Do Fish have fins and other mysteries

Triathlon Forum
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So Fish, (and thanks to all who helped me on the last thread), do you have fins? I am hearing two totally different sides to the whole training with fins argument. “A” says it builds your kick, helps you get used to swimming at speed, loosens ankles. “B” says it gives you a false sense of speed, is bad for balance in the water, and on. Sure do see a lot of good swimmers use them though. So do you use them and why?

Also, with the help of many fish here, I’ve come up with a 3 day a week swim/speed building workout to use over the next 5 weeks before the season opening sprint. Please let me know what you think:

Mon. 800 warmup (200 free, 200 kick, 200 drill, 200 pull)
10 x 100 on 1:50 cycle (I do 1:40 per 100, and rest 10 - yes I’m slow, but that’s why I’m doing this stuff :slight_smile: )
10 X 50 Sprints (45 second rest, around 40 sec per 50)
cool down

Wed. 800 warmup (same deal, not too creative here)
500 continuous tempo swim (race simulation)
10 X 25 Sprints with 30 second rest
Cool down

Fri. 800 wu again!
5 x 200 slow to moderate, focusing on form, 10 seconds rest between each
8 x 50 sprints
CD

So how 'bout the fins, and what do you think of the workout? (I’m sure if must seem really basic to most folks here)

2

What the heck does “tempo swim” mean? If it’s a race simulation are you doing a 500 all out?

Mix up your warmup so you go right from a drill, back to SWIMMING, take what you learned from the drill and put it into your stroke. Might be 12 x 75 kick drill swim by 25, for instance.

Do you mean KICK SETS with fins, or swimming with them?
My “fin philosophy” is if I feel like it I grab some. Not rocket science. You have bigger fish to fry than fretting over fins. Just go swim.

3

it depends:

on the type of fins,

how much you use them,

and *how *you use them.

4

You already know my view on fins. I use them and I don’t know any competitive swimmer who doesn’t. Of course it’s easier to justify if you’re swimming more than 35kms a week (the competitive swimmers not me (anymore)). You’re obviously not swimming that much so if you’re going to use them, make sure they don’t dominate the session and make sure you’re not swimming aimlessly, use them for a purpose.

I think your sessions look ok. Personally though, I would go with longer main set and less sprints. You need mileage under your belt (like tigerchik says, just swim). I would add 500-600m to your main sets and keep it to ~4x50 sprints (actually I would have you doing 25m sprints but you want to do 50s so do 50s :slight_smile:

Do you have less time on a Wednesday? Why is that session significantly shorter? Also, with the main set, triathlon swim race pace is pretty slow (after all you’re saving energy for the rest of the race right?) so I’m not sure what you’re trying to achieve here beyond confidence with the distance. If by race simulation you mean max effort then I’d consider breaking the 500 up sometimes. Try it one week as 5x100 max effort with 10 seconds rest after each 100. You’ll hold your stroke together longer and each 100 will be faster.

What drill do you normally do with the warmup? I agree with tigerchik (again) that it’s preferable to follow drill with some swim so you can put things into practice.

With your Monday session, if you make 1:50 cycle one week, try 1:45 the next.

5

My Opinion (as a former swimmer, not coach) - fins can be a great tool if used properly. Too many people do swimming sets with fins on - I don’t agree with this approach for the reasons (cons) you listed.

I do think doing kick sets (with & without a board) with fins on can help build leg strength and help with your ankle flexibility.

I think your workouts should include a separate kick set in which you use fins some of the time. Don’t over use them and they help.

PS - I only use “zoomers” and not some scuba diving type fins that are too long or slow down your kick too much.

6

Good question :). I guess I’m trying to apply what has worked for me in running to swimming. I do tempo runs every week, and when the plan calls for it, gradually up the pace of the tempo. The 500 would be pretty close to all out for me. I guess I’m impatient that way and just want to see how I’m doing at something close to a race distance. In running and biking, I’m often doing the actual race distance continuous and then some (sometimes x2) in an upper zone III lower zone IV. I was supposing that I should apply the same philosophy to the swim, but is that not the case? Part of me is nervous that if I do all of these shorter sets leading up to the race, but haven’t seen what my body does at 500 or 750 or whatever, it may not be there?

I see your point with the drill set location in the set, and I’ll modify.

As far as kick sets with fins, I’m not sure what I mean. I don’t have any fins, but see others with them and was wondering how they should be used.

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Arrgh, why does my response always go away when I use the quote function? Sorry moulli, here is the brief version of what you didn’t see just a few moments ago. I’ve got the time to make my sets longer, so I will. I liked your thoughts on fins, if for no other reason than to experience that feeling. If you think 8 x 25 would be better than 4 x 50, I’m game, I just figured longer dist was better, but I’m not the one with experience. The short set on Wed was just because I figured I would be more spent after a 500 all out. Do you think my 500m race would benefit more from me doing 5 x 100 all out, as opposed to a 500 continuous at the fastest pace I can muster? I’m all ears here, just soaking it in. Thanks!

