I know we all freestyle. How many people swim other strokes on a regular basis? Which ones, and how much, relative to free?
I usually do a set of 5 x 100 IMs after warmup, as a pre-set to my main set. The other strokes, butterfly in particular, forces me to up my effort level before heading into my main set.
I swam as a youth, and all through high school and college, so I am fairly adept at all the strokes.
I have always hated backstroke. I sometimes throw in 50s - butterfly/breast but my shoulders ache
I do around 75% freestyle (crawl), 10% each breaststroke and butterfly. Those were my events when I swam in HS and I remain pretty competent. The last 5% I save for things like the trudgeon, which is a scissor kick head up variant on the breatstroke and very good in choppy water, and backstroke that I use for rest and getting my breath back.
sawyer
You should work some in for several reasons: (1) It will reduce some of the stress on your shoulders from swimming only freestyle; (2) It will strengthen complementary muscles; (3) It will improve your feel for the water; and, (4) It will decrease boredom.
Having said that, I must admit I am not practicing what I preach. www.USMS.org has some workouts you may want to try with mixes of drills and other strokes.
As a basis to my answer - I come from a pretty good swimming background.
Probably do 30 to 35% of training in off strokes. Adds variety, but more so requires different muscle group work. Personally I think that working all muscles in the H20 only makes a person a better freestyle swimmer. Also adds confidence. I can chug a huge gulp of lake/sea water and still maintain my presence and forward mothion while recovering.
I do a decent amount of backstroke- it knocks back the boredom a bit, and also helps me work through the odd freestyle problem.
I used to throw in IM sets on a regular basis, but had some issues with a shoulder last year that kept me from doing fly so I stopped them. (and I’ve always loathed breaststroke- lacked the coordination to make the kick work)
Thanks, tri_bri2. I agree with you on all counts- and I do work in a good amount of other strokes myself. I usually swim five days/week, with one day devoted to strokes other than free, and one day for drills, fin work, and fun stuff. I’m just curious to see how much other people do- my feeling is that a lot of triathletes do almost all free.
Your last comment describes me and the reason is that I didn’t swim in highschool or college so didn’t develop those strokes. But I think what everyone has said is true but those people are the ones that developed the different strokes in HS and college which is why they do them which is a good thing.
lately, say 10%+ backstroke, maybe 5% breast, 1% fly (if the coach says so). Like most people say, doing the backstroke relieves a lot of the stress on the shoulders especially during speed/pace sets. I like to do the backstroke as the “50/100 easy” before I repeat the 5x 300m @ pace that we do etc.
I definitely think the other strokes are important - we do a lot of kick, no board, on our backs which for a while were painfully tiring but now I’m starting to “feel” how I should kick away the water with my feet… hence, it helps me front crawl.
as for fly & breast… well, they’re still a disaster. ok, no breast is ok, I just don’t go anywhere. I can’t get that damn kick.
I am learning/refining a few of the other strokes. Masters swim coach also has me doing back stroke (which I hate) to balance out the muscles of the chest, back, and delts…seems to be helping alot…makes for tough swim sessions. We are just starting a bit of butterfly…I suck at it and working on the leg kick…have no clue what I’m doing with the kick yet. Coach is getting me straight…
Only doing freestyle at the moment as I just got back in the pool last week. Once I get some semblance of feel for the water I’ll swim everything except breaststroke. Knees & ankles aren’t flexible enough you see, so I cheat and do breaststroke arms with fly kick… much better!
Our coach at USF has a rather standard rotation:
Monday: sets of 100s or less, one third IM/stroke
Tuesday: 150s or less, two thirds IM/stroke
Wednesday: we go long (200-500s), mostly/all freestyle
Thur: sets of 200s or less 50/50 stroke
Friday: we go long or really short, depends on weekends meet/lake swim schedule.
Summer months the pool is set up long course on Wed/Fri morning and Tue/Thu eve for some wonderfully meaty 4,500 yd workouts. Main set will be something like 5x (500 cruise on 6:30, 100 fast on 1:10)
Favorite mix set goes back to high school when we were horsing around too much we had to do the “Bannon” set named after a guy on the team. 10x100 fly free fly free. If everyone in the lane didn’t make the interval, it didn’t count and we had to do-over.