Training to cope with changes in swim pace – An Olympian’s guide

I’m sure many of you may have been putting the hard miles in over the winter months and may be feeling very happy with your progress with the season start upon us.

On the other side of the spectrum, there may also be some of you who have not done as much as you would have liked, be it due to injury or other commitments, and are looking to vamp up your training with the new season bearing down on us.

Whether you have put the miles in or not, one thing that many athletes forget and which is crucial to your swimming success is being able to change pace, and more importantly, being able to recover from these pace changes and settle back into race pace.

Lisa Mensink, a 2008 Olympian and professional athlete on the ITU World Championship Series, outlines a training plan that can really improve this aspect of your racing. Lisa puts a lot of her success down to these sessions and highly recommends you incorporate them regularly into your training to see the best results on race day.

“This session is great to get you ready for pace changes that inevitably happen in a race situation - fast starts, closing gaps to swimmers ahead, surges around buoys. These sessions are crucial as they not only prepare you to swim at varying paces, but more importantly they train you to recover from changes in pace and allow you to return to your desired race pace” says Lisa.

Warm up:

4 x (150 freestyle/50 choice)

4 x 100 drill and technique work

8 x 50 as 25fast/25easy

Main set:

2-4 x:

50 start speed/fast, 15s rest

100 race pace/strong, 20s rest

2 x 150 steady, 20s rest

100 race pace/strong, 20s rest

50 start speed/fast

100 easy

Cool down:

2-400 choice


To read more about Lisa and hear her news throughout 2014 go to www.lisamensink.com 

Simple Ways To Build Strength and Endurance with Harrison Dean

Strength

Wanting to build up your swim strength? There are some key tools you should be taking down to the pool with you for this. My standards are a pull buoy, paddles and a band.

I am going to assume most of you have a pull buoy and paddles tucked away but if not Zone3 has a good range of paddles and any good local sports store should be able to sell you a pull buoy.

If you are looking for a band get an old bike tube and cut it up and make a band that will fit snuggly but not too tightly around your ankles.

Below are some good examples of strength swimming sets. These will really help you become strong enough to deal with the duration of your Triathlon or Open water swim race and help prevent some of the pesky muscle fatigue.

600m – 2000m wearing your pull buoy paddles and band. Start with a shorter distance, like 600m and over time work up to putting in over 1000m every time you do a set like this.

25m – 100m Intervals with low rest just wearing a band around your ankles and letting your feed drag behind you. Start by just doing 25m at a time as this is super hard and to begin with it is near impossible to stop your feet dragging on the bottom of the pool.

100m – 1000m wearing a band around ankles with pull buoy between ankles. This is a bit easier than the above set but its still not easy so be sure to pick the distance you swim according to your ability.

Endurance

Having the endurance to complete the distance you set out to do is a tough one. Swimming slowly for long distances will help but you really need to mix up intensities and distances to get the most out of your training and be ready for the big day.

An endurance swim session can be different for different people depend on your goals and your current fitness level. The key outcome to the session is to help you swim faster for longer.

Three key ways to improve your endurance are:

Long and slow: Long and slow is easy, a great thing to do on your easy days. Depending on your fitness level and swimming ability long and slow distances can start from 400m and go up to 2km or even longer depending on the event you are training for.

Long and steady: Very similar to above but this will help make sure you are strong enough to push through the distance. This will test you more mentally than physically. Holding on to a steady pace can be harder than you may expect. Distances: 400m -1500m.

Fast, short rest, repetition: Building your threshold at speed is a great way to get ready for competition day. Keeping the rest down and the speed up really tests the body, the mind and the lungs. It could be argued that this is speed training but I would disagree. These sessions are very fitness dependent and without a coach it may take a few try’s to figure out the session that works for you.

Distances: 200m, 300m, 400m 10 – 30sec rest, 4 – 10 times through.

Good luck!

Harrison Dean

harrison@triathloncoach.co.nz

www.triathloncoach.co.nz