We do this set at least once a month with our senior kids, and with a few pace time tweaks it’s easily applied to some of the younger groups as well. I’m basically always looking for quality distance sets that aren’t mind-numbing and tedious from the perspective of the athlete, and this one does a good job of getting those metres while keeping them cognitively engaged.
The set starts off with pacetimes that are very forgiving, so they don’t need a lot of additional warm up prior to the actual set. We only did 600m of smooth drills to start off with, knowing that the Wedge Set will ease them into the workout pretty well on it’s own.
It starts to get tough near the end of the set, where you’re getting up to the 400, 500, or 600 but that difficulty comes on very suddenly. You’ll have kids swimming the set like it’s the easiest thing they’ve ever done, then all of a sudden they’ll hit a wall and look like they forgot how to swim. So in addition to just being a good old fashioned fitness building set, it also challenges them to approach it strategically and make sure they save enough energy for the final stages.
These are the pace times I use for most of my older athletes, but you can easily change them to suit almost anyone’s needs. The idea is the base pace time for each 100 decreases by 5 seconds as the distance goes up by 100. So for this example the 600 is at a 1:15 base per 100, the 500 is at a 1:20 base per 100, etc… but you can easily change that and work backwards from there.
Workout
Warm Up:
600 as
100 Finger Drag Catchup
100 Backstroke with Hockey Puck on Forehead
100 Breaststroke with Paddles No Strap (using the pressure of the water to keep the paddles attached to hands)
Wedge Set (all free):
100 @1:40;
100 @1:40, 200 @3:10;
100 @1:40, 200 @3:10, 300 @4:30;
100 @1:40, 200 @3:10, 300 @4:30, 400 @5:40;
100 @1:40, 200 @3:10, 300 @4:30, 400 @5:40, 500 @6:40;
100 @1:40, 200 @3:10, 300 @4:30, 400 @5:40, 500 @6:40, 600 @7:30;
Warm Down:
8×50 as 25 Kick, 25 Swim @ 1:00
WORKOUT TOTAL: 6600
This workout was provided by Wayland Swim Club Head Coach & Director of Sport Dexter Bligh.
