Why are swim workouts always about doing sets of repeats? Why not just swim the whole yardage at once? I can understand wanting to work on drills, and that necissarily will be broken down into sets, just becasue of the changeup in what you are working on.
I’ve only been swimming for a couple of years, but I don’t understand why your swim workouts should be any different than your normal run & bike workouts. You don’t stop your bike/run workouts and do sets of mile repeats or whatever. So, whats the advantage to breaking swimming down and stopping/resting b/w sets?
Is it becasue swimming is not so much endurance dependent, where stopping b/w sets matters much? And by breaking it down into sets you can concentrate on your form more? Dunno, school me please.
i would go insane if every workout i did, i just jumped in the pool and swam a given yardage straight through. the thought makes me nauseous.
another aspect is that you can work on different things for each set. for instance, if i am doing 10x100’s i will be swimming at a much faster pace per 100 than i could sustain if i just swam 1000 straight. doing drills is another reason–i break those into shorter distance so i can concentrate on one specific thing at a time, which, for me, is harder to do if i do a straight swim.
i would also think that swimming in sets is related to being in a confined space–i.e. a lap pool–for the majority of workouts. makes it much more akin to interval work on a track than say a trail run or a bike ride. i wouldn’t do ‘sets’ in an open water training swim…
The best explanation I’ve heard is that swimming farther than you can hold good form is counter productive. It also a lot less boring than non-stop laps. Training at different speeds is another reason. Harder swim, run and bike workouts are usually broken up into repeats with rests because you can accumulate more total distance at the target rate than you can by going non-stop.
I think the real reason is that 4000yds in a short course pool is 160 lengths which is higher than most swimmers can count.
Being a competitive swimmer for my club and high school team right now, here’s the take from the competitive swimming world.
It gets boring swimming up and down doing the same thing for two hours. For our practices, we put in close 10,000 yards a day. It is just suicide mentally swimming that straight. Doing straight distances too also is not productive for you’re stroke. When you’re tired, your stroke technique starts to fall apart. If you swim that huge distance all at once, your technique will turn to a dead fish very soon.
There is no way to know how fast you’re going without stopping. So after a while, once you start getting very bored, you’ll start focusing on other thigns. So now your speed drops as well as your stroke falling apart.
So now that you don’t know hwo fast you’re going, there isn’t a way to do speed work as well.
There is more but those are the biggest ones.
I find this common for cyclist or runners who just started swimming. They think that just getting in the pool and going will get the most out of their workout just like riding their bike or running. Or if they do do “sets” they take anywhere between 30 seconds to 3 minutes for rest for a repeat 50’s. On average, you should be getting about 1/6 of your time for rest during hard sets. So say I’m holding 1:00’s for 10x100’s. I should on average get 10 seconds rest.
Hope this helps! Swim happy! Oh yeah, here is a good quote. “Quality, not quantity.”
The boredom thing has nothing to do with it. You must embrace the boredom and learn to love it in order to succeed at swimming. Running away from it will only hold you back.
The real answer is that in competetive swimming, with the exception of the 1500 free, the races are only about 20 seconds to just over 4 minutes in length. Set training is intended to allow swimmers to train close to or even above race pace to build strength and speed. The way competetive swimming training is done has a lot more in common with training for a 400 m run or the mile than it does with training for a marathon.
Even though a triathlete is training for slightly longer swims, training sets like “real” swimmers is actually the best way to go. It allows swimming harder at a higher pace and thus build strenght faster.
You’ll go faster on the bike and run too if you work in some intervals.
Oh yeah, here is a good quote. “Quality, not quantity.”