I thought I’d try to start a bit of a repository for good sets. I see a lot of good ones in the monthly ST swim club thread, but they easily get lost in there.
This is a friendly place to share your faves, either yours or others you see that you like the idea of. Not the whole workout, just the main set, and try to scale so it’s easy to fit into a typical triathlete or masters workout, which is around 3000 m / yards total. So if the main set is between 1000 and 2000, that would be about right in my view.
I’ll start with one we called “wheels” in college. still a favorite. this is the 1000 version, easy to scale up as desired.
I enjoy doing a set of tag 50’s when in short course pools. Don’t do it nearly as often as I’d like, but when left unsupervised I like! We don’t do it as a a triathlete would in the sense that it’s not a typical threshold set doing 15 x whatever on 1:xx. This is meant to be excruciating and I think the longest I have lasted is maybe 1200. One goal: destroy the other swimmer by giving them less recovery. It’s really a hoot to do so if you have a pal near the same speed it can be a great high intensity set!
Simple, when they touch the wall at 50 you go, when you touch they go. 30 some odd seconds is a lot of rest IF you are gaming the intervals. Competitive nature takes over and it’s war!
I swim the pull/paddle sets at a moderate effort. The 100s are all fast and I get about 15 seconds rest on those. I hit them pretty hard.
I also like to do 4x500 with a minute rest. Then I add up the time spent swimming the 500s (minus the rest) and that’s my goal time to beat the next time I do this workout.
My old standby that was probably the biggest contributor for me progressing from a pretty slow swimmer to a fast one is the classic 10-15x100 free (best average) on an interval that gives you 5-10 seconds rest. When I was killing myself every day during my freshman year of college trying to earn a spot on a college team I did this on my lunch break 3x per week and got it down to a 1:05 interval coming in just under a minute. Nowadays I only do it every few weeks and normally hold a 1:20 interval, sometimes a 1:15 interval if I am feeling really motivated. This set hurts the lungs pretty bad, but will really improve your ability to recover quickly.
My old standby that was probably the biggest contributor for me progressing from a pretty slow swimmer to a fast one is the classic 10-15x100 free (best average) on an interval that gives you 5-10 seconds rest. When I was killing myself every day during my freshman year of college trying to earn a spot on a college team I did this on my lunch break 3x per week and got it down to a 1:05 interval coming in just under a minute. Nowadays I only do it every few weeks and normally hold a 1:20 interval, sometimes a 1:15 interval if I am feeling really motivated. This set hurts the lungs pretty bad, but will really improve your ability to recover quickly.
That is so funny you bring up the lunchtime swim ‘trying to make the college squad’. There is a kid where I swim whom I see on occasion when I get a mid day swim. He is doing 100 repeats on short intervals wanting so badly to get walk on the team. That’s when I cry…seeing him come in ~ 57-58…less than 10 seconds rest…still doesn’t have the AAA cuts to walk on at a D2 school.
Yeah, for all that work I was able to have someone talk the coach into letting me on the team (I even got a tiny scholarship), but my first year on the team I was a nobody. However, the work ethic paid off and I was a conference champ and All-American by my second year and only got better from there. Tell the guy at the pool to keep it up, being part of an NCAA team was easily the best education I ever got at a school and was worth almost any cost.
Yeah, for all that work I was able to have someone talk the coach into letting me on the team (I even got a tiny scholarship), but my first year on the team I was a nobody. However, the work ethic paid off and I was a conference champ and All-American by my second year and only got better from there. Tell the guy at the pool to keep it up, being part of an NCAA team was easily the best education I ever got at a school and was worth almost any cost.
Holy smokes nice work on the Conference Champ/AA status. When you say ‘only got better from there’. Are you holding out on me? Am I conversing with an Olympian or something? I always find it funny when Gary Hall gets on here and inevitably someone is saying ‘well who are you and what makes you think that is the case?’.
200’s. Start on 4:00, and every time you finish one, take off 15s rest. So the first one is on 4:00, second one on 3:45 etc. When you realize you wont make the next one, bump down to 150m, so initially you will get some rest, but every time you touch the wall you’re still knocking off 15s. Do 150m’s until you wont make your pace time again, then bump down to 100’s. Keep going all the way through 50’s and 25’s. It’s not fun.
Haha, definitely not even close to Olympian level. I swam DII so AA wasn’t quite as tough. Though I still take pride in the fact that after my Jr year I checked the splits at DI nationals and I could have been the 3rd or 4th guy on half of the top 8 (All-American) 200 free relays! But my individual events weren’t even close.
*Interesting note - I was proof reading my comment above before sending it and the part where I said “I still take pride in the fact…” My iPhone auto-corrected the word “pride” to “PEDs!” That would have been awkward trying to back pedal from that one lol!! I think auto-correct does that on purpose sometimes for the comedy of it.
Haha, definitely not even close to Olympian level. I swam DII so AA wasn’t quite as tough. Though I still take pride in the fact that after my Jr year I checked the splits at DI nationals and I could have been the 3rd or 4th guy on half of the top 8 (All-American) 200 free relays! But my individual events weren’t even close.
*Interesting note - I was proof reading my comment above before sending it and the part where I said “I still take pride in the fact…” My iPhone auto-corrected the word “pride” to “PEDs!” That would have been awkward trying to back pedal from that one lol!! I think auto-correct does that on purpose sometimes for the comedy of it.
Well that is still awesome. I actually swim next to several DII AA’ers who are at NCAA’s in Ohio as we speak and I get to see that speed every day. It’s FAST.
My old standby that was probably the biggest contributor for me progressing from a pretty slow swimmer to a fast one is the classic 10-15x100 free (best average) on an interval that gives you 5-10 seconds rest.
