Correlations to race speed vs. practice times
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Most coaches have at least 2 meets in by now and should have some data. Anyone started looking at how their race speeds line up with what is going on in practice and vice versa?
200s:
1. 50s, line up with what? The whole 200 or are they closer to the average of 50s 2, 3, & 4?
2. If it’s closer to 2, 3, & 4, then where does the first 50 come from? 25s pace doubled?
3. If you use 75s how do they fit? Is it the last or middle 75 of 200?
100s:
1. Average of the 25s? (sure be nice)
2. Average of the 50s?
3. Where’s the first 50 coming from?
4. Second 50 is that the pace of 50s on short rest?Have other questions but need to think about them a little more
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
Just a couple of notes, oldschool. Mind you, small number of male, high school swimmers, so can’t read too much into it. Also, training scy but swimming lcm.
400/500: 75’s seem to match overall race times much more accurately than 50’s. I am going to try setting a goal time for first half of race with 50’s and second half of race with 75’s. It won’t be a huge difference in goal times, but I thought I would experiment a little in August and September. My swimmers feel the same way about training 50’s and 75’s for this event. They seem to be able to make their 50’s all day long, but it isn’t matching up with race times.
100/200 breast: Cannot get my boys to repeat their goal times, but we are continuing to drop time in races. Maybe because of the use of larger muscles, but I can only get 2-3 repeats at actual goal times before failure. Sometimes, nobody makes a goal time. For the 200, we have been training 50’s at a time about 4-6 seconds slower than actual goal. For the 100, about 1-2 seconds slower. I don’t see this happening with any other stroke, but it’s pretty universal with all my swimmers. For example, swimmers training <:36 for 50’s in 200 breast goes 2:16 in race. Now training <35.5 and will see if it translates.
Again, not much, and certainly not a large enough group to be conclusive, but I’ll take anything little bits of info/insight I can get.
Rick,
Working at goal speed as a target time is rough. I got cute (and all full of myself) about 8 years ago and tried that with my kids and had pretty much the same results, they could make very few of them, yes they did improve. But man was it a rocky road and made me nervous too.400/500 guys. The idea of 50 front 1/2 isn’t bad. Then maybe combine them with 75 and 100s at back half pace, example: 6 x 50 at pace on :50/1:00, 2 x 75 at pace on 1:30/1:40, 1 x 100 on 1:40/1:50 (just guessing pace will determine interval) at pace and do them as rounds maybe 3-4 rounds with :30 rest between rounds. You would be looking at 3x as 1650 to 4x as 2200 tvw at 400/500 pace, not an easy set. you might do the first two rounds as above and maybe drop the 100s on the 3rd round and the 75s on the 4th or reverse it and go the other way and add the 75s and 100s You just have to read the kids and present the challenge. The key is holding “race pace”
With your breaststrokers try using the average of 2, 3, & 4 of their current best time and see if that makes a difference. The 2:16 is probably out in 31 mid and then holds in the 34 mid to high range? So we’d use 34.81 to 35.51 (.69+) for HS swimmers is about average, as the target times. Basically what you are doing with the 35.5 as a “no slower than time”. Also any time you adjust speed they will regress a little i.e. if they could make say 8-10 total at 36s, then you move them to 35s, they may fall back to in the neighborhood of 5-7, which is ok.
Don’t apologize for your group size. It’s what you have and what you are seeing with that group. At least you are pay attention and starting to use the data to try and make your swimmers better. It’s a start and can be a very interesting journey.
Just my thoughts
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
My suspicion on the breast intervals seemed to be supported by the results this past week. Even though my swimmer was unable to “train” at his desired race pace, he still dropped time. We had a 2:14 time (converted) in the 200 breast. We were training at under :35.5 in practice and only able to complete 6 or 7 before first miss.
Again, only one swimmer, and it was a lcm race when we train scy exclusively, so I’m not going to read too much into it. Just thought it was worth sharing.
Now, I am busy gearing up for the high school season. We will be going usrpt exclusively for the first time. Swimmers will be given rest on an individual/as needed basis, and I hope to have much more meaningful data to share. I just need to find a good, efficient way to track it analyze it.
Rick,
Here is a sample data sheet for “n x 50 fr on 1:00/:50” Just to show things you might want to record. That’s up to you.The workout data sheet is how I get numbers from practice to the Excel sheet. Years ago I had them record their numbers and was handling 24 sheets of paper. Then we went to using gray clipboards 1 per lane and they could write in pencil so it didn’t matter if they got wet they could still write on them. They also drew pictures and were a pain to clean every day. But it dropped the paper handling from 24 to 8. Now I use the workout data sheet and after each set just walk down the lanes and ask for numbers, takes about 3 minutes and I’m handling one sheet of paper for recording data into spreadsheet.
Once you get one sheet made it’s just copying over for another set.
Just some ideas
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
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