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Sprints: You had 10x50, which is a very serious sprint set following from your short rest set. If you want to build lactic tolerance, 10x50 is a good set. If you just want to sharpen up a bit at the end of a session I think it’s to much. A few 25m sprints will be enough to do that (remember these are swum at the magical 110% effort). Of course if you feel that you’re not getting enough of a work out from the 25s, definitely step it up to 50s. I just think you’re better off putting more energy into your main set which is the short rest set.

500: You think you’ll be more tired after the 500 max than after 10x 50 sprints!!! I’d rather do a max 500 than 10x50 sprints any day of the week :slight_smile: Put it another way, would you rather run a half marathon or 21 x 1km max efforts? This makes me think we might be crossing our wires. When you wrote 10x50 sprints did you mean max effort or just “solid”?

Break it up. Try 500 straight one week, try 5x100 the next. It’ll keep it interesting.

I’d add to the session though. If you think you’re going to be to tired after the 500 then do a longer warm up. Won’t hurt you to do the 500 max a little fatigued.

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The last sentence of this post is the important bit. Skip to there if you like :slight_smile:

More on the whole 25 / 50 thing … Firstly, my comment “you want to do 50s so do 50s”, that wasn’t meant to come out petulant or critical (if it did). I was meant to be just expressing what I would do personally and meant that if you’re more comfortable doing 50s that’s fine.

I like doing 25s because I like working on super sharp max effort speed. Its also just what I’m used to. When I was training seriously the morning standard was moderate intensity distance work finished off with some short sharp sprints (20-25m efforts, sometimes dived, sometimes pushed, sometimes as turns). 50 sprints are something we would do at night as part of a quality main set (read max effort). I don’t think you need to be doing sprints as a main set, you’re just doing it to augment your distance stuff which is why I fell back to my morning standard. BUT, if you like 50s and comfortable with 50s you should go for it. Its a little bit more speed endurance than doing a 25 but you’ll still get the benefit of doing shorter faster work. To make things interesting you can play around a bit. For example you could try doing 1x25, 1x37.5, 1x50 etc.

The whole 25 or 50 thing is splitting hairs a bit anyway, the point I really wanted to get across is that I think you should spend more time getting mileage under your belt doing the main set (100s / 200s etc) and less time doing the speed work at the end.

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Thanks again, I think I see your point now. And no offense taken here at any point :slight_smile: I prefer the 25s, so I think I’ll stick with them, and I’ll work on adding a longer main set as well. Looking forward to comparing my catch to the article you pointed out as well. Now I must turn in, can’t swim too well on no sleep!

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I guess I’m trying to apply what has worked for me in running to swimming.

Yeah that doesn’t necessarily work :slight_smile:

They are two entirely different sports…

With running you can do lots of easy stuff, workouts every once in awhile. Swimming, on the other hand, every session you get in the pool should be intervals and done “hard” - you recover from it very quickly. Also tri swim training = lots of vo2 max and threshold. Different from how run training = lots of aerobic runs with the occasional workout.

Feel free to do some really fast 500s (race distance swims), that’s good vo2 max training.

Fins. College teams - need to kick. Triathletes - kicking not so important. You needn’t spend a ton of time on kick sets. Another use for fins is swimming @ race speed, again nice for pool racing becuase you get a feel for that pace, can suddenly feel how some other parts of your stroke are at that pace, any little spots of ‘drag’ at a slow speed are magnified at a faster one. For tri swim training you really don’t need to spend lots of time swimming with or kicking with fins. Get rid of the toys and see above “just swim” comment.

You are in general kinda on the right track. But lose the “well if it works for running it’ll work for swimming” idea!

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A 500 all out is around your vo2 max
5 x 100 all out, lactate tolerance - not vo2 max because it takes 2 min or so for your body to hit peak oxygen consumption

Think about which one of those is more tri-specific. That said, I like doing sets of all out 100s off the blocks on occassion - they are fun - it’s variety. You could do 1 one week the other the next. The key is that we get you in the pool and swimming (do you see a theme here)

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I absolutely agree with tigerchiks main theme :slight_smile:

I disagree on this bit though “every session you get in the pool should be intervals and done “hard” - you recover from it very quickly. Also tri swim training = lots of vo2 max and threshold. Different from how run training = lots of aerobic runs with the occasional workout.”

Tigerchik: What do you mean by intervals done hard? Can you give an example? Is this something that you believe for triathletes because they swim relatively short infrequent sessions or do you believe it to be the case for swimmers?

