There are a ton of low cost options for daily strength training workouts out there. Lots of gyms have apps or low monthly fee structure programs that give you a daily general strength workout.
Is there something reputable and similar in swimming? Just a daily swimming workout with some intervals and scaling options. Just want some more “structure” to my pool time.
Seems I can’t find anything, closest I can find is Tower 26 which is ridiculously over priced.
I don’t think you need much at all given that most triathletes are not competing in the 50m fly, 50 back, 50 breast, 50 free. If you are competing at the shortest swim events even those are still well over 20 seconds for most people meaning endurance factors in.
For everyone else, lat pull downs, push ups, bridges, sit ups done in 5-10 min per day watching TV (minus the lat pulldowns for which you need a machine) . The more body weight core stuff you do the better because the core connects the legs which are the anchor connecting body to water to the motion of the shoulders.
Thanks Dev.
Should clarify, my bad!
Not looking for strength workouts, I am looking for a daily swim workout.
Honestly, I go to the pool without a “plan” in place for the workout and I always end up loosing interest and leaving. But I am not looking for a structured training plan at this point, just some general direction to some daily structure.
Just kinda something to keep me honest, but not debate “what do I do today”
Ok sorry, It depends on goals, but lots of sets of 50’s and 100’s are you friend regardless (your best strokes are always the first 10 off rest or first 7 off the wall…after that it is downhill, so best to break it up).
It’s not a super cheap app, but MySwimPro has an on-demand workout option that generates a workout on the fly based on how you’re feeling, what you want to do, which strokes you want to practice, what equipment you have available, etc. It works pretty well when I’m not doing a plan but don’t feel like just doing endless laps, just to have some variety. (It’s marketed as “AI” so I suspect it’s just using ChatGPT behind the scenes, so you could also just use that, but MySwimPro has the advantage of syncing the generated workout to my watch.)
There are a series of “swim workout in a binder” books out there, search on amazon or other bookstores. They’ll give you a pretty good variety of workouts.
I tried to link to one of them on amazon, but it wasn’t working properly in the preview.
Most swim workouts are pretty similar, they look more intimidating than bike/run but it’s just split into more sets. Once you have the pattern you can more or less jump in the pool and pick what main set you want and what drills you feel you need on the day, no more complicated than that.
200-500 Easy warmup (straight or however you want to split)
200-500 Drills
1k-3k Work sets (15x100, 10x200, 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1, 6x400)
100-200 cool down
Not free, but USMS.org has swim workouts that you can elect to be emailed to you every week. I only do freestyle so when says IM or back I sub pulls, fins, or paddles, etc.
Totally free, reputable and very useful resource for swim sets is…SLOWTWITCH! Go to the swimming forum and find the “fish thread” for this (or any previous) month, then scroll through and see what the really good swimmers do for their workouts. Then, scale rest times and sets as necessary. There are some seriously fast swimmers posting their workouts, so you may need to extend rest / do fewer reps, but there are lots of ideas there. You can then post your workout in the thread and that will also help to motivate you and keep you engaged with the process.
Might take a look at SwimPlan.com. As I’m an Adult swimmer, can’t speak to the quality, but I like their workouts. Seem more focused to freestyle which fits the Tri need. They are cheap and configurable. I think you can join free and try out some workouts as well.