Tag: Deep Practice

Freestyle Pre-Set with Deep Practice

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

We used this as a little pre-set before a longer freestyle set.  It really helped many of our swimmers get in a “good technique groove.”

“Deep Practice” is a concept we use to denote whole-stroke swimming while maintaining a very specific focus on an aspect of the stroke.  The list at the bottom was our brainstormed list of freestyle deep practice possibilities.

Aerobic Free with Deep Focus

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

I like our distance sets to also include some technical focus.  This set seemed to do the trick.  The “Deep Practice” points of emphasis correspond to the 1st, 3rd, and 5th 50s of the 300.  The swims written in black are meant to be descending effort (getting faster) on an increasingly tighter interval.  At the end of the set, we recorded 10-sec heart rate values for swimmers immediately upon finishing 30 seconds after finishing, and 60 seconds after finishing. B3 = breathing every 3 strokes.  This set was performed in a SCM pool. 39-43 minutes, 3,000m.

Backstroke & IM Set with Deep Practice

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

We have been using this concept of “Deep Practice” lately with some success.  The idea is that you swim the full stroke (as opposed to drill, where you swim part-stroke) and simply emphasize a particular technical element.  This set is focused on backstroke technique at the beginning and then includes some fatigued backstroke as part of unbalanced 200 IMs, Seemed to do the trick.

Barely legible at the bottom it reads “Fly is always fast” and “use backstroke as primary means of descending.”