I was just invited to join my (university) department’s swim team for a sort of throw-down style swim meet at the end of march. It’s a small, fun unsanctioned meet simply for bragging rights.
They aren’t holding any events longer than 100 yrds, so I would either been in the 50 free, 100 free or a relay. The thing is, this is only week 3 of me betting back into swimming after a good year of time off, so I’m still pretty dang slow. Even then, my prior training focused on distances 200 and longer, so I’m not strong at all in the 100 or shorter.
So…how would you start structuring workouts with all of this in mind? My volume is at a place now that I could get up to 5 days a week fairly quickly.
I am a distance swimmer, 10K up. I took off two month and was back in the pool for 2 weeks before my first masters meet. I trained 1000-1100 per day over those two weeks. My big events were 100 IM and 100 Free so I did a lot of sets like this.
16 x 25 on 1 minutes, 4 of each stroke
Start and finish at the middle of the pool, 10 x 25 working on turns
Lots of 50s, and a handful of 100s, kept everything under 200 except maybe an initial warm up.
You’ve got enough time to get a little fast-twitchy just do a lot of fast swimming with LONG rests intervals.
I really enjoy 50s on 3 minutes.
short intervals are your friend. Practice starts and turns as well. 25 and 50 sprints starting mid pool are one way to work on turns. If you have a smaller pool or dive tank to swim in (or swim widths) you can focus on speed and turns as well. We would set up our LC pool to train 12.5 metres some days, great for turns and breath control (something else to work on)…
My guess is that kicking strong during a 50 or 100 is going to wreck your pull mechanics and disrupt your flow - make you slower. This happened to me.
Instead, I would focus more on swimming and under water dolphin off the walls. I’ve always had a weak kick, so other on here may chime in with different advice.
My flip turns kind of suck. I have the flip part down, but my timing is always off and my dolphin and Breakout are lacking. Any advice to get that under control.
Push off on you back and work on a nice smooth dolphin motion. Try and go 10+ kicks. I also like tucking my chin mire an physically watching my core and legs dolphin. Try first to break out in fly. It’s a lot easier than free.
I pull with my non breathing arm first on breakouts.
The progression deals a little more with effectively flipping, but coming out on your back is dealt with as well. As another poster noted. Coming out on your back is more than just an esoteric element, it helps to simplify the turn, and let you focus on what is important at different times. This might be short notice with your impending meet though!
The swim meet was yesterday…and I was lied to…it was not a friendly little show down…
Last year, there was a pretty small turn out and the team that I was on this year absolutely destroyed the field. Apparently, there were a few people on the water polo team that took this as a personal challenge, and responded this year by bringing their entire team and recruiting every fast swimmer they could find. I knew I was in trouble when I was on deck to swim the 100 free and the slowest women (in the heat before me) swam a 1:06. The winning 200 relay and medley times would have contested regional HS times.
So on the downside, I had my ass handed to me in a big way. On the upside, I’ve never hurt that bad in the water before, and I put down faster times then I was planning.
Hopefully by next year I’ll at least be competitive.