Tag: Woodruff

Freestyle Win/Fail Set

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

This set prompted a discussion about how we judge success/failure during a set. Most often, there is a prescribed speed an interval that helps guide our effort level. On this one more than most, I wanted to push our swimmers to the verge of “failure” in the conventional sense of missing an interval. Post-set, we redefined success as having pushed ourselves to the limit and actually finding the point of failure.

Overall, our team embraced the challenge of this set. The intervals were specifically set up (25m pool) so that I expected the second set of 4 x 100 and the final 2 x 100 to be extremely challenging.

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Butterfly Power Stations

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

Each station takes around 9:00. We did each station 2x, doing the fly set at the bottom after each station (4x total).

“Buddy cords” refers to a stretch cord with a belt at both ends. Swimmer 1 pushes off and swims a 25 fly while swimmer 2 stays at the wall providing resistance for the 1st 10 cycles of fly. After the 10th cycle, swimmer 2 pushes off the wall and swims easy free following swimmer 1 who completes the 25 fly.

For the Drag Sox, the Set utilizes the Sox worn in two different ways. Sox at the ankles provides high resistance to the kick. Moving them up to the calves provides a little less. Taking the Sox gives the swimmers the boost of a fully involved kick for the last 2×25.

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Underwater Kicking & IM Blast Set

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

This workout involved two stations – one working underwater kicks and one doing an IM set. We did each station 3 times — the cord set was the same each time, and the IM set progressed through the three versions listed. The 3rd round was essentially a broken 400 IM.

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Quality Pyramid

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

We did this set off the blocks, and several of our swimmers said they liked it despite the fact that it turned out to be much harder than they expected. SCM.

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Vert Kick and then Beat Your Best

Posted on by rdwoodruff

Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

On the 175s, the goal is to beat your best 200 time (should get them at least :20 rest on those).

This turned out to be a good set for us, though we ended up needing to make some modifications at the end due to time constraints.

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Underwater Skills and Speed with 11-12s

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

This is part of a practice I did recently with our top 11-12s. Our main focus was on underwater kicking. Our pool has a black line across the bottom approximately 9 yards from the wall.

For the 1:00 vertical kick and rotate, we were flutter kicking with our arms folded across our chest, performing a 90 degree rotation about every 5 seconds accompanied by my demonstration.

Texas 25 = push off and streamline underwater kick to the black line, flip, 4 underwater kicks, sprint back to the wall, turn, 4 underwater kicks and sprint to the opposite end. Texas 25 = 45 yards (everything is bigger in Texas).

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Fasts 75s + 150 Challenge

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

3x:

3x (75 fast from dive+75 ez)@2:30

1x (150 fast + 150 ez) @6:00

The goal on the 75s was just to be fast, execute excellent turns, and hold good technique.

For the 150s, we set a specific time goal based on the 75s.

For Free and Back, that goal was 2 x (best 75 time) + 6 seconds

For Breast and Fly, that goal was 2 x (best 75 time) + 10 seconds.

With those goals, we were able to get a pretty high level of effort with a high success rate.

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