Triathlon swim team workouts

Bookmarked!!!!

Thanks Tim!

Welcome to BT, Tim.

Thanks for sharing your workouts!

Mark

The warm-up needs to be consistent. It's two
fold. You are training your body to warm-up and when it's consistent you'll
know. Second, - I've noticed that a lot of people in the
triathlon community don't think warm-up is important or that it should be
shortened since you have a limited amount of time (1 hour or less) in the water. For most people, to get
warmed-up, takes on average between 20-30 minutes of swimming.
The workouts I write are trying to get everything out of the main set, since we don't have a lot of time. When I write workouts that are sprint oriented and high intensity the athlete needs to be ready to go for the main
set. Typically, those sets are 1000 or less, but every yard counts. In my opinion, triathlete warm-up are too short and they end up not being warmed-up when they get to the main set so part of that set is just wasted.

But with these longer warm ups are you not essentially training your atheletes to require long warm-ups all the time.  If there is a time shortge why not condition them to be able to go with 5-10 mins of warm-up.  Have you considered race day?  I don't see a lot of time to spend 20-30 mins before a race to warm up for the swim.  I ask because I can't remember any program I was in having a warm-up longer then 500yds.  Then again my memory is a little hazy.

Swimming is a nuero-muscular sport where we are
trying to build a very efficient "kinetic chain" in the stroke

Again leading to a shorter warm-up.

spending time on other strokes isn't very
valuable and can detract from their freestyle distance training. If we were
swimming 15-20 hours a week, I would be using the other strokes as recovery/garbage yards/warm-up and
would completely agree

If I only have a short period in the pool I will often do a recovery set of back/breast rather then resting.  Saves time and adds yards in a shortened period.  Also helps build shoulder strength.  What's considered garbage yards?

Thanks for the links to your workouts.  Just curious how you feel about the above?

I would argue that you're not training your athletes to require a longer warm-up... you're giving them a proper warm-up so that they can perform better in the main set. 

My masters practice is about ~3000m. We warm up about 600m-800m. 

In college, it was about ~6000yd. We warmed up 1000yd.

This is not time wasted, at all. On race day, I go by feel, because I know what a properly warmed-up body feels like.

"Saves time and adds yards in a shortened period." <- that could be garbage yardage. What's the goal of your workout? I generally do a lot of active recovery, but it will be after a full set, or perhaps 100m placed in between harder efforts. But, these will be freestyle, generally, and the purpose is to keep the body warm and moving, but allow HR to return to closer to normal, so that the next hard effort can be done effectively.... not so I can log XXX more yards.

Garbage Yardage to me is generally sets like 100x100 because it's your birthday. Or Christmas. You CAN plan workouts like that to be specific and beneficial, but generally, stuff like that isn't done with a purpose other than to do it.

Yes, learn how to warm-up well and have better workouts from that. If a race is coming up that will not allow for a good warm-up (or none at all) then work on this leading up to that race, but not for the majority of the time. Make yourself into the best swimmer possible and do race specific things leading into that race.

Just to elaborate on that to get a sense for how 'hard' the sets are intended to be, how do you define the 100 time?  An 'all-out' 100? A pace you could hold for (x) x 100 on (y) rest?  Something else?  Thanks.

Thanks Tim,

What I've found that works with time based intervals is knowing what "effort level" I should swim them.  There is a big difference if a coach gives me 100's on 1:40 "all out" and 100's on 1:40 at 80%.

You know your athletes, but for us borrowing your workouts it would be helpful. 

Unfortunately, my swimming is currently a bit 'stale' and I would guess a 1000TT today would give me an avg. pace closer to low-mid 1:40s (hopefully can 'fix' that in several weeks time)--short course meters.

It was someone else who mentioned a specific workout.  I just thought it was a good question to get a better idea about how much any specific set in your workouts should 'hurt'.  :-)

Oddly enough, there's a sizable group in the triathlon community who think they should train distance running like swimming.  But I get your point.