Swimming ... On a Monday

As I was driving to my sunrise swim this morning I thought about the majority of the swim sessions that I give my athletes on a typical Monday and why I script them the way I do. I knew my legs were a little heavy from the weekend as a combo of getting back to a good training routine (longer ride and runs from what I’ve been doing, plus some strength training on the lower body). So, I scripted my session in my head based on what I thought MY needs were and then went and knocked it out … it was as follows:

NOTE: I am a believer that one should swim strong/solid OR fast every session, even if it’s briefly, AND that long warm ups are necessary. 

Here goes:

-        -500 easy based on how I feel (just wake up)

-       - 8 x 50 w/ small paddles building the last 25 @ 10sec (start to force the system awake and use good technique with paddles)

-       - 4 x 100 w/ fins as 25 kick / 75 cruise swim (kicking was to help recovery from the weekend AND drive HR up a little)

-       - 4 x 50 cruise w/ small paddles (technique)

THAT WAS ALL WARM UP … most athletes think a warm up 500 easy is the warm up ... not so fast!  When athletes are carrying any kind of fatigue it usually takes at least 20min to get all systems warmed up. So you can see that this particular warm up checked a lot of boxes for me

-        MAIN SET of 1500 meters just rolling from one block to the next on the rest interval indicated – focus is on small bits of pace change BUT ALWAYS holding form.

-        250 pull, done as 25 strong / 100 cruise @ 15sec rest

-        200 pull, done as first and last 25 strong @ 15sec rest

-        150 pull, done as 25 strong / 50 cruise @ 10sec rest

-        100 pull, done as first and last 25’s strong @ 10sec rest

-        50 pull, easy @ 20sec rest

-        5 x 50 paddles – strong @ 10sec rest

-        200 pull w/ paddles - cruise

-        3 x 50 paddles – strong @ 10sec rest

-        100 pull w/ paddles – cruise @ 10sec rest

-        50 strong w/ paddles

-        WD = 4 x 50 easy mixed

  

In the end I checked all the boxes that I wanted … technical swimming, small bits of harder / faster swimming, a little work to aid my heavy legs, a solid warm up and controlled main set and some pulling to take a bit of work off my tired, and sinking, legs.

When I script athletes swim sessions these are some of the things I think about when deciding how to place their swim workouts across the week. I hope that you’ll do the same for yourself, or for the coaches out there, you start doing that or your athletes.

Always thinking … and today writing!