Begin this 1000-yard set by swimming 1 x 100 at a moderate effort (say, 75%). Count your total strokes then divide by 4 to calculate your average spl. In this example, we'll assume a total stroke count of 64, which will give us an N of 16 spl. Then use your N in the following way (stroke counts in parentheses are from the example of 16 spl)
Swim 4 rounds of (3X25)
Each round of 25s is N-2, N-l, N (14, 15, 16)
Swim 2 rounds of (3 X 50)
Each round of 50s is N-2, N-l, N (28, 30, 32)
Swim 1 round of (4 X 75)
Each 75 is N-2 + N-1 + N (14+15+16 or 45 total strokes)
Here's what you'll probably experience as you go through the set: On the first round of 25s you'll probably just be calibrating your stroke length. In each successive round, as you calibrate a bit more finely, you'll change gears with more of an effortless flow, and — just as would be the case if you change gears more adeptly on your bicycle — you'll probably swim a bit faster. This experience results in two key benefits: First, neuromuscular learning occurs as your brain processes new information on each of the 12 lengths in that set. Second, you learn to swim faster without swimming any harder. You use efficiency rather than effort to accelerate, and that will be a priceless lesson.
The same learning experience will be repeated on the two rounds of 50s and the set of 75s, except with your motor-learning center being challenged at a slightly higher degree of complexity each time. Not only does the puzzle change even' length, but also you tackle a higher-order puzzle after each cycle of 300 yards.
Continue using yoga breaths or bobs for your rest interval, perhaps adding a breath or two to your rest period as you move from 25s to 50s to 75s for your repeat distance. If you like, insert 100 or 200 of your favorite drill (or swimming with an SSP focal point) as recovery between rounds of 300; before long, you'll be able to move easily from round to round, changing gears and speeds as easily in the water as you do on your bike in the course of a 10-mile ride. Continue, at least initially, to ignore the pace clock. Simply/ee/ your speed develop naturally as you let yourself "rev it up" a bit by adding strokes from lap to lap.
Fourth Gear: Lance Armstrong in the Water
If you've gotten this far, you are already swimming with an assurance and mastery enjoyed by only a tiny fraction of all swimmers on earth. You're now ready for graduate-level gear changing.
In the examples below, start the set by swimming a moderate-effort 100 to find your N for the rest of the set. Take your total stroke count, divide by four, and use that as your N to calculate your target stroke counts for all the repeats that follow. Most important, in this set, the N is an average stroke count for each swim. There is no prescribed stroke count for each length within a swim. If your target count for the 75s is N-l (which is 15 spl or 45 total strokes in the examples I've chosen), you can take the 45 strokes as 15+15+15 or 14+15+16.. .or 16+15+14, for that matter. With repeated practice, you'll soon know the easiest and most efficient way to hit your stroke counts for any speed or effort.
Swim 2 rounds of 500 as follows
1st Round:
1 x 100 @ N (64 strokes)
2 x 75 @ N-l (45 strokes)
3 x 50 @ N-2 (28 strokes)
4 x 25 @ N (16 strokes)
Active Rest: 100 Drill or Silent Swim, then:
2nd Round
1 x 100 @ N-2 (56 strokes)
2 x 75 @ N-l (45 strokes)
3 x 50 @ N (32 strokes)
4 x 25 @ N-2 (14 strokes)
Let's examine what you'll likely experience in the course of each set and the learning that results. You start with an easily achievable stroke count in the 1st Round. As you move to the 75s, the spl gets a bit more challenging, but the repeat is shorter. The 50s offer the same combination of tougher spl with easier repeat distance. In each set, you're also practicing the calibrate-and-recalibrate skill again. The 2nd 75 should go more smoothly than the first. Ditto for the last two 50s. But when you get to the 25s, suddenly the spl gets bumped back up to the starting point. The combination of easier spl and easier repeat distance means you may "run out of pool" before taking the allotted number of strokes. So your task on the 25s is to learn lofit in the added strokes smoothly, which means to swim fast fluently.
