Tag: Quality

Speed with Unique Challenges

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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

Hour Of Power Revisited

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Ryan Wooodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

I have posted several “Hour of Power” type workouts on this blog over the years. Each one has been slightly different to work for the swimmers in my group that year, where we are in the season, and what course we were swimming (we train in SCM and SCY). Today’s version is one that I was particularly happy with for our squad for this year.

We used AquaVolo’s DragSox and simple 1-gallon buckets to pull behind us.

Blasting Buckets and Sox

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

LCM. This set makes use of the 12m diving well that sits alongside the 50m lanes we use. In order to maximize our space with our entire team practicing at once, we occasionally use it this way. For ease of communication, we call one width of the diving well a “25.”

We used 1-gallon buckets tied to waist belts for the set of 8 x50, timing each 25 and emphasizing racing a teammate.

For the diving well set, we used the aquavolo drag sox. The contrast between resisted kicking and non-resisted (when we take the Sox off) leads to some excellent speedy UW kicking.

Anaerobic Set with Coach Brookover

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Chris Brookover, Mt. Laurel YMCA Phoenix

We are stuck at an hour per workout now, and wanted something fast on a Sunday morning. The anaeroic worked well. Everything in brackets is the “B” interval.

Warm-Up:

1 x 300 @ 6:00

12 x 25 @ :35 – Underwater 3 ea. R-Side,L-Side,Back,Front

Pull:

1 x 300 @ 4:30 [5:00]

2 x 150 @ 2:15 [2:30]

3 x 100 @ 1:30 [2@1:40]

4 x 75 @ 1:10 [1:15]

Anaerobic Swim:

2 X

2 x 75 @ 1:00 [1:10]

1 x 50 @ 1:00 [1:10]

2 x 75 @ 1:05 [1:15]

1 x 50 @ 1:05 [1:15]

2 x 75 @ 1:10 [1:20]

1 x 50 @ 1:10 [1:20]

Rest 1:15 [:45]

Pushing the Pace

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

After two weeks back in the water, we did this one to push the pace and enjoy racing our teammates. To properly social distance, we had swimmers going from both ends of the pool, thus the opposite instructions that allowed me to time both groups. SCY.

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Sprint Challenge Set for Meters

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

This set can be done in a SCM or LCM pool. All 35, 65, and 95s are done from a start and timed to the head crossing the line.

Athletes are instructed to go all out on the 35. The goal for the 65 equals 2 x 35m time. The goal for the 95 equals the 35m time + the 65m time.

4x

35m sprint, 100 ez @4:00

65m sprint, 100 ez @4:00

95m sprint, 100 ez @5:00

We did the set 4x through to allow our IMers to go 1x each stroke.

 

This set was originally published to this blog in May 2018.

The I.M. Merry-Go-Round

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

SCM. We did this IM Set recently. At the conclusion of the set I asked each swimmer two give me two scores on a scale of 1-10. The first score was for how challenging the set was (lowest score was an 8), the second was for how well they thought they did (lowest score was a 7).

Note the stroke instructions on the right were different for each of the four parts on each round. On the 16×25 of the fly round, the EZ 25 was permitted to be freestyle, but on all other rounds all 25s were of the specific stroke.

Total distance: 4,000m

Total time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Q: Why is it called the “I.M. Merry-Go-Round”?

A: Because it looks fun, but after an hour you can’t wait for it to stop!

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Speed Spectrum and Active Recovery

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

SCM pool. The goal was to really push ourselves to hold some aggressive times in practice. The main group did the top set while the distance crew did the bottom set.

If done in a SCY pool, I would probably change the goal on the 150 to “beat your best 200 time by :20”

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