"Empty the Gas Tank" Freestyle Set with Coach Todd Kramer

Todd Kramer
Assistant Coach
Columbia Swim Club

Here is a set that we did at the Columbia Swim Club earlier this week. Our hours have been limited this week at our pool, so we had to swim our Senior 2, 3, and 4 groups together. Swimmers are 13-18, ranging from just below the Sectional level to OT qualifiers. This was done LCM. We just wanted to get a tough freestyle set in designed to push their limits, physically and mentally. ‘Empty the gas tank’ is just a phrase to remind them to not ‘save up’ for later in practice. We wanted them to push the fast parts of practice to their limits from the beginning of practice.

Here is the set(intervals listed are interval groups)
3×150 Free – add on fast 50 from back to front(the rest is ‘fast enough’) @ 2:00/2:10/2:15
3×150 Free – all fast @ 1:55/2:05/2:10
1×100 Free – Empty the gas tank @ 2:00

5×250 Free – add on fast 50 from back to front @ 3:20/3:30/3:40
5×250 Free – all fast @ 3:10/3:20/3:30
1×200 Free – Empty the gas tank @ 3:30
2×350 Free – #1 change gears each 50 #2 all fast @ 4:30/4:45/5:00
1×300 Free – Empty the gas tank

"Crack the Code" Aerobic Block

Clarke Nyman
Eagle Swim Team

Here’s a creative way to break up the monotony of 40×100 or 20×200 aerobic blocks.

The Legend:
(1) 100 @ 1:30 [p500]
(2) 200 @ 2:30 [0 beat kick, 2 bk, 4 bk, 6 bk by 50]
(3) 300 @ 3:45 [Descend x100]
(4) 400 @ 5:00 [Neg Split x200]
The Code:
Rd1:  (1)    (2)    (3)    (4)
Rd 2: (2)  2x(1)   (4)    (3)
Rd 3: (3)    (4)   3x(1)  (2)
Rd 4: (4)    (3)     (2)   4x(1)

**This set paces on 1:15 for 100’s.  (1) is a spike to amp it up a bit.  Dolphin kicks and walls are a top priority.

See Coach Nyman’s other posts here.

The Banana Set: Distance Day with Progressive 200s

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

This set was for our distance crew.  Above the green squiggly line, swimmers had the option to pull, and the instructions were the same for each swim — to negative split by 5.  Below the line, we look for each progressively larger set of 200s to also get faster.  We crushed it! The last set of 5 was great.  This set was very mentally tough but I was proud of our kids for persevering! After the set, they were so hungry they ate my banana that I brought for a post-practice snack, hence the name.

Distance Freestyle Descend

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

Sometimes, the sets posted here are interesting and creative. This post is not one of those. Sometimes, you just need to do work. Today’s post is straight challenging, and is intended for milers only.

A post shared by SwimmingWizard (@swimmingwizard) on Mar 20, 2017 at 4:52am PDT

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