After the first round, give yourself a recovery 100 of drilling or an SSP, if you like, then tackle the second 500. On the second round you'll use the same range of stroke counts, but the task — and the learning experience — will be completely different: You'll start with the longest repeat and lowest spl. You'll have to swim with incredible discipline and mindfulness to finish the 100 @ N-2. (Remember an average of 14 spl could be done as 13+14+14+15, for instance.) But then you add strokes as the repeat distance gets shorter on the 75s and 50s. The 50s @ N should be a breeze and you should be able to do them with a nice feeling of easy speed When you get to the 25s @ N-2, you're back to "stroke deprivation," needing to subtract two strokes per length from your count on the 50s. But, because they're 25s, try to swim them as fast as possible in the allotted 14 strokes. If you get to the point where you can do all this successfully, Congratulations! You have just crammed as much learning as is humanly possible1 into 1000 yards of swimming. You've also done a lot more to develop your swimming and triathlon potential than one more "same old, same old" set of generic 100-yard repeats on 2:00, or 1:30 or even 1:10.
The above set makes use of the world's most incredible learning machine — the human brain and body. The most neglected ingredient in training — for virtually all athletes, not just triathletes — is that of "fooling the body." The whole point of training is to create adaptability. Give the body a task it has not done before and it adapts by making changes to strengthen its ability to successfully complete the task. Running, cycling, or swimming farther or faster stimulates your body to make cell-level energy-system changes to be equal to the task. Once it has made those changes, however, doing the same set again will not produce further adaptation. Yet most athletes do the same sets in the same way, day after day, week after week, year after year, motivated by the desire to "top off the fuel tank.
Effective Training sets keep your brain, body, and neuromuscular system in a state of confusion, having to constantly come up wjth solutions to new puzzles and tasks. And the more continually you maintain an environment for adaptability, the greater the capability you create.
Chapter 16
Swimming for Time: Speed at Last
Up to now, we've ignored the pace clock — something verging on heresy among swimmers and coaches. But we've had good reason: Allowing you to fully develop swimming as an art has readied you to train for it as a sport with far greater return for your investment of precious time and energy. With stroke count now ingrained as your most important piece of training data, we'll finally begin using the pace clock to give you another piece of information to cross-reference with your stroke-count numbers. This will give you the complete swimming-improvement picture. We'll start with my favorite pool game: Swimming Golf.
Swimming Golf
To play Swimming Golf, count your strokes for a fixed, short distance (I prefer 50s because the math is manageable) and add your time in seconds to that number. This gives you a structured way to find your most economical SL and tempo. For any swimming speed, there are many potential combinations of SL and SR; from one extreme of a very short stroke with extremely high turnover to a very looong stroke with a very slooow turnover. Neither extreme is energy-efficient, but playing Swim Golf and experimenting with a variety of combinations helps you quickly pinpoint the one that works best for you. And when you compare your effort level with your score, you gain an accurate measure of how to produce the greatest V with the least expenditure of energy. By playing regularly, you find the smartest, easiest way to the lowest score, using cunning rather than muscle. Here are examples of the two basic ways to lower your score. Please don't be intimidated by the stroke counts, times, and scores that you see here. Remember: Swim Golf is relative. No
matter what your starting "score," (and it might be 90,100,110 or more), the point is to lower that score. You'll see benefits no matter what your starting point.
Version 1: On successive 50s, swim the same time but reduce your stroke count.
Example:
32 total strokes + :50 = 82
31 total strokes + :50 = 81
30 total strokes + :50 = 80
In this example, you'd start by swimming a relaxed 50 in 50 seconds. Adding your count of 32 strokes to your time yields a score of 82. The goal in this version is to repeat the same time on each succeeding 50 in the set, but to continue subtracting strokes, until you can't shave any more from your count without sacrificing speed.
