Tag: Quality

Strong Quality Set with Sarpy County Swim Club and Coach Nick Baker

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Nick Baker
Sarpy County Swim Club

This workout is from our second week back from a 3 week break. The 4 minutes on the first 100 was a little too much rest but being the first week back it worked out ok. The main set (5x) was for 200 pace work, all free. The 2×25 sprint were to simulate the 3rd 50, where swimmers need to really hit it hard. The final 150 had a 50 sprint kick to bring a 200 home with a hard kick, then 100 recovery for in between sets.

Broken 200s and 100s Quality Set

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

This was a little quality set with some broken 200s and 100s that we did recently.  The first set was just a pre-set to get us ready.  “Sprint the blue” refers to the solid blue part of our lane lines that is between the backstroke flags and the wall.  Swimmers sprinted the 5 yards into and out of each wall.



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What’s Your Magic Number? Make It and You Are Done!

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

The Magic Number set will challenge your swimmers mentally and physically.  Here is how it works.

  • The set is 7 x 100 @ 7:00 all out from dive (or any other distance and interval that you choose). Make sure there is a sufficient enough recovery time for your athletes to really be ready to go for the next repeat.
  • Before the set write down goal times for each athlete.  Try to make them very challenging but do-able.  For our team, I set them a bit faster than lifetime best practice times, frequently within 2 seconds of actual lifetime best times.  These times are the “Magic Numbers” for each swimmer.  Achieving this time means the swimmer is done with the set.  

  • But here’s the kicker — don’t let the swimmers see their Magic Numbers before the set.  Let them wonder what it might be — this will help them race without putting a mental limit on how fast they can go!  Only after they have completed a few rounds should you show them the Magic Numbers.

  • When our team did this set, we had some athletes  make their Magic Number on #1.  They relished “just going for it” without knowing what the real goal was.  Others swam hard but weren’t able to dig REALLY deep to go fast until after they find out the goal.  Some swimmers completed the set without ever meeting their Magic Number, but nearly all of them had their best-ever sets of 100s from a dive.

Relays for Friday Fly Day

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

Relays for Friday Fly Day.  We sometimes do a series of relays to train fly because we have narrow lanes.  On this particular day, we did 4 relays with some easy drill and kick in between.  On each relay, each swimmer had to swim a 50 four times.  The instructions changed by round as shown here.

 

Group Goal 75s

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

This was a good motivating set for our group at the end of an arduous practice.

? x (75 at P200 +25 ez) @ 2:30

75s are timed to the feet.  We used our pace cards to determine Goal and Best Time 75 pace for 200 events.  If swimmer achieved Goal 75 time, he scored 2 points for the team.  If he achieved Best Time pace, he scored only 1 point for the team.  Instructions were that we would do as many rounds as it took for the team to score 120 points (15 swimmers).  We finished in six rounds.

8 Lifetime Bests in a Single Workout

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

Typically twice per short course season (once in the fall, and once in Jan/Feb), I have our older swimmers bring their old “tech suits” to practice one day to wear during a quality set.  The aim is three-fold:

1. Put up some fast times to validate our recent training and bolster our athletes’ self confidence.
2. Get some practice/rehearsal warming up, putting on the tech suit, and swimming with it on.  Swimming with a tech suit feels different, and we don’t want anything unexpected on race day.
3. Prepare for even faster swimming by… swimming fast!

This was last Saturday’s practice.  Each swimmer swam either 3 x 200 @ 22:00 or 5 x 100 @ 11:00 all out for time.  We had 8 lifetime bests swum during this practice and countless near-bests.

Boom!

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff
Head Coach
Lynchburg YMCA

This was a one hour set focused on intense quality and race pace swimming.  Swimmers focused on 200 & up events did the left column, swimmers focused on 200 & down did the right column.  It went well, but if I could do it again I would restructure the first 10 swims for Group 1 to give them a bit more rest.