I should probably disclose that with one exception my background and experience is in swimming and dealing with swimmers, not triathletes. I definitely don’t agree that every time you hop in the pool something should be done “hard” though. When I was doing base work for swimming (certainly in my later years), I did the majority of my work as tigerchik describes running (lots of aerobic with the occasional workout). Nowadays that’s still what I do if I’m trying to get ready for race (swimming or triathlon).

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I disagree on this bit though “every session you get in the pool should be intervals and done “hard” - you recover from it very quickly. Also tri swim training = lots of vo2 max and threshold. Different from how run training = lots of aerobic runs with the occasional workout.”

Tigerchik: What do you mean by intervals done hard? Can you give an example? Is this something that you believe for triathletes because they swim relatively short infrequent sessions or do you believe it to be the case for swimmers?

For triathletes.

Swimmer training: 10 or so practices a week
Triathlete training: lets say 3 swims a week

If you’re swimming 10x a week there’s a place for some easy aerobic sets - if you’re only swimming 3x a week I don’t think there’s too much of a point to getting in and swimming easily.

If you want to swim fast… you have to swim fast

Example of a set? Here’s a favorite: 8 x 300 on 4:15, desc 1-4 last 4 are FAST. Vo2 max set… I’d go from 3:45s to 3:33s or so and the last 4 be edging 3:30s (when I’m in decent swim shape :wink: I’m nearing it) so you’re getting about 45 sec rest. That has a lot more benefit than 2400 yds easy.

A freestyle stroke is all concentric contractions (I’m serious - think about it - since I told someone they needed to cite stuff earlier I can tell you there’s a nice table in my kinesiology book showing this) and it is eccentric contractions that cause muscle microtrauma. Concentric contractions only cause a little bit of muscle microtrauma. That means there’s a low recovery cost… you can swim “hard” / fast all/most of the time

My background - born and raised as a distance freestylist, and now I am a swim coach in training :slight_smile: so, I’m still learning.

But I really think, if you’re only going to swim 3x a week like most triathletes do (and 3x a week might be pushing it :wink: there’s not too much of a place for getting in and just swimming easy… that said though, your comment about “base work” (we dislike the term base though! “general to specific” instead) - when I am trying to get back into swimming I guess I do a fair amount of ‘aerobic’ sets as I spend a lot of time doing drilly things like 200s middle 100 drill (or kick) etc.

Sorry if that’s muddled, I was writing and thinking at the same time. I told you I am a coach in training!!!

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other thought would be, when I am swimming with a masters team - so swimmers training for meets - we swim fairly decent yardage and will toss in sets like 6 x 100 pull on 1:30 as a recovery set, or sometimes on Saturday AM workouts my darling masters coach will make us do my least favorite thing in the world which is ??? x 300 kick, pull, swim, “until you get tired or run out of time.” Easy set, for pure yardage / aerobic training. But that’s to finish off a 2 hr workout… how many triathletes spend that long in the pool? Not even my fishtwtich team has practices that long right now :wink:

How would YOU train triathlete swimmers, vs pure swimmers?

Dear plainsman… forgive us for kinda hijacking your thread :slight_smile:

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Plainsman loves the hijack. He’s like a sponge absorbing everything that he can about swimming and different swimming philosophies :slight_smile:

Just to start with… I can come across as critical (especially with writing) when I don’t mean it that way. I was just curious about what you meant (I’m a curious person and I like to know why and what people are thinking), I wasn’t trying to criticise you and I apologise if it came across that way.

Totally agree with you about the ease of recovery. You’re far better than me on the physiology involved but I know that training in zero g / no impact (cycling / swimming) allows more training / quicker recovery than impact activities like running.

The clarification that you meant for triathletes obviously makes a massive difference and I think your 8x300 set is a really good set.

To clarify what I meant and what I’d give triathletes, I didn’t mean to just get in and swim easy. I meant swimming, to use your example, 300s moderately working good form (I’ve communicated this to Plainsman before so I didn’t elaborate). You get the work out from trying to hold your stroke together (lengthening out in front without loosing circle of power, high strong catch, holding your core stable blah blah blah), and although it doesn’t give your heart / lungs a massive workout it certainly makes you tired, fitter and faster. When I first started training like this I was always shocked at how fatigued I felt getting out after what had seemed like an “easy” session. When I was fit I’d do something like this holding ~3:50-4:00 on maybe a 4:10-4:15 cycle (for 300m so the equivalent of 3:40ish for 300y). So it’s not “easy”, it’s definitely moderate but below threshold. Nowadays, when I never consider myself fit, I just swim and take a quick swig of a drink or 10-15 seconds before setting off again (ahem except that I haven’t trained since August (focus is on learning how to run)).

