Tag: Woodruff

Speed Power Power Speed and GO!

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

We did this set this week and got some tremendous results. Swimmers got to choose their strokes by round. The 2 x 25s with the bucket seemed to help awaken their speed for the following 100. We did this in a SCM pool.

3x:

1 x 25 fast from start @:40

2 x 25 fast resisted with a bucket @:40

1 x 25 fast (no bucket) from a push @:40

1 x 100 easy swim any stroke 2:30

1 x 100 all out from dive

1 x 400 25 kick/25 swim with paddles and snorkels

Infinite 50s Mindbender

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

We started this set with about 40 minutes left in practice:

We started doing 50s fast from a dive. I wasn’t sure how many we would do. Just when I thought their enthusiasm (and speed) was starting to wane, I challenged an individual to hit a faster time to end the round for the group and start the 200 easy.

It worked better than I could have hoped. On each round, we had at least one swimmer expand their perception of their capability and get to be the hero for their teammates.

Short Axis Awesomeness

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

In this one, we spent some time working on fly and breast together. It turned out to be a little more challenging than I expected. We did this SCM.


The 50s breast started out with 2 pullouts and swim the rest of the 1st 25. On the 2nd 25, do 2 cycles with a 3-second glide, and then 1 cycle with a 2 second glide, 1 cycle with a 1-second glide, and then hit “speed drill” br (narrow pull, narrow kick, fast hips a la Dave Salo) for the remainder of the 25.


Fly 25s we were looking for a consistently high effort and no breath on the last 7m into the finish.
The 8 x 25 fly is only done once before you head back up the set.

Christmas 25s and 500s

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Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

SCM

Our pool has been a little fuller the last few days with college swimmers coming home to train. This means having to consider our space a little differently when creating workouts.

This one was a good one-size-fits-all for us today. Some speed, some endurance, a little racing, some equipment, and some underwater work.

They are “Christmas 25s” because 12 x 25. For the 2nd round, we pulled 1-gallon buckets, and if swimmers went fr or fly, they were to hold their breathe for last 8m. The fourth round we did the even ones fast from a dive (HVO)

All around a solid day.

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.