Thursday September 9th 2010

Today's practice goal was geared toward extending our basic freestyle swimming threshold. I define "threshold" as the pace an athlete can hold, on a particular interval -- using oxygen as their primary energy source. When we swim super-fast with a lot of rest, we tap into sugars we've got stored in our body and we use those sugars as fuel. If we can swim at race pace (in a race) without tapping too much into our sugar supply, we can last at that given race pace for longer. Our supply of glycogen (sugars) is not an endless supply -- and once we are out of that energy source there's nothing we're going to do in the middle of the race to produce more. If we can get reasonably far along into a race while still using oxygen as our main energy source we will bring our races home with the glycogen (energy) we've saved.

Our Mid-distance/Distance Set:

5x100 (125)hold 101 or 106
rest 10
10x100 (120)hold 59 or 104
rest 1:00
10x100 (115)hold 57 or 102-104

BT was doing a good job on the left side paces, and BT's harem was at or under the paces on the right. Many athletes looked like they were doing the paces with quite a bit of control. I know there was work involved but for the most part we were just floating along. Quite a few of the women working on the right side were at pace or just under easier than I've seen all year.

Our Mid-distance/Speed Set:

5x100 (130) hold 102/106/109
rest 30
5x100 (125) hold 100/104/107
rest 45
5x50 (50) hold 29/31/32
rest 30
5x50 (45) hold 28/30/31

Lots of easy ability to hold pace. I felt like I was slowing everyone down! One this type of set, the paces should be held right on the pace with the lowest possible effort -- a nice switch from the goals we often have which entail taking the "time" to the next level.

We finished with 36x25 (30) every 4th fast Fly or Free.

Here's a "Speed" Lesson:

I asked Max to swim fast on the 25s, but to "Max" out at 90-95%. The reason this type of sprinting is important: If you thrash your arms, hands, feet, core etc with a lot of jolting movements and you basically TRY to go nuts you actually end up hurting your ability to gain and hold speed. The water, as a medium, is extremely maliable -- and will change to whatever consistency you'd like it to change into. The type of consistency we'd like to have with the water we're swimming through is non-turbulent and still। When we move our limbs too fast and don't take the time to hold the water, we are essentially just pushing the water around the pool. We don't want to push the water around the pool because pushing the water around the pool has nothing to do with swimming through the water! We want to sneak up on the water, and catch the water by suprise -- not disturbing it as we put our hands, forearms, and feet upon it. We want to make relatively slow movements with our hands as we begin the propulsive phase of each stroke, and then accelerate our hand speed ONCE WE'VE TAKEN HOLD OF THE WATER.