My actual set would be pretty similar to yours but with mine you wouldn’t get as much rest so you might be able to fit an extra 300 (although I might break it up with 50m backstroke here or there). The major difference between us is perceived exertion and focus. Yours seems to be more on speed, mine is on length / form. I figure the most important thing is correct form and strengthening all of the supporting musles that go with holding correct form.

What we’re discussing comes down a little bit to the divide between younger and older swimmers. Younger swimmers need to spend some time flogging out long/fast/hard miles but older swimmers don’t. I’m not sure this is something that you agree with but certainly the second part is irrefutable in my experience (older swimmers don’t need to do long/hard/fast miles). They can do moderate “form” miles and super fast speed work with nothing in between. I’m pretty sure Dara Torres is an example of someone who does this sort of training and its certainly something done by plenty of Australian olympians (expecially during “base” training (I agree with you, never used this term while swimming, picked it up on ST).

I’m not certain what applies to masters swimmers. Whether it’s best to train them like young swimmers or older swimming. I’d be interested on the opinion of anyone who agrees with my comment regarding older swimmers and has experience with masters swimmers.

Certainly my ex-swimmer friends and I can get good results doing moderate form work 3 times a week but as ex-swimmers who did the hard yards when we were younger, we’re a tainted sample. I have a couple of friends who were non-swimmers that I encouraged to focus on long moderate work rather than flogging themselves and they’ve done well but better than they would have done doing “harder” work? Who knows.

Wow. That really was a hijack. Sorry Plainsman.

Tigerchik - hope that some of that rambling made sense and hope that it didn’t seem critical. I guess when you boil it down - the set that I repeat ad nauseum and bore my friends (and you) telling them to try, is really a short rest set swum somewhere in the upper aerobic region focussing on form. The critical issue though is holding form, not holding your pace / making cycle.

I’m leaving work for the day so no more hijacks from me… for now :slight_smile:

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You don’t sound critical at all.

Plainsman loves the hijack. He’s like a sponge absorbing everything that he can about swimming and different swimming philosophies :slight_smile:

LOL!

I think your 8x300 set is a really good set.

It is a good set… it hurts… ohmygod that is one of the sets I love to hate.

You’re far better than me on the physiology involved but I know that training in zero g / no impact (cycling / swimming) allows more training / quicker recovery than impact activities like running.

I’m getting my degree in this ex phys thing :wink:

You get the work out from trying to hold your stroke together (lengthening out in front without loosing circle of power, high strong catch, holding your core stable blah blah blah), and although it doesn’t give your heart / lungs a massive workout it certainly makes you tired, fitter and faster.
WHy not work on holding your stroke together… while swimming fast :smiley:

The major difference between us is perceived exertion and focus. Yours seems to be more on speed, mine is on length / form. I figure the most important thing is correct form and strengthening all of the supporting musles that go with holding correct form.
Form/technique is important. When I do workouts or write them for someone else I do technique work as part as an extended warmup, then a main set on the assumption that you are still focusing on swimming WELL and not thrashing around. As for “strengthening all the supporting muscles while you hold correct form,” well, you get that when you swim FAST too. Though I will tell you here, I lift (baby weights!) and do a lot of rotator cuff strength stuff outside the pool as well.

What we’re discussing comes down a little bit to the divide between younger and older swimmers. Younger swimmers need to spend some time flogging out long/fast/hard miles but older swimmers don’t. I’m not sure this is something that you agree with but certainly the second part is irrefutable in my experience (older swimmers don’t need to do long/hard/fast miles). They can do moderate “form” miles and super fast speed work with nothing in between. I’m pretty sure Dara Torres is an example of someone who does this sort of training and its certainly something done by plenty of Australian olympians (expecially during “base” training (I agree with you, never used this term while swimming, picked it up on ST).

I’m writing a thesis about Torres’ training… anyway, no fair to bring her into this discussion: she is a SPRINTER and we can’t reasonably compare her swim training to that of a distance freestylist (much less a triathlete distance freestylist!)

Not critical - I’m enjoying the conversation. Plainsman are you soaking all of this up :slight_smile:

fish kisses!

18

Soaking it up like Sponge Bob after a Chinese buffet :slight_smile: Carry on! BTW, I’m going to swim after work today but I’ve printed this thread so I can hopefully review it between lunch and meetings today.

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Do a combination of kick sets with them and without them. If you ONLY do it with them, you may never develop the right feel for the water that gives you good propulsion barefoot.
If you only do them barefoot you don’t get any raw strength gains because you never get enough resistance. They are a way to create more resistance to create muscle overload and they are a way to allow you to use vast amounts of oxygen (but max VO2 training can be accomplished other ways).

20

Oh, and they tell me I’m 36 for this race season, so in swimming/tri does that make me a young or old swimmer…be gentle…:slight_smile:
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