- Today, I'm here to help those newer swimmers
and triathletes out there
that are looking for a handful
of key swim workouts for them to follow
and improve their swimming.
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Okay, as a beginner swimmer or triathlete,
it's really important that we learn to walk before we run.
So, you may have heard people talking about
these fancy or super hard threshold sessions and whatnot,
well, forget about them, because at the moment
it's really important that we focus on the fundamentals
and basic skills that are going to
really set you up as a swimmer,
and then maybe we can come to them at a later day.
So one of the key sessions that we should be performing
as a beginner is the aerobic set.
(gentle electronic music)
As the name suggests, aerobic sets mean that you're
performing them aerobically.
So with oxygen.
And to achieve this, you need to be doing it at
an easy pace.
Now, by doing it at an easy pace, this actually
means that we can rack up some good duration and distance
and increase the rep lengths,
which in turn is going to improve our endurance,
which is obviously key for triathlon events.
Now, this brings us back to the analogy I started out with.
Learning to walk before we run.
So it's really important that at this easy pace
we build up that rep length gradually
rather than trying to increase rep length
as well as speed at the same time,
'cause that is just a recipe for disaster.
Now, today I'm going to be giving you some session examples
throughout, four different types of workouts,
but as with all of them it's really important that you do
a good warmup, a good warm down, so that you're preparing
for the session and also recovering well
and prepping for the next one.
So a good aerobic set to start out with
is five lots of 200 meters at an easy aerobic pace
with 30 seconds recovery between each rep,
giving you a 1000 meter main set.
Then progress this to four lots of 300 meters
aerobic with 30 seconds recovery,
and that now gives us a 1200 meter main set.
Then you can keep increasing the rep length
and reducing the number of reps,
so we've got three lots of 400 meters aerobic.
Now with 30 to 40 seconds recovery.
That's another 1200 meter main set,
and then let's go big.
Two lots of 500 meters aerobic with 30 to 40 seconds
recovery, but now just giving you a 1000 meter main set.
But a rather long rep length now.
Well, first time through the two lots of 500 meters
may seem pretty tough to start out with,
but perhaps next time around try adding in a third rep.
So you're doing three lots of 500 meters.
That'll give you a whopping 1500 meter main set,
and if you think about it, that is the distance
in an Olympic distance triathlon, so you've basically
covered that distance with simply around 30 to 40 seconds
rest every 500 meters.
That is a pretty good confidence boost.
♪ Calling me ♪
♪ Oh, like a rainbow ♪
♪ Like a rainbow ♪
- Well, moving on from our aerobic base work
and onto an equally as important area,
and that is with our technique sets.
Now, no matter how hard you're training or
the tough sets that you're doing,
if your foundations and your technique is not in place
then all of that can fall apart
and you won't actually be able
to access those top end speeds in the first place.
Now, with technique sets it's quite often regarded
as a recovery set, and yeah, okay, fair enough.
They're maybe not as hard as a speed set or a threshold set,
but I often find them really quite draining
because you are having to focus a lot on
your stroke and analyzing how
that stroke is feeling and looking.
So with that in mind, I'd often recommend actually
trying to break the reps down in a technique set.
You keep it really short, really focused and that quality
really high, and as that fatigue does set in,
you can stop, recover, reset, and off you go again.
So, let's start out with a set of eight lots of 50 meters
drill focused.
Swim as 25 meter drill, 25 meter easy.
Swim taking a good recovery of 15 seconds between
each of the reps.
Then into 100 meters easy pull with 30 seconds recovery
and then into four lots of 75 meters with a middle
25 drill and easy swimming either side,
20 seconds recovery between each of the 75s.
Then into another 100 meters easy pull, 30 seconds recovery,
then two lots of 100 meters as 25 meters drill,
75 meters easy swim,
30 seconds recovery between each of those
and then rounding out 100 meters easy pull
giving you a total of 1200 meters for the main set.
Now, you'll notice that I kept the drill reps
just 25 meters.
Because as I mentioned before, this is nice and short
to allow you to keep that quality really high
for the entire duration.
Now, if you are interested in the type of drills
to do for that, I'll be throwing to a video
at the end of this, so stay tuned for that.
But now on to another fantastic workout that you can include
into your training, and that is the strength workout.
(gentle electronic music)
Well, the idea behind this is to add a strength element
to the workout, little like going to the gym and
lifting weights.
Now, generally these are done at an easy aerobic pace
whilst increasing the demands on the muscles.
So by using swim toys such kick pulls,
pull buoys, paddles and so on we can really focus
on specific areas, making it really efficient way
of increasing our strength and power
in those particular areas.
A bit like I guess going and doing hill reps
when you're running.
Okay, so let me give you an example.
We've got five lots of 100 meters,
the first 100 as swim, the second 100 as pull,
the third 100 as pull with paddles,
the fourth has kick, the fifth back to swimming,
taking 20 seconds recovery between each rep.
Take an extra 60 seconds recovery at the end of those
five 100s and repeat the five 100s through again.
And of course, as we start increasing our endurance
through doing those aerobic sets that we were discussing
earlier, we can also start increasing the rep lengths
of the strength sets, so we can go for 200s, 300s,
or maybe even 400s.
Additionally, I quite like to use other strokes
as a means to increasing my strength,
because the other strokes tend to feel a little bit harder
because we don't do them that often,
but they will be working newer muscles perhaps
we aren't using when we're swimming freestyle,
which will all be of benefit to us.
And now for our final workout, and that is the speed set.
(gentle electronic music)
Now, I know I keep talking about learning to walk
before we run, and it is important for the speed sets
that you don't do these until perhaps you're feeling
quite confident and comfortable
with those aerobic sets
and you've built them up to a fairly good duration.
But if you are at that point, speed sets can be brilliant
for increasing our speed and being able to swim fast,
essentially we're increasing our pace range
rather than just being stuck at that aerobic pace
we might be doing in those longer sessions.
So, we can unleash that top end speed
also increasing our arm turnover, which again
is important for swimming faster.
Also, it's just a fact, speed sets are quite fun.
They're quite different from all the other workouts
we're doing, so that can really
start to spice up your training.
So, I'm not going in with anything crazy here.
Merely some short reps just to get a little bit
of pace change, unleash that top end speed,
and get the arms turning over.
So, something like four lots of 25 meters
as an all out effort to 15 meters with a really quick
arm turnover and then finishing the 25 meters
with 10 meters of easy swimming.
Take 40 seconds of rest between each of those 25s
and then into 100 meters of easy swimming
taking 60 seconds recovery.
And then repeat this whole set through
two, three, or maybe even four times.
Well, you'll notice those are fairly short reps
with really quite long recoveries, and the idea being
that we're just looking for that high quality,
all out max efforts trying to deliver
the best stimulus possible.
So the short reps will allow you to do that
and then the long recoveries allow you
to reset and recover ready for the next one.
Well there's four great workouts for you.
I hope you do enjoy them.
Of course start out with those aerobic and technique sets
and then you can start building in
the strength and speed workouts.
Now, unless you are able to do four swim workouts per week
I'd actually suggest alternating between them over
maybe a two week basis.
Well, do let us know how you get on
in the comment section below
and if you have any questions,
of course drop them down there too,
and I'll do my best to get back to you.
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If you'd like to find out a little bit more about
the freestyle technique you can see that by
clicking just down here and if you'd like to see
three drills to improve your catch, which tends to be
most people's downfall, you can see that by clicking
just down here.