Reply To: How to achieve time goals in practice but not in meets
I experienced the same thing with breaststroke sets. Was training the 100/200 with 16 x 25’s and 12 x 50’s. goal times were :16.5 for 25’s and :36 for 50’s on 30 secs. and 55 secs. intervals. Swimmer finally got close to completing set, but he was swimming at a stroke rate that could never be sustained in a race. He said that’s what he had to do to make it. I explained that if he isn’t training the way he races, then we aren’t going to get the results.
I raised goal times to 17.5 and :37 and asked him to swim it the right way. he did, and we have lowered the goal times to :15 and :33.25 in two months. It took some time to convince him that the faster way is the way they race. It takes a lot of reinforcement, but it is really a cool thing to see my swimmer training his br. with a solid technique and form that looks identical to how he races.
