Anything wrong with doing swim intervals on every workout?

Nothing wrong with intervals every swim; I never get in the water and swim the race distance straight unless it is actually a race.  Further, my normal swim workout is in the 2500-3500m range and I would never hit the pool to do that workout without breaking it up into intervals.

However, you want to vary the workouts in terms of length, intensity and recovery.  There are five paces that I normally use while swimming:

Easy - warmup, cooldown, drills, recovery sets

Moderate - used in the mainset when endurance is the focus; these sets will be slower than threshold pace and have very short recovery (5 seconds for 50-200's, 10 seconds for 250-400's)

Threshold - swimming just slower than 1500m race pace; these have short recovery (10 seconds for 100's, 20 seconds for 200's, etc)

Fast - swimming faster than 1500m race pace; typically a short set (max of about 300) with longer rest or active recovery (300 with 100 easy non-free recovery)

Sprint - all out; very short set (max less than 60 seconds) with long recovery (equal or slightly longer than swim time (25's on 60 seconds, 50's on 2 minutes).

Shane

Edited by gsmacleod 2009-08-19 8:14 PM

I wouldn't do the same intervals every day but I do mostly intervals.  I like to mix long and short intervals throughout the week.  Today was 2x1500m, yesterday was 10x200m, both with a few hundred meters warm up and cool downs.  Although you might recover enough to swim 100m intervals everyday you still need to mix up the training to keep from plateauing.  

I dont think there could be anything wrong with it, but I would make sure that you are getting in a few long/continuous swims here and there, more for mental toughness than anything else. YOu dont want race day to be the only time that you are swimming continuously for more than 100m at a time.

if i am in the pool 5 days a week, the main sets for each workout will look something like this:

2 threshold

1 speed

1 hard pull/kick day

1 that cna go anyway depending on how i am feeling, or more threshold.

in additiojn to this i get a decent amount of drills/warmups/cooldowns, etc.

I do nothing but intervals in the pool. No long straight swims..

Yeah, but you're a freak of nature, like not human even... :D

John

Nothing at all wrong with it. In my experience (as a former competitive distance swimmer) a 16 x 100M w/ 10 sec rest interval is far more productive than a straight 1600 swim.

You should be doing intervals 100% of the time in your swim training. 

Trent Grimsey who races 10k and 20k+ ocean swim trains intervals, Michael Phelps trains intervals, all the top swimmers train intervals.

If you just turn up and swim 2-3k non stop its not going to improve your swimming as much as if you did intervals. 

+1 - only do straight swims when I'm in a lake

haha! keep it quiet or me and my fish-people will eat you whole on your next swim!

Interesting how swim training is VERY different than run training in that for run training (my forte), if you just log a ton of miles and sprinkle one hard speed session per week, that will likely yield more benefits than blasting out interval after interval every day, EVEN if you're not getting injured. 

I'm cranking up my swim intervals, though. And I still admit that I somehow transform from being a hardcore, all-out, take-no-prisoners runner and biker in training, to a crying little baby in pain after the first 10 minutes of my swim intervals. Strange how that killer instinct doesn't necessarily cross over to disciplines you're terrible at! 

One of the reasons why you swim intervals rather than long unbroken swims is to be able to hold your stroke together. Swimming is more about technique than running or cycling.