This makes for an intriguing puzzle. You could, for instance, subtract a stroke by holding a longer glide after your pushoff, but that will slow you down a bit, so you'd need to regain that time without adding back the stroke you saved on your pushoff. The most valuable learning experience will come from using the knowledge you gained in Chapter 15 to carve strokes from your total, but — each time — to add just a little bit more "oomph" to each remaining stroke to keep your time the same. This version will teach you a lot; have fun with it.
Version 2: On successive 50s, maintain your stroke count, but descend your time.
Example:
30 total strokes + :45 = 75
30 total strokes + :44 = 74
30 total strokes + :43 = 73
In this example, you swim at a chosen stroke count, then note your time from the pace clock after finishing. To improve your score you need to keep exactly the same stroke length, but take each stroke just a bit faster in order to shave time. This poses a different problem and a different learning experience than the previous version. Looking at this version in light of the formula V = SL x SR, what you must do here is increase V (i.e., go faster) by raising your SR while keeping SL the same. It's not easy, but as soon as you begin solving it, you've advanced your skill set to an exceptionally high order by acquiring the knack that decides races at the Olympics.
Your improving golf score will provide an unerring measure of how well you're using SL to create speed. If you play regularly, you'll be amazed at how quickly a bit more effort can add a lot more strokes. If those strokes don't translate into enough speed to lower your total score, you know right away you've been wasteful and can take quick steps to fix the problem.
Swimming Golf sets and scores are also the perfect way to develop a kinesthetic sense of how you should feel at the beginning of any swim longer than 400 meters in racing or as you start longer training sets. When you record a personal best score, immediately capture and store how you felt while swimming it. Those that feel the easiest, yet produce a solid score, give you a benchmark for the kind of stroke sensations you should aim for in your races. With enough practice, you'll be able to put yourself in a flow state at will.
Tiger Woods in the Water
Once you have the basics of Swimming Golf, you can easily add refinements to raise your game to a higher level. The first step is to begin factoring in your heart rate or Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE; see Chapter 12). You may play Swimming Golf inefficiently at first, wearing yourself out to get a good score. For example, you may drop your score by kicking harder, something you couldn't sustain in a long race or training swim.
The advanced golfer measures her scores against the effort needed to achieve them. If you swam a 50 in 32 strokes and 37 seconds for a 69 score, but had an RPE of 5, you'd be hard-pressed to swim like that for more than one or two 50s — and would probably need to rest a minute or more between them. On the other hand, when you can swim that 69 score with an RPE of 3, you might be able to maintain it for 10 to 20 repeats, perhaps resting only 3 to 5 yoga breaths between swims; this would definitely be a "race-ready" golf score.
Thus, reducing your RPE at a particular score is just as useful a goal as lowering that score. You might save energy by swimming more efficiently, or you might do it by using a different strokes/seconds combination. The more curious and creative you are in playing, the more you'll learn. Here are several variations that will make you a "tour golfer:"
1. Do a round of 3 to 4 x 50s to establish a benchmark score. Then do several rounds with fistgloves®. How close can you come to your ungloved scores? Finally, remove the gloves and do another round ungloved. Does your ungloved score improve after "educating" your hands with the gloves? If so, capture and store the feeling it produces.
2. How many ways can you score? Tiger Woods is so dominant because he has shots in his repertoire that other golfers can barely imagine. Once you've been playing for a while and have established your own "par," test how many different stroke counts you can swim at a slightly higher score. For example, if your record score is 77, try swimming a series at a constant score of 80 as shown below.
30 strokes + :50
31 strokes + :49
32 strokes + :48
33 strokes + :47
34 strokes + :46
At the end of the series, identify which combination felt easiest. That goes into your muscle "memory bank."
