The Swim Coach Writes...

I got to coach the Master's morning workout today and thought I'd share this fun set. This distance swim workout is a great one if you're either trying to work your way up to a specific distance, or improve your time at a particular distance: take the distance and break it down into an increasing set. This is how it works.

Say your distance is 750 yards (or meters), it can be broken down into this increasing set:

50
100
150
200
250

Now give yourself a little bit of rest in between each of those components, like 10 seconds after the 50, 20 after the 100, and 30 after each of the others (I don't like to go more than 30 or your heart rate comes down too much). By the end of the set, you've done the distance with some breaks to make it easier on you. You can repeat the set as many times as you want.

If you're going for a time, set an interval instead of a specific number of seconds. So, if you were hoping to hit a 1:30 interval per 100 in your 750, you could swim the 50 on :55, the 100 on 1:50, the 150 on 2:45 and so on. Then try to hit your interval for each component (swim the 50 in :45, the 100 in 1:30, the 150 in 2:15, etc.)

This set looked deceptively easy when I wrote it up, but we repeated it four times on a pretty quick interval and it got tough fast! Give it a try if you're looking for something to spice up those boring long swims.