This page contains links to workouts and related information.
Each workout is based on a theme that is introduced at a weekly group workout.
If you are swimming three times a week, try to make the group workout that introduces
the weekly theme, and then perform two additional workouts as your schedule allows.
To perform a recovery workout based on the weekly theme, perform all drill sets
and either reduce the swim set distances by 50% or perform the swim sets at the
EN1 pace (long slow distance pace). To perform a key workout based on the weekly
theme, reduce the number of drill repeats by 50% and increase the swim set pace.
| Focus | Description |
Workout Date |
|
Distance Ladder | Faster lane: distance ladder. Slower
lane: distance with breathing | May 21, 2013 |
| 400s (& Sighting) |
Longer repeats with sighting practice. | May 14, 2013 |
| Swim Leg Strategy | Sort
out the start, draft the middle, finish strong. (Long course! Yay!) | May
7, 2013 |
| CSS
Calculations | Use your critical swimming speed (CSS) to
set your training categories. | Apr 30, 2013 |
|
Setup | Tonight's focus is on the setup. | Apr
23, 2013 |
| Conditioning
200s | To build endurance we will swim hard but consistent
200s. | Apr 16, 2013 |
|
Sighting | It's almost open water season, so it's time
to practice sighting! | Apr 9, 2013 |
|
400s (& Breathing) | Faster lane: endurance with
main set of 400s (after some speed work). Slower lane: more breathing focus with
some tools. | Apr 2, 2013 |
| Breathing | Focus
on breathing in general and head position in particular. | Mar
26, 2013 |
| Pacing | Pacing
is one of the most important skills for a triathlete. | Mar
19, 2013 |
| Sighting
or Kicking | Faster lane will focus on developing seamless
sighting technique. Slower lanes will focus on mastering 2-beat kicking technique. | Mar
12, 2013 |
| Kicking | Kicking
focus for everyone, with two main sets: one for faster lane and one for the slower
lane(s). | Mar 5, 2013 |
|
Arms | With an arms focus for everyone, there will be
two main sets: one for the faster lane and one for the slower lane. | Feb
26, 2013 |
| Kicking | Focus
on coordinating the kick with the arm stroke. | Feb 19, 2013 |
| Line and Balance |
Focus on maintaining aquatic line and front-to-back balance. | Feb
12, 2013 |
| Catch |
Drills for improving your early vertical forearm catch. | Feb
5, 2013 |
| Consistency |
Focus on maintaining form up and down the main-set ladder. Underwater video
during cool-down for those who missed last week. | Jan 29,
2013 |
| CSS 200s |
More CSS work with longer repeats. Also underwater video. | Jan
22, 2013 |
| CSS 100s | Work
on swimming at your critical swimming speed pace. | Jan 15,
2013 |
| Open Water
Skills | Practice sighting, turns, starts and weaving through
crowds. | Jan 8, 2013 |
|
400s | Build endurance with main set of 400s (after
some speed work). | Dec 11 , 2012 |
| Conditioning-Arms | Conditioning
with arms focus. | Dec 4, 2012 |
| Kicking | Focus
on coordinating the kick with the arm stroke. | Nov 27, 2012 |
| Consistency |
Focus on maintaining form for progressively longer repeats. | Nov
20, 2012 |
| 400s |
Build endurance with main set of 400s (after some speed work). | Nov
13, 2012 |
| 200s |
Build speed and endurance with 200s. | Nov 6, 2012 |
| Kicking | Focus
on coordinating the kick with the arm stroke. | Oct 23, 2012 |
| Up-Tempo with Sighting | Swim
just above CSS and sight twice per length. | Oct 16, 2012 |
| Long Strokes | General
conditioning with focus on long strokes. | Oct 9, 2012 |
| Kicking | Focus
on kicking for propulsion, rotation and stability. | Oct 2,
2012 |
| Consistency |
Focus on maintaining form for progressively longer repeats. | Sep
25, 2012 |
| Conditioning-Arms | Conditioning
with arms focus. | Sep 18, 2012 |
| Open
Water Arms | Two aspects of the arm stroke for open water:
a high elbow recovery, and a high turnover rate. | Sep 11, 2012 |
| Continuous
Swimming - Passing and Drafting | To simulate swimming in
open water, we will swim in circles - alternating direction (clockwise or counter)
each set - with lane lines removed, and without pushing off the walls. | Sep
4, 2012 |
| Sighting
and hard 100s | Triathletes tend to get slower during summer.
