I need a good swim routine for the week, any advice?

Question

I need a good swim routine for the week, any advice?

Answer 1

If you're serious about it and want to commit to it then I'd suggest joining a US Swimming Swim club and begin training in a team environment with a coaching staff. It's always more difficult to train by yourself.

Since this is August it's the off-season so you may not have a choice but to train yourself.

Here's some suggestions for training yourself:

1. Always start with a warm up.

This can be as short as a 200 or as long as 1000 (yards/meters). This should be used just as a way to get your heart rate up and to get a feel for the water.

2. After the warm up you can either do a stroke drill set or a short swim set (25's or 50's) Don't worry about your times but concentrate on stroke mechanics. There are many drills that are available out there that you can do. Select the ones you prefer and enjoy. I'll give you some popular links below.

3. I'd place your main set (main focus) of your workout next. The type of set to choose would depend upon what your strength is. If you're a sprinter then do a a set of 50's or 100's (a multiple set of 75's would fit nicely too). If your a stroke specialist then you can swim the same set of the stroke you specialize in. Sometimes this can be overwhelming so you can customize it by swimming every other, every 3rd, or even every 4th swim your specialty while swimming freestyle on the others.

The time intervals should be short rest (mostly aerobic) when you first begin (early season) or longer rest (mostly anarobic) when you get in better shape and can put high energy into this set. Of course, if the distance races are your forte then you can swim a set of 200's, 500's, or even 1000's (I usually like to mix it up, maybe even strange distances - i.e. 250's, or 300's)

4. I'd then throw in a Kicking (kick board) and/or pulling (pull buoy) set to isolate the upper and/or lower part of your body.

5. If you want to extend your workout you can put a second main set in here.

6. I'd recommend a sprint set to finish your workout. Usually a set of 25's of your choice of strokes would work well. Give yourself enough rest in between each swim so that you can swim at race pace without bringing your heart rate too low before the next swim.

7. Then perform a warm down, nice and easy. This can be anywhere from 200 to 400.

If you have two hours for your workout this is the amount of time I'd set aside for each part of this:

1. warm up - 5-10 minutes

2. stroke drill set - 5-15 minutes

3. main set - 30-60 minutes

4. kicking/pulling - 10-15 minutes

5. secondary set - 20-40 minutes

6. sprint set - 5-15 minutes

7. warm down - 5-10 minutes

I'd recommend using this template (or something similar) but use variety in the different elements of it to 'spice it up'. You also need to prepare the entire workout before heading to the pool. Your going to find that you will not spend your time well at the pool if you're trying to think of a creative set or drill for your next work out segment.

Good luck and enjoy...