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The goal for the workout was to work on endurance and pacing during the workout.
On days where your pool time is limited a good planned session is key to a good workout for your athletes. This is such a workout from an evening where a lot of our athletes were limited to 1h . . .
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This is a series of three workouts that were done by our Junior group while I was away with our Senior athletes for Swiss SC Nationals . . .
Some or parts of our workouts & resources and/or the accompanying PDF may only be available to premium members. If you would like to gain full access and help us support the swimming community, please choose one of our subscriptions to our platform.
This set should be swum fast – with an average at goal 1650 pace. I put a whiteboard up, with 1650 paces on it – and I highlighted certain times that would place high at our Spring Championship meet in Florida.
This workout starts off pretty typical for us: some kicking, some pulling, then some drilling. The Main Series is a “traditional” IM set I used to do in Baltimore (as a swimmer, and as a coach). It’s based off an IM set we used to call the “Janet Evans” set.
For whatever reason, back in 1992 when I was doing it as a swimmer, we called it the “Janet Reno” set because we changed the “Real IMs” which defines the “Janet Evans” set to “Free-IMs” which defines the “Janet Reno” set. For those who do not know: a “Free-IM” is “Free-Back-Breast-Free”.
The set is awesome because although you’ve got to descend the Free IMs, you have to hold yourself together on the 200-400-600-800 Free — which particularly as you get into the 600 and 800 is a huge challenge. The Free IM 200s should be descended.
We use stretch cords during our morning workouts and I have come up with a few ways of making it fun. We don’t have a lot of high tech equipment at the pool, and I am a big believer in resistance training, especially with power racks, and bucket systems.
Generally on Fridays I ask the athletes to do a major Kick Set. Our set for today, for most people is 12×100 on (2:00), kicking 3 100s of each stroke FAST.
The (2:00) interval for us is pretty long, so the athletes on this particular day are getting more rest per repeat than they generally get during kicking sets. The 25s at the end are designed to allow the athletes to access a little bit of speed — which at the end of the week is very important.
Right now we are in a situation where about half of our team had their first peak at SC Nationals and now everybody is focused for Regionals mid December. This “double peak” represents a challenge on many levels for our athletes.
This workout is the continuation of the week that started on Monday November 19. After a our Wednesday evening “Lactate” workout, we went back to an aerobic workout on Thursday. Our week this week (and many others) looks like this:
Aerobic (Monday), Active Rest (Tuesday), Fast Race Pace (Wednesday), Aerobic (Thursday), Kick and Speed (Friday), and either Aerobic or Active Rest (Saturday). Sunday is an optional day for Postgrads or a recovery day for everyone else.
This practice allows the swimmers to take a little bit of ownership of the main set. They will be able to pick and choose the distances they will be swimming.