Races aren’t too far away so for this week’s triathlon swim sessions I decided it was time to start increasing the work load and putting a little more intensity into some of my sets. Tuesday’s swimmers in particular received the main brunt of that change. Here are his week’s pair of swim sets.
Tuesday, 18th March 2014 – Endurance Swim Session
| Warm Up | ||
|---|---|---|
| 300m Front crawl – easy | ||
| 2x | 50m Front crawl – kick on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m Front crawl on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m As 25m doggy paddle, 25m front crawl on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m Front crawl on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m Front crawl – kick on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 100m Front crawl – building on 25s rest | |
| 1,000m | ||
| Main Set | ||
| 4/5x | 250m Front crawl on 40s rest 1: steady 2: 200m steady, 50m hard 3: 150m steady, 100m hard 4: 100m steady, 150m hard 5: steady |
|
| 60s Rest | ||
| 250m Front crawl – hard | ||
| 2,000m – 2,500m | ||
| Cool Down | ||
| 200m Choice | ||
| 2,200m – 2,700m | ||
Variation in pacing is a regular theme on the Tuesday session, but this time I stepped it up with a fifth of the session being performed at a hard pace. It is a jump on recent weeks and I won’t keep every week at this level right now, but I wanted to give a shock to the system and make sure my swimmers know it won’t be getting easier.
Thursday, 20th March 2014 – Endurance Swim Session
| Warm Up | ||
|---|---|---|
| 300m Choice – easy | ||
| 2x | 50m As 25m straight arm recovery, 25m front crawl on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m As 25m finger drag, 25m front crawl on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 50m Front crawl on 15s rest | |
| 2x | 150m Front crawl as 50m pull, 50m kick, 50m stroke on 20s rest | |
| 900m | ||
| Main Set | ||
| 3/4x | 300m Front crawl – pull and paddles on 30s rest 4x 50m front crawl – building on 15s rest |
|
| 2,400m – 2,900m | ||
| Main Set 2 | ||
| 5x | 200m as 100m medley, 100m front crawl on 30s rest | |
| 3,400m – 3,900m | ||
| Alternative Main Set 2 | ||
| 5x | 200m Front crawl as 50m hard, 150m steady on 30s rest | |
| 3,400m – 3,900m | ||
| Cool Down | ||
| 200m Choice – easy | ||
| 2,600m – 4,100m | ||
Not quite so much intensity on Thursday – I tend to use this smaller session to focus on swimmers’ techniques. I usually include a mix of strokes towards the end for the stronger swimmers, but there’s interest in putting a little more work into technique outside of front crawl. They need it! Next week’s session will mix up the strokes throughout.
