Swim Workout: Crossfit-Inspired BLAST in the pool

For this week's Saturday Masters, I decided to let my Crossfit training provide the inspiration for a truly taxing workout. For the main set, I got everyone out of the pool and used all four lanes. We did a serpentine swim, entering the pool on one side and swimming up and back in that lane, then under the lane line to the next lane. Up and back in that lane, switch to the next lanes, etc. until you reach the other end of the pool and get out on the opposite side. Since our pool is four lanes, that's a 200 yard swim total. Then on that corner of the pool, swimmers did 10 squats, came back over to the starting side and did 10 situps. We did that all four times, so four rounds of 200 yard swim, 10 squats, 10 situps, for total time.

One thing I noticed as I watched my Master's swimmers go through this workout is that different swimmers have different limitations. For some people, it's flexibility. Some swimmers can't squat without their heels coming off of the ground. This points to reduced leg and achilles flexibility, which can hamper swimming. For some swimmers, core abdominal and back strength is a serious limitation, for others its overall conditioning or swim technique. Since this workout hit all of those areas, if you couple it with a technique-heavy warmup like I did, it's a great one for making sure you are improving across all of the modalities that swimming requires: Technique, Flexibility, Core Strength, Conditioning.


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SKILL: Kick Timing
DRILL: Two-beat kick with pull-buoy

Warm Up
300 Drill/Skill by 50
100 Kick 200 D/S 100 Pull 100 D/S

3 x (25-50-75-100 Build reverse IM) r 10


Main Set

4 x 100 Desc. Get warmed up!

4 x All-lane serpentine swim + 10 squats + 10 situps For Time

EZ 100

2 x 200 Pull, 200 Stroke

100 EZ

3550 y