I’ve received a question recently regarding the “percentage of effort” in our swimming sets at T2 Aquatics.
I notice in your examples of workouts you do not mention level of intensities? Care to expand on this subject and perhaps we can draw in more coaches on the subject?
– Phil Daniels ASA Coach / Tornadoes of South Dorset
Generally, I’ll give the athletes times to shoot for based on either a) what I perceive to be a proper threshold pace (for aerobic work), or b) what their race pace may be for stroke-specific training. In the case of today’s fly set, I asked the athletes to hold {plus 1.0-1.5 200 pace} for the first 20 50s (10 of which were fly); followed by {plus 0.5-1.0 200 pace} for the next 20 50s (10 of which were fly); followed by {200 goal pace} for 10 50s (5 of which were fly). I feel like these standards were achieved fairly well by most of the training group — in particular the most dedicated athletes. It should be noted: all 200 race pace times should be adjusted for a lack of turn time in training — we subtract one second for the turn when going from the foot push to the hand touch (as opposed to foot touch to foot touch like one does in a race).
For the kicking set, I basically looked at what they did on the 2nd of 4 100s and told them to kick a lot faster (by calling certain people out and urging them to either get under 110, 115, or 120).
I think it’s a potentially dangerous thing to either a) give standards that are too slow, or b) not give any standards at all. It’s easy to get “caught” either way. With race pace swimming I will generally go off of the athlete’s best race performance and ask for faster paces — particularly at the developmental “senior” level (ie. swimmers who have not achieved US National qualifying standards). For those who HAVE achieved at a higher level (approaching US Olympic Trials or higher) I will give them “race pace” type goals for sure, but at times I will simply ask them to swim just above their “race pace” — but do so with a certain stroke count or kick count, etc. I prefer to see relaxed, repetitive swimming just a bit ABOVE race pace for the higher-level athletes — with the technical precision it takes to race at an International level (these athletes swim plenty at or under their race pace, so to me it’s valuable to ask for certain technical markers as well during the season — marker that when achieved will mimic the proper technique needed to accelerate through the middle of a LCM championship swim).
