If you are out there swim training by yourself, you just don’t know the depth of the pain you can endure, by others pushing you.
I’ve started swimming with people who do 27-30 150s going off at 2:00. That’s 150s, not 100s. That doesn’t count the 300s done after that. I know some of you swimmers here do 40 to 50 100s on 1:15 or so. For some reason, these guys are cruelly partial to 150s. I liked 100s. I am partial to them, because, pretty much, at the 100 level, I’m timed to die.
I do as many as I can but end up caving in and doing 100s, but they don’t; HOWEVER, I have never done so many repeats my whole life. I use to could not do more than 10, now I’m way way beyond that.
I would never have been able to increase my swim, just by myself in the pool. Prior to this, I did a few repeats but my main thing was trying to swim a mile or 2. If you are just starting to swim, do not get into the “I’m going to get ready for triathlons” by swimming a mile kind of training. The natural inclination is to start triathlons, go out there by yourself at the pool, and work up to doing slow miles.
Its stupid. And its stupid to be out there without a group dynamic pushing you, unless you have no choice.
I think it is almost impossible to get any better in swimming unless you are training with other people who push you.
I’ve learned that if you just think you can’t swim another one on the send off, you can do 15 more. If its just you standing there back at the gutter waiting on the clock to hit the send off again, odds are, you are going to quit.
Once you get the basics down, swim improvement starts first with the mental before you get to the physical. Since swimming is all nice and low impact, you can really put the stress on your body for long time periods in a way you’d be guaranteing injury if you tried to do the same while running. The problem is getting past the point where you’re saying “this set is fucking insane and there’s no way I’ll make those sendoffs” A good coach knows how to assign sets to your lane so they sound scary, but are actually not as horrible as they sound if you crank it along at a pace where you have to push it some.
I agree that a group wlil push me much harder and further than when I train by myself. Its very helpful and useful to train with others if I want to go the extra distance/speed/etc.
My question though is Assuming that during these group workouts heart rate is elevated for a considerable time is this good for overall training? This being the off-season, base building period, how much is appropriate. How often do you do this?
I agree with you about the motivation, swimming with my masters group really helps me a lot.
One big thing it does is that it makes me swim faster, not longer, most of my swims now are between 3200 and 3700 yards. I can get a little bit of a draft off of the other swimmers and work on speed and efficiency. The people in my lane are probably much faster than me but during the workout I can keep up and the next week it gets easier. I am finally starting to lead some of the sets. Hopefully in a few months I will be able to move up a lane.
That’s what I keep asking. I’m trying to do my first marathon in March. It doesn’t help much if you can’t eat freaking lunch if you can’t pick up your arms to hold a fork, much less run after that. Go try to run after that shit. You run like a bobble head doll. No arm swing. Freaking Dolan Laners.
All I hear is:
“15 more…”
Me: “Memphis in May is a long way off. Now, what are we doing this for?”
“15 more…you can do it…”
Back to the start of the lane.
“14 more…”
Me: “I’m doing 10 more, ya’ll can just go on.”
“No man, don’t weenie out…”
And in the five to ten seconds before send off, I’m bitching the whole way.
14 intervals later. I can’t move my arms.
Hell, now that I think about it, I’m bitching about it right now.
Interesting take on it. I swam last night – all alone. I didn’t measure my total distance covered, but it was surely no more than half of the usual meters from when I’m coached/pushed. I went through a few drills, a few form 25s, never really pushed myself, and then bagged it. Of course, it was dumping cold rain and dark, but ehhhhhhh, that’s the real test, no? I flunked.
I agree somewhat - I got much better by swimming with Masters once a week (but thankfully the group I swim with does not do anything approaching the speeds you are talking about). But I also swim a couple times a week on my own using the book - Gale Bernhardt’s waterproof swim workouts in a binder. I don’t think the real high heartrate swimming is good for me all the time.
If you’re bitching this much, you’re doing too much. Dial it back, know that you are still doing more than you would be if you were training alone, and keep challenging yourself to increase both the duration and the speed with your main sets.
BTW, the same dynamic goes for running at the track. If you’re not doing track workouts during the year, you should be, and if you’re doing them alone you’re probably not doing as much (or doing it as fast) as you would be if you were with even one evenly matched training partner.
In any case, use your “propensity to bitch” as the governor that keeps you from overtraining during any part of the year – particularly during base building.