3. Repeat short series of 50s at several stroke counts. E.g., If you have an N of 20 spl (or 40 strokes per 50), try several rounds of 50s as follows:
3 x 50 @ 38 strokes
3 x 50 @ 39 strokes
3 x 50 @ 40 strokes
3 x 50 @ 41 strokes
Descend your golf score on each round and compare your best scores. Which stroke count produced the best combination of low score and low RPE? File that away. Want to learn even more? Occasionally, swim either of those series in the reverse order, from higher count to lower. The same range of counts will produce fresh insights, when you subtract, rather than adding, strokes.
4. Different Strokes. As the Four Strokes Made Easy DVD demonstrates, alternating backstroke and freestyle can benefit both strokes, more than practicing either one alone. I particularly enjoy doing LongAxis Combinations in Swimming Golf. Here's one of my favorite series. I may do two or three rounds of the following:
3 to 4 x 50s backstroke. Count strokes and take times. Aim for best score.
3 to 4 x 50s (25 backstroke + 25 freestyle). As above.
3 to 4 x 50s freestyle. As above.
Compare the score you achieve for freestyle after swimming backstroke and then back/free as a warmup, against scores you achieve in other types of sets. Want to learn still more? Do a round of the above with fistgloves®, then another round with "nekked hands."
5. Use your own experiences to create imaginative golf sets to measure any aspect of your swimming. Try doing golf sets Super Slow and compare them with your scores at, say, 70%, 80% and 90% effort. Do them as silently as you can or with a focus on Piercing the Water and compare your scores with those you achieve using other focal points. Any "tweak" that produces a better score or the same score with a lower RPE is useful. File it away for use in a race or in another training set.
No More Generic Training
With so many learning experiences from Tl Lessons and thoughtful whole-stroke sets filed in your body's "athletic-performance hard-drive" you now have the tools to transform the generic sets prescribed in any book, article, or Masters workout, into Effective Training. Here's one simple example, based on a fairly routine training set.
The coach or magazine article prescribes a set of 5 x 100. You can choose any of the following ways of doing it.
Option 1: Swim all 5 x 100 at the same time and same stroke count. You're practicing constant SL, SR, and V.
Option 2: Swim all 5 x 100 in the same time, but subtract one stroke from each successive repeat. You're practicing constant V, but producing it more with SL and less with SR.
Option 3: Swim all 5 x 100 in the same stroke count, but descend your time on each repeat. Same SL, but more V from gradually increasing SR.
Option 4: Swim 5 x 100, adding one stroke to each successive repeat and descend your time. You go faster by "trading" some SL for more SR. This
option offers other choices you can make in where to trade that SL for more V to practice yet-finer control.
In this example, speed and SR are added to the end of the repeat first, while maintaining the initial SL at the beginning of each repeat until deep into the set — which is smart rehearsal for effective distance racing:
Example:
• 13+14+14+15 = 56
• 13+14+14+16 = 57
• 13+14+15+16 = 58
• 13+15+15+16 = 59
• 14+15+15+16 = 60
Each of these examples would slightly change the learning experience and training effect of what was once a pretty generic training set. And each such change would squeeze out a bit more adaptation value from a finite amount of training time.
A need for speed?
The training program I have suggested will thoroughly prepare 95 percent of all triathletes for unprecedented racing success. But a small number, those seeking to race at a near-elite level or above (not just pro's but top age-groupers too) may have more specialized requirements. Particularly in races where drafting on the bike is legal, medals are often substantially decided by the swim finish. So, for a small number of triathletes, it may be critically important to splash out of the water with the lead pack.
Many triathletes have prepared themselves for that by doing "anaerobic swimming" or simply going hard. The goal is to tolerate the pain of lactic acid buildup. Admittedly not much fun and, I think, perhaps not all that necessary even for elites. Ivar Brinkman, a Tl-trained triathlon coach in Belgium, has his athletes do about 10 percent of their total swimming yardage in sprints, usually in combination with longer swims, mainly to rehearse for the experience of sprinting the first par t of the swim leg, to get in the draft of the fastest swimmers, then settling into a more sustainable pace.
Triathlon swimming made easy Page 14