Tag: Instagram

The 10 Sculls

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

I love sculling. There are an infinite number of ways one can scull, and it is always good to work on one’s feel for the water.

Today we did 10 x 100 @ :20 rest, 50 scull/50 swim freestyle with max efficiency. We used a snorkel on all but #8 and #10.

Here were the sculls:

A photo posted by SwimmingWizard (@swimmingwizard) on Sep 15, 2016 at 4:49am PDT

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I Like 200s

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

This is a total of thirty 200s.  That can be repetitive, but by mixing up the paces and expectations, a swimmer can get in a real groove on a set like this.  This set is from last winter.  We had a Sunday practice that almost nobody was able to get to due to bad weather.  The one swimmer who ended up doing this set had a phenomenal spring, dropping major time in his freestyle events from 100 to 1650.

SCY

The "Approaching 200" Challenge Set

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA
 
The purpose of this set is to challenge swimmers by having them swim at paces and for distances that gradually approach 200 race pace.  When we did the set, we started with 175s all freestyle, and then progressed to the 180s and beyond done as athlete’s choice of stroke.  Swimmers were timed to a hand touch on the 175s, and then were timed to their head breaking the line. We used a cone on the side of the pool and multiple cones on the bottom of the pool to mark the required distance.  Our swimmers were very successful making the goal time (lifetime best time) all the way through the 190 yards and several were successful at the 195y distance.

Pacing the 1500 Like a Pro

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

I gave this set (in short course meters) to my distance swimmers recently.  The idea is predicated around Russell Mark’s observations on pacing the 1500 free at the elite level.  He has observed that the very best milers have tremendous front and back end speed but swim at a very consistent pace in the middle.  This set rehearses that concept.

We start off with a 50 pretty fast (near 200 pace) and then follow up with a 100 strong (2-3 seconds slower than 400 pace) and then repeat three consecutive 400s at the same exact speed.  Then repeat the 100 and the 50 to finish a total of 1500m.  Athletes take 20 seconds rest between each swim, meaning their total built-in rest is 2:00 (this makes it easy for determining their swimming time after the fact).  We did a little backstroke for recovery and repeated the broken 1500 twice, trying to descend these repetitions mostly by making our 400 times faster.

Finally, we finished with a straight 1500.  This was icing on an already tough set, but we saw some really good times and I was very pleased with the effort.
Total distance: 6,600m

Baltimore IMs

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

We have had a similar set posted on this blog before.  The concept here is that swimmers should be able to perform the last 150 of a 200 IM race at practice.  It is a challenging goal, but one that our swimmers achieved approximately 60% of the time during the workout today. I added in the freestyle to include a little technique work and some active recovery.