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Main Set Thursday - How Far Can You Go?

Posted by Glenn Mills on Jun 28, 2012 04:52PM (3,920 views)

The title of this may get you thinking it's something other than what it is... read on.

As I explained at practice today, this can either be a very easy practice, or one of the toughest. Depends how far you can... well... go. It's a very simple set in explanation, but the group dynamics will be tested greatly. The drill that was sent out prior to this practice was MATH.

Get ready to add - Main Set (short course yards)
- Each lane will have a time to start with, our fastest lane started with :50 seconds for 50 yards. All they had to do was to start with the first 50 on the :50, then subtract :02 seconds for the interval on each 50 after that. So the intervals for the 50's would be as follows:
- :50 :48 :46 :44 :42 :40 :38 :36 :34 :32 :30 (as far as you can go)
- 200 kick relax and recover.

At this point, realizing just how tough this is, not just to swim your last 100 as a 1:06 negative split... or 1:02 if you're faster than us (or more), it's the math that's the killer. To turn this into a "teaching moment", we regrouped. When we did these sets long ago, it wasn't enough to just follow the leader and hope they got it all correctly, the 2nd and 3rd swimmer had to help. Each time they got to the wall, they'd say what the leader was supposed to leave on. It's called teamwork, and helping each other... or, two minds are better than one. When the times get further down, it gets easier mentally to figure, but tougher physically. That's what I love about sets like this... there's no turning off your mind or your body.

For those swimmers who thought the first few 50's were just too easy, one option was to start off swimming stroke until you were unable to make the interval anymore, then switch to freestyle for the last few.

We repeated the set again... much more successfully I must say.

Final part of the set -- reverse it:
- 6 x 50 on the following intervals
- :32 :34 :36 :38 :40 :42

This works well as a sort of warm down.

Heads should be realing after this, but it should also be challenging physically. Enjoy.

descend set, pace, pace clock

Responses

athena	Responded Jun 28, 2012 11:37PM are you swimming free style this whole practice?
Glenn Mills	Responded Jun 29, 2012 01:30PM "For those swimmers who thought the first few 50's were just too easy, one option was to start off swimming stroke until you were unable to make the interval anymore, then switch to freestyle for the last few."... that's up to you.
sprinter	Responded Jul 02, 2012 10:09AM How fast must the first send off time be?
Glenn Mills	Responded Jul 02, 2012 10:55AM Decide what you think your fastest interval would be, and back it off about :18 seconds... that should get you about 10 x 50's. Make adjustments on the 2nd set.
sprinter	Responded Jul 03, 2012 03:14PM Hm, isn't it then cheating if we switch strokes? I mean if I start on BR, which send-off times will be of course slowest, and some reps later I notice I have to do something else to make the starting times, this would be like adding more seconds to my current send-off time and I will be doing this set for longer than if I'd done the same stroke. So, to answer my own question, YES, it is cheating. Swim the same stroke :) :) :)
Glenn Mills	Responded Jul 03, 2012 03:33PM The difference would be if you were swimming with a group. If you didn't have the option of varying the interval enough so you could go the same stroke... get as much out of your stroke prior to having to switch over. This is sometimes the difficulty with sets like this. So that's an option for those who are in a lane of freestylers, but want to do something else.
GW	Responded Jul 03, 2012 03:39PM Sprinter, but you would still be pushing yourself. Just a case of having to be honest, ie were you really pushing to make the send off or were you having a 'cruise' so you could do something you prefer. From what I've seen of your earlier posts you would fall into the first category. That said I will sometimes do sessions where everybody is working on the same turn rounds to give the top lanes an easier session (they may disagree of course :)) whilst keeping the pressure on the other lanes. Alternatively, if a swimmer is struggling for whatever reason we will again, go say, freestyle instead of form, to allow them to make the turnrounds and still get the distance or swim, say, 75s instaed of 100s on the same turn round. Just mix and match to suit the situation would be my repsonse.
sprinter	Responded Jul 05, 2012 08:05AM I guess I do not swim in a group enough. I didn't think about the groups. Sorry, my bad :)
Glenn Mills	Responded Jul 06, 2012 06:02PM No worries Sprinter. It's all stages of our swimming life. While I loved this type of set as a swimmer, as a masters swimmer and coach, we all have so many variables within any practice that some flexibility needs to be written in to the practice to really make it functional.
Sam Murphy	Responded Jul 08, 2012 12:41PM I know I'm a bit late into the conversation but I've both swum and coached a very similar set here in Aust. but we know it as Shane Gould 50's (after the Aussie Olympian). The set starts on the 60 and then drops a second each 50 until you're unable to make the interval. Starting from 60 gives kids an idea of their aerobic & threshold improvement as they might get down to 42's then 12mnths later down to 37's...they can see in figures their improvement. Also note that for the slower ones (say 60-45sec intervals), they arent expected to hold fast times but instead just make the time.

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Main Set Thursday - How Far Can You Go?

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