Too many long out-and-backs in open water. We'll fix that with quality 100s. | Aug
28, 2012 |
| Return
of the Walls | We are back to short course (that's swimmer
talk for 25-yard lanes). So we will focus on learning proper flip turns | Aug
21 , 2012 |
| No Walls | Open
water skills plus a little speed work. | Aug 14 , 2012 |
| 400s | Build
race speed by swimming 400s faster than your race (cruising) speed. | Aug
7 , 2012 |
| Speed Work | Shorter,
faster intervals and team pursuit races. | Jul 31, 2012 |
| Endurance | Build
endurance by enduring 300s. | Jul 24, 2012 |
| Navigating | Practice
weaving through a crowd in open water. You will be doing a lot of this as you
learn to swim faster! | Jul 17, 2012 |
| Speedy
100s | Triathletes tend to get stale and slower during the
summer. Too many long out-and-backs at Walden. We'll fix that with some quality
100s. | Jul 10, 2012 |
| Fours | One
the eve of the Fourth of July the workout focus will be fours - as in 400s. | Jul
3, 2012 |
| Sprinting
& Cruising | Practice starts and drafting; and maintaining
form and pace at varying distances. | Jun 26, 2012 |
| Conditioning-Legs | Conditioning
with kicking focus. | Jun 19, 2012 |
| Sighting,
Drafting, Passing | Open water skills practice again --
sighting, passing, and grabbing a draft when you are passed. | Jun
12, 2012 |
| Conditioning-Arms | Conditioning
with arms focus. | Jun 5, 2012 |
| Faster
Swimming | Your body does not adapt to swimming faster unless
you spend some time swimming faster. Today you will swim faster. | May
29, 2012 |
| Continuous
Swimming - Passing and Drafting | To simulate swimming in
open water, we will swim in circles - alternating direction (clockwise or counter)
each set - with lane lines removed, and without pushing off the walls. | May
22, 2012 |
| Navigating
Crowds | Practice navigating your way through crowds. | May
15, 2012 |
| Conditioning | Main
set helps you to hold form while increasing distance. | May
8, 2012 |
| Arms | Conditioning
main sets with arms focus. | May 1, 2012 |
| Flip
Turns | Triathletes! Stop embarrassing yourselves at the
wall... | Apr 24, 2012 |
| Swimming
Golf | Check your swimming golf score on a regular basis
to track efficiency. | Apr 17, 2012 |
| Drafting | Practice
drafting in a pack. | Apr 10, 2012 |
| Timing
the Kick | Work on connecting the 6-beat kick with your
arm stroke. | Apr 3, 2012 |
| Sighting
(again) | Head down. Head up. Repeat. See the sighting
practice videos. | Mar 27, 2012 |
| Open
Water Arms | Two aspects of the arm stroke for open water:
a high elbow recovery, and a high turnover rate. | Mar 20, 2012 |
| Sighting | Minimal
or "Alligator Eyes" sighting technique. | Mar 13,
2012 |
| Arms | Conditioning
main sets with arms focus. | Mar 6, 2012 |
| Kicking | Focus
on kicking for propulsion, rotation and stability. Underwater video. | Feb
28, 2012 |
| Open
Water Turns | Practice open water turns and navigating through
traffic | Feb 21, 2012 |
| Drafting | Practice
catching some free speed. | Feb 14, 2012 |
| Sighting | Head
down. Head up. Repeat. | Feb 7, 2012 |
| Arms | Conditioning
main sets with arms focus. | Jan 31, 2012 |
| Timing
the Kick | Work on connecting the 6-beat kick with your
arm stroke. | Jan 24, 2012 |
| Pulling | Practice
an early catch and a long, powerful pull. | Jan
17, 2012 |
| Passing | With
the pool is set up for long course, we can practice open water skills (passing,
drafting, etc) | Jan 10, 2012 |
| Backstroke | Use
backstroke to reset and refresh your freestyle stroke. | Dec
5, 2011 |
| Powerful Setup
| Focus on getting into the setup position powerfully,
because that what makes you both fast and efficient. | Nov 28,
2011 |
CSS Calculation
& Workout | Calculate CSS and swim at endurance paces
EN1, En2 and EN3. | Nov 21, 2011 |
| Arms | Focus
on various aspects of the arm stroke. | Nov 14, 2011 |
| Kicking | Focus
on kicking for propulsion, rotation and stability. | Nov 7 ,
2011 |
|
Speedy Recovery | Get faster by speeding up your arm recovery. | Oct
31, 2011 |
| Technique | Kicking,
pulling and freestyle sets with focus on individual issues. | Oct
24, 2011 |
|
Consistency | Focus on maintaining form for progressively
longer repeats. | Oct 17, 2011 |
|
Balance | To swim efficient freestyle, you need to practice
