Month: December 2016

Turn Work

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

In my opinion, spending time “working on turns” is wasteful when it just involves starting from mid-pool and “doing turns.”  I prefer to do something more like the following set, intended for one of our freestylers who has been having a difficult time with getting the approach to the wall right.

9 x 100 @ 3:00 from dive
#1-3 80% effort (no higher) with maximum focus on approaching/attacking the wall, getting an excellent pushoff and streamline
#4-6  same as 1-3 but at 90% effort (only if #1-3 were completed satisfactorily)
#7-9 100 % effort, same level of excellence expected on turns. If #4-6 were not done well, these last three are still done at 90%

Groovin’ that Pace

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

I had a lone swimmer do this set in a 25m pool recently on her last day before beginning taper.  The idea was for her to get into a groove with her 500 free race pace and be able to repeat it over and over again.  Seemed to work well as most of the timed 50s were about 0.8-1.0 faster than her “best time” pace and near her goal pace.  While I didn’t want it to feel extremely difficult, she seemed challenged and performed well and fairly consistently.

40 x 50
repeating the following set of ten for 4 rounds
1 at P500 @ 1:00
1 easy free @ :50
2 at P500 @ 1:00
1 easy free @ :50
3 at P500 @ 1:00
2 easy free @ :50

She got a bit of rest on the 500 pace 50s, while the recovery 50s only provided 6-9 seconds of rest on the wall before pushing off on the next one.