24/3/10 Swim Training

W/U:
100S
100P
100K

M/S:
10x50(odd no. Moderate pace, even no. Race pace), all on 1:20

100Easy

3x100(Each 100- 25E,25M,25H,25F.O)
15sec Rest on last person

100Easy

1x200(50E,50M,50H,50E)

C/D:
300 Easy as 2(100FS,50Breast)

Total:1.8km

Often swimmers go to a group swim and clock mileage without knowing the reasons behind the reps. As a coach I believe the students must know what is planned for them in the training in order for them to fully gain from the experience other than feeling like "the grp swim is somewhere I can push myself and experience pain..."... Below is breakdown of tonight's quality session.

This is a relatively short swim at 1.8km total mileage and thus you can notice an increase in the quality of the sets.. We can focus on speed technique and pacing with adequate rest..

During the swim, other than prescribed rest in the swim sets, I only gave 100m easy as the other rest time.. This active rests keeps the body active and learns to find ways to relax and recover on the go...

That is Something that alot of undertrained endurance athletes aren't able to do.. When they hit a higher than normal HR, they'd slow down and usually continues at that pace without any increments of pacing after slowing down..

E.g 42km race.. First 10km at 10kph pace, hr hits the ceiling and speed starts to drop.. In order to lower exertion, runner slows down and keep the pace or slower (which is aerobic pace) til the race is left abt 1to2km left and they suddenly can run at 12kph again.. If that happens to u, u probably have a issue with pacing and didn't do enough training to know your body enough.

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Tonight's varied distances provides a platform to know how it is like to be doing Recovery Pace/Steady Moderate Pace/Hard Pace/Flat Out for the following situations:

- Building up speed over 100m/200m
- Recovering from Race Pace (alternate 50s of hard and moderate set)
- Recovering from a build up to Race Pace (200m set)

These sets allows us to experience actual racing situations..
1) Building up speed over the last 200m,
2) easing into the swim at start then chionging the first 100m til the first buoy
3) sprinting 50m to pass a fast swimmer
4) recovering from the sprint efforts whilst still maintaining a base timing for your swim with good stroke technique and reduced effort.

Some short reviews:

Wilson:
Pulling with a straight arm most of the time.. Not sure if u feel alot of effort from the shoulders and arms or the back muscles(shld be this, remember I told u I am getting some lower and upper back ache after the swim?, frankly speaking my arms are still fresh to some good quality gym work after the 3.5km despite the speed work..)

Catching the water correctly and getting the elbows at the right position in the pull allows rotation of body to bring the elbow pass the body with your lats and serratus anterior and core.

Lawrence
Strength is building up really great and you're right there with sam and Gen already..
Good to know you're clear with the arms positioning in your pull and my only other concern right now is your left side body rotation that isn't really happening as well as your right side(fantastic on the right).

Kinda sad to know you'll be away but I'm sure we'll see you once per month when the dusts settles and your road clears..:)

Gen
Excellent streamlining at slightly higher than moderate effort but lead arm tend to not straighten up at higher effort and also extra slow swim..

Same issue as your run, you don't know how to slow down.. if you can't do the slow down and do a stronger pace after the active rest, its gonna be a very monotonous race oh... also, very hard to do finish longer races feeling strong too! Try to glide more! HR Monitor can help, else you'll Have to be very discipline in learning how your body feels.

Sam
Despite feeling like shit as you mentioned, the timing never lies.. Your endurance over longer distances (500 and above) probably dropped a little but the swim trainings you've done over the last half a year is still in the bank.. this is what we mean by base training.. giving you base strength to build on. :)

However, you must take note of using your body rotation together with the limbs like i told you just now yup..
Lastly, Your swim is definitely enough for the sprint tri, focus on your bike and run for a more complete race! Maintaining strength and improve on weakness is the best way to improve overall timing!

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I don't really know how many of you are reading all these but no matter how naggy I can be, I hope all these are going through good heads who're absorbing these hrs of typing I'm doing! haha..

Also, I've stopped repeating all the mistakes in the blog, and instead I go one to one to all of you to tell you what you should work on.. I believe that is more efficient for a bigger group of ppl.. :)

Hope you guys enjoyed the swim, its 1.8km.. not 1.5. So I did 3.5 too! haha.

Cheers
KK

ps: Jersey order has been made. I will update once we can collect and when to pay the costs. :)