where in the pool it beeped on my next interval and try and keep the beeping at the same place for that particular interval.
No mayo on burgers…ketchup, lettuce, tomatoes and the best part of all, grilled onions. Hodad’s in San Diego is the place to go.
You don’t have to set it to such a long beep interval. I’ll set mine to half of what it’s supposed to be so it beeps at the wall and halfway down the length of the pool. So for example a 1:20 CSS pace I would set to beep at 10 seconds.
You can also hit the top button (I think), and it will restart the beeping pattern. Set it to beep, finish whenever, and when your rest interval is done, hit the top button when you take off for the next interval – it’ll beep again at 25s or whatever you’ve set it at.
…
Well if you felt you wanted to base swim sets around training zones (I don’t nor do I agree with this) then you might be more keen to know your CP and work off zones of paces from there.
Can you expand on the bolded statement?
Sure. Firstly a caveat… if you grew up competing in swimming at HS or college this is less relevant. However the majority of triathletes are adult onset swimmers and as such their stroke technique under load (swimming anything but easy or for long time) lacks. So there isn’t much sense in swimming sets of 400’s, 500’s, 1000’s etc… if you can only hold your stroke together for 200-300m before it degrades and then you are just engraining poor technique. On top of that triathletes really aren’t afforded enough time in the water to be doing aerobic conditioning in the true sense of aerobic conditioning that a long distance swimmer would.
If you are trying to develop the neural pathways to function faster and endure longer it is far better to do lots of shorter interval distances with accompanying rest that allow you to hold your stroke mechanics together. You can play around with length of recovery to affect lactate responses, you can play around with drag tools to pressure the load end of the continuum in the “technique under load”… but adult onset swimmers really want to be doing as much as possible to improve feel for the water and “hardwire in” good stroke mechanics.
Regards,
David
Totally Agree with Dave on this one. Speaking from a long competitive swim background.
Focus on technique as much as possible for as long as possible. Sets of 200’s or 300’s with exerted effort and a specific rest period (focusing on “feel”) will pay off in the long run rather than longer sets of just mindless junk stroke form.
Try to video your stroke underwater for workouts and try to find when and where your stroke falls apart.
Its all relative to how serious you want to improve your swim. The more efficient your stroke becomes the more energy you conserve and that results in more energy for the rest of your race.
Thats my .02
Good Luck and happy training everyone!!!
I agree too, just was not sure what he meant by “zone training” within this context. My Masters coach has taught me how to train like a swimmer and it has worked (dropped my 1000scm time by 8 seconds per 100m in less then 2months) but the CSS swim sets looked intriguing as an addition to my current interval workouts. Their longest example of interval distance was 400’s, if I remember correctly.