Hello fish,
I am a guy who hates doing drills but figure they may be necessary for my current level (not a fish). However, I absolutely love doing repeats/intervals of anything under 500 but mainly love the 100s. I swim 4x a week and have been doing drills 2x and intervals 2x but as I approach the winter, I can see myself making excuses not to do drills. I guess my question is would I be OK just doing repeats 4x a week, at least for this off-season and maybe into next year since I am comfortable with my current speed or would that be dangerous to my form and I should just suck it up and drill more. I know that I would eventually be able to tell by monitoring my interval speeds but I’d rather not let it get to that point.
Bit of background: Kind of AOS, I grew up in Hawai’i so I am at home in the open ocean, comfort was never an issue, the issue was swimming more than 25m and not to catch a wave. I start triathlon in 2014 and for 3 years was the potato chip bag at >2:00/100m. Last fall I got some good instruction and video analysis and this year, I did the Honu swim in 33m (1:44/100m) and IMLP swim in 1:06 (1:43/100m). Again, not a fish, but I certainly like that speed for the time being. Which is why I would rather just do repeats if it will simply maintain (or even help?) my speed. Maybe someday down the road I will want to get faster, if it’s possible, but I am also a shitty cyclist so I would be fine keeping my current swim speed while I work on that.
Thank you in advance
I don’t think they are mutually exclusive. You can start out with some drills, then an integration set, then main set.
But at it’s core the question is back to you, which type of work helps you improve the most?
Some folks get drills, and can do them on their own and get better. Lots of other folks don’t, and without feedback drills are a waste of time. Figuring out which one you are will make the appropriate mix of drills and intervals pretty obvious.
Hmmm, never really thought about what drove my improvements, prior to getting coached I wasn’t doing either drills or intervals. The drills in the coached sessions were very helpful, now that I realize, because I was getting feedback. While I have improved a bit since the sessions ended, I haven’t felt that the drills have been helping much. This is helpful, thank you. I guess if I start to see myself slow down in intervals I will rethink my strategy.
I think that 1:06 for an Ironman swim is faster than 1:43/100m. Let me go do some math.
my garmin said 1:41 I think, obviously I am also not the straightest swimmer in the world but I tend to use official times as I have seen some funky things in garmin swim maps.
Hmmm, never really thought about what drove my improvements, prior to getting coached I wasn’t doing either drills or intervals. The drills in the coached sessions were very helpful, now that I realize, because I was getting feedback. While I have improved a bit since the sessions ended, I haven’t felt that the drills have been helping much. This is helpful, thank you. I guess if I start to see myself slow down in intervals I will rethink my strategy.
I think intervals trump drills but as Kevin said, why not use the drills as part of your warm-up, then do your intervals. Say swim a 500 free, then 500 of drills, then your main set of X x 100 and/or X x 200, etc. You could also consider getting your coach to look at your stroke every 4-6 wks to be sure you’re going in the right direction, though your times will be the main arbiter.