[izSwimming]

Ryan,

You make a great point about the structural demands of our bodies. It’s interesting that humans are the only animal that can’t instinctively swim yet we have all dedicated ourselves to bettering it. It sounds like you have a background in strength and conditioning so I would love to hear more of your thoughts!

I agree that work on land can get the job done but do all or even most swimmers need it? If weight is the issue than any exercise that accomplishes that goal will help. Although it does seem that most coaches forget that swimming is a great exercise to lose weight. Also, you can’t out train a bad diet.

If ROM is a limiting factor that isn’t being developed by swimming, then we can potentially do some work on land to help that. But forcing kids who have ample ROM to do mobility work seems like a waste of their time.

Same goes for kids who are limited by their jumping ability. The athletes I have coached who have weak push offs are normally the ones with poor streamlines and underwater skills. It seems our time would be a lot more well spent working specifically on that. The extra push offs you do alone will overload their legs/hips and you will accomplish that goal. I coach a kid right now with a 42” vertical but is just an average swimmer. Why are we still spending any time working on his jumps? (That’s obviously a question directed at myself and my team).

E.L. Thorndike’s Theory of Identical Elements states that transfer of training lessens as the tasks grow apart. There are identical elements between a jump on land and a push off the wall but the posture is entirely different. I agree there can be some benefit but blanketly saying this will help everyone seems incorrect.

I can’t deny that land training can help with starts but is it really ideal? Could our time be better spent working on actual dive starts? It seems that doing 15-20 good starts 2-3x a week would build some serious leg strength. And those athletes would be able to work on their entry and breakout which all know to be just as important at the start itself.

“By training everyone the same we will destroy as much talent as we create”

[izSwimming]

Thank you for the feedback! Regarding the books I’ve been lucky enough to have a very smart coach point me in the right direction with where to find quality information

We’ve done 10-15m efforts with higher velocity than the 25s. We’ve also done 6 second max effort swims both with limited underwater work and full underwaters. We’ve also done 6-8 cycles at a time with tempo. On these I told them to try and get more distance each rep with the same number of strokes/tempo.

I will try implementing some varying tempo work as well. We’re 5 (women) and 12 (men) days out from our conference meet so I’m assessing some of our results.

I’ve attached the tracking/testing for our 25s on 2:00. This is every set + number made since our mid-season invite (the rest is in a different workbook). We retested yesterday. The one swimmer I thought was at a speed barrier actually improved but very minimally (10.11 to 10.08). Any feedback you or anyone else has on the workbook or maximizing those improvements would be greatly appreciated!

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[izSwimming]

Rick,

The only problem I have come into when keeping the distance constant is a little bit of “leveling off” after about 21-30 days at the same number. By that I mean they simply can’t swim any faster. The “miss 1 sit 1” approach while stopping after 3 failures tends to help alleviate those problems though as long as everyone understands they are expected to make less after the time has changed.

Just curious, how often do you adjust their pace times?

[izSwimming]

Thank you! This absolutely helps.

In the past, I ran into the issue of adjusting the pace after making 100% of number offered in a single set but learned from that mistake very quick. I’ve been keeping the speed relatively constant but the individual differences in peak number is still something I simply need more data on.

But thanks again, and the correlations you have presented are extremely helpful. I wish everyone recorded data in that manner!

izSwimming

[izSwimming]

OldSchoolC,

I had very helpful findings with a 100 butterflyer this long course season. The core of our training consisted of nx25s on :30 (SCY) done typically twice a week as well as nx50s on 2:00 (LCM) also done once or twice for about 10 weeks over the long course season. We used the same pace times each set the whole season while increasing the volume per set. After doubling his 25s on :30 pace and converting it to LCM his pace was .08 faster than his actual split. His 50s on 2:00 pace was .08 slower than his actual race split. Added together it equated to EXACTLY what he swam in the race.

We were swimming the same pace times throughout the season while increasing the volume per set. Each meet, as the numbers increased, the speed lowered. These findings tell me that it requires a certain number per set before those numbers equate to actual racing success. My swimmer reached the point where he could make ~18-20x25s on :30 before failure and 6x50s on 2:00. It should also be noted that we also swim 50s on 2:00 SCY for the first 4 weeks in the season and this pace time converted to significantly faster than his 2nd 50 race time.

My question is, have you found any peak numbers that equate to success? How do you know when it’s time to swim faster?

izSwimming

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