This workout is one of my favorites. A bit of history on it: I had a training group one year that was able to practice 90 minutes per day. We had no more time than that!
Our expectation was to compete with the top athletes in the USA, so we had to get creative with practice time.
My thinking here is simple. The warmups coaches tend to give athletes can get too long, and our aerobic work tends to be not long enough. I was watching athletes swim pretty well towards the end of warm-up…but then the warm-up was over! Invariably we would do a set of 12×50 or 16×25 as a “pre set”, then the main set. So the aerobic workout would look like this:
- 25 minutes warm-up
- 3 minutes sit on wall
- 10-15 minutes pre set
- 3 minutes sit on wall
- 20-40 minute aerobic set
- 5 minute recover
- 10-20 minute secondary set
- 5 minute swim down
I figured, because I only had 90 minutes, that we should combine the warm-up and the main cardio set- leaving space for 50s at the end.
From my experience athletes who are motivated find this type of practice invigorating. The first time they do it, they may hate it, but to the athletes: once it’s over, they have a short set and that’s the workout. They learn to love it. And as a coach, you get 50-110 minutes of progressive aerobic conditioning.
The static intervals above are great for developmental swimmers; more advanced athletes might drop the intervals throughout the set.
Workout
5x:
200 Free IM (245) double pullouts
200 Kick (3) odds free/evens on back
200 IM Drill-Swim (245) sprint turns
200 Pull (230) 5th
200 Free (230) Descend 1-5
200 easy
30×50 (45) — 2 free swim plus one free kick fast!
300 easy IM drill
WORKOUT TOTAL: 7000
This free workout was provided by T2 Aquatics Head Coach Paul Yetter.
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