Swim Training for Sub 11 mins - 750m (Sprint distance)

That is pretty good for someone only swimming 3 months

Ideally, find a local swim team coach and get him/her to assess your stroke.
If not possible, get someone to video and send it to someone competent. Not a message board :-)

Do something like a CSS (Critical swim speed test) where you do a 200 and a 400 and get a threshold speed. This will give you a hint if you have good endurance, poor speed.....

Once you know your strengths and areas to work, build a plan.

^^^ what he said!

Swimming is very much about technique and that's likely where you'll find the quickest gains.

Thanks for the prompt reply - definitely think I will need to try and get a coach to look at me...

3 months new to swimming and already at 12'30" / 750 m?! Are you telling me that I'm dumb? I started swimming 4 years ago and trained seriously for 10 months, including some 1-1 lessons and a video analysis as well, but I'm still at 31 minutes 1500 m race speed! (my recent CSS test in 50 m long course was 7'24" / 3'36" - 1'54" CSS)

For years a buddy of mine would swim 38 to 40min for a HIM. He probably improved 1 or 2 min in 10 years

Last year I got him to join a masters program. Coach is an Ex Oympian who's philosophy is stroke correction but in the context of "work", ie lots of sets of 50, 100, 200 with the occasional 400 or 800. Very few drills, a litte kicking but more during the long workouts (weekends).

He did this 3x per week for a year and dropped 6min on his HIM swim.

Does this mean I should change club? My club is a standard swim smooth squad led by an ex-olympian coach.

It's very hard to say. I don't know your program.

But let's put it this way. If you are swimming say 3x per week, let's say 2400m per session. If close to 2000m of that work isn't at a reasonable pace then I am sceptical.

I do believe there should be continuous feedback from the coach asking you try do this, that, whatever, but it should be done in the context of swimming at a reasonable pace.

I see people come to the pool and in a one hour session swim maybe 800m at a good pace and the rest is kicking and drills and whatever. Total waste of time IMO.

If you are swimming 4200m and 3000m is good swimming and the rest other", sure.

But I believe there is a minimum, meat and potatoes swimming that has to be done. Swimming on my side with a snorkel and fins, laternating from one side to the other for 1600 of a 2000m session is just stupid. I am exaggerating here.

I had/have a bad cross over. One coach made me do all these stupid things with fins, a stick, snorkels, catch up........did sweet f'all.

Another coach just slowed me down 3sec/100, made be bilatieral breath all the time to bring some balance into my stroke, THEN corrected a few things and I was swimming 4s faster per 100m in 2 or 3 months. The bilateral breathing all the time was hard to get used to. Now I can bilateral or single side breath and have a more balanced stroke. But it was all done in the context of building my endurance and perfecting the technique at a real swim pace.

Thanks for reminding my outstanding problem. From the CSS test I have done, I should work on a certain pace (e.g. 1'54" / 100 m), however, on a lot of days I can't swim at the pace that I should be at. On those days I can't swim anything faster than, e.g. 2'5" / 100 m (i.e. at least 10 seconds slower than what I should be), but on other days I can swim at or even faster than this pace (e.g. 1'53" / 100 m).

For example, the coach wants us to swim at 2'5" interval, on a good day I can easily complete the set on time, and sometimes I can even catch up the previous pack on 2'0" interval! but on a bad day I can't even swim 100 m in 2'5"!!!!!!!! On a good day I am in the middle of lane 1, but on a bad day I can't even catch up the back of the lane, and can't even complete the whole training set!!!!!!!!!

And it is easy to identify the day is a good day or a bad day - if the temperature is under 27°C it is a good day, the hotter the pool is the worse I am, but in recent months the norm is 30°C so I can't do anything at the pace I should be. (today it was 32°C at the pool) Therefore I am constantly complaining about the extreme heat but no one can help me unless I emigrate.

Edited by miklcct 2019-08-15 10:16 PM