Fly-Focused Long Course

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

This is a full workout for a first long course course practice of the season focused on butterfly. This is after a 15-20min warmup:

Pre-Set

9 x 100 @:20 rest

#1 Dolphin kick on side

#2 8 Dolphin kicks on side, 1 cycle fly

#3 6 diolphin kicks on side, 2 cycles fly

Main Set

2x:

4 x 150 @ :15 rest, 10 cycles strong fly then steady free each 50

6 x 100 @ :10 rest 14 cycles strong fly then steady free each 50

8 x 50 @ :50

Round 1: All fly Descend 1-4 and 5-8

Round 2: #1,3,5,7,8 are FPA fly, #2,4,6 are free B5

Kick Set with Freestyle

6 x (75 fast kick try to best best 100 LCM time + 25 EZ kick ) @2:20

1 x 200 freestyle descend cycle count by 50

4 x (75 faster + 25) same as above

1 x 200 freestyle descend cycle count by 50

2 x (75 faster + 25) same as above

1 x 200 freestyle descend cycle count by 50

Warm down

Vertical Kick Set

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

We love using vertical kicking to work the legs and practice alignment of the body. The :30 vertical kick is done with the hands out of the water. The :20 is with head on hands (a little more difficult), and the :10 is done in a streamline position (most difficult). There are endless variations and permutations one could make to this structure.

Underwater Golf

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

We have had many posts on this blog using the “Golf” concept (adding seconds swum and cycles taken over a distance and aiming for a lower score). Here is a twist to that concept focusing on underwater dolphin kicking

6x (1x 100 back, fly, or free + 1 x 50 EZ) @ 3:00

On the 100s, get your time and then SUBTRACT the total number of dolphin kicks that you took in the 100. Calculate your score during the EZ 50. Give a high level of effort on the 100 and aim for a lower score each time.

Example:

Swimmer goes 1:08 in the 100 back and took 7 dolphin kicks off each wall (28 total), the golf score would be 40.

68 seconds – 28 dolphin kicks = 40

Speed with Unique Challenges

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

SCM

Each round of this set, we swapped in a mystery set that the swimmers did not know ahead of time as the “unique challenge” in brackets.

The last challenge was “Save your partner”. Each swimmer had to swim a 100 off the blocks under a certain coach-determined time. Fail to make the time and your partner has to do it too. It was a somewhat clumsy attempt to get some peer-pressure motivation going.

The rest of the set worked well, with some of the unique challenges being a bit off-the-wall.

FPA = Fastest Possible Average