perfect posture, line and balance. | Oct 10, 2011 |
| Sensory Images |
Swimming is so complicated that we can easily get too focused on a hand or
a foot or some other bit player in the whole-body stroke. Sensory images can help
to organize the whole thing without worrying too much about the parts. | Oct
3, 2011 |
| EVF Catch
and Pull | Drill progression to work on the EVF (early
vertical forearm) catch and pull - the favored catch and pull for distance swimming. | Sep
26, 2011 |
| Arm Stroke
Setup | Get the setup right, and it's hard NOT
to have an effective stroke. | Sep 19, 2011 |
| Kicking | It's
true that you don't need to kick much for distance swimming, but you must kick
right - otherwise your legs will become a hinderance. | Sep
12, 2011 |
| Walls
Part 2 | Now that we are swimming across the pool the short
way, we need to practice open turns and flip turns. | Sep 5,
2011 |
| Walls | If
you come off every wall with authority and snap to a perfect streamline, you will
be starting every length of swimming with good posture. | Aug
29, 2011 |
| Breathing | When
you breathe, you can disrupt your posture, balance, aquatic line and timing. The
trick is to minimize the disruption - especially when the breathing cycle is also
your sighting cycle. | Aug 22, 2011 |
| Faster
Swimming | Your body does not adapt to swimming faster unless
you spend some time swimming faster (duh). Today we will swim faster. | Aug
15, 2011 |
| Catch
and Drafting | With everyone swimming in circles, one half
of the team performs catch drills, while the other half practices drafting and
passing. | Aug 8, 2011 |
| Open
Water Surprises | Simulate two common open water surprises:
lost goggles and wobbly legs on exit. | Aug 1, 2011 |
| Speed Work | We
tend to swim lots of long slow sets (in open water, for example) during summer.
One swim per week should include speed work. This is your speed work for this
week. | Jul 25, 2011 |
| Stroke
Rate | At endurance swimming speeds ordinary swimmers tend
to turn their arms over more slowly. The best endurance swimmers switch to a two-beat
kick (which requires much less energy than a six-beat kick), and they turn over
their arms more quickly. | Jul 18, 2011 |
| Gearing
| The ability to change speeds in open water is critical.
You typically need to start fast to find some open space. Then relax for a while
to find your cruising gear. Then you need to accelerate into the turns or to find
open space again, or to catch a draft. | Jul 11, 2011 |
| Continuous Swimming
| To simulate swimming in open water, we will swim in circles
- alternating direction (clockwise or counter) each set - with lane lines removed,
and without pushing off the walls. | Jun 27, 2011 |
| Breathing
& Pack Swimming | Learn the cost of breathing on your
"hard" side, which hopefully will inspire you to address that issue.
And learn to deal with a pack - you can join it or swim around it. | Jun
20, 2011 |
| Setup
& Drafting | To get the best draft, you need to get
right on somebody's toes. With a good (wide) setup, it's easy. Note: Video for
those needing a fresh look (and who did not have video last week). | Jun
13, 2011 |
| Sighting | Focus
on sighting. Video for those needing a fresh look. | Jun 06,
2011 |
| Connect
the Kick - Part 2 | Connect the kick to the arm stroke.
Simultaneous drill and swim sets. | May 23, 2011 |
| Connect the Kick - Part
1 | Connect the kick to the arm stroke. Simultaneous drill
and swim sets. | May 16, 2011 |
| Navigating
Crowds | Now that the pool is set up for long course, we
can practice open water skills under more realistic conditions. | May
9, 2011 |
| Stem-to-Stern
Balance | Swimming well is a balancing act. With good stem-to-stern
balance you can move through the water like a sleek kayak. With poor stem-to-stern
balance you move like a wounded guppie. | May 2, 2011 |
| Swimming Golf | Checking
your swimming golf score on a regular basis is one way to track stroke efficiency.
| 2011-04-18 |
| Pace
Control | During a race your first focus should be consistency
- same pace, same stroke length - and that is hard without a wall to bounce off
of every 25 yards. This week focus on learning to maintain form (strokes per length)
at race pace while increasing distance. | 2011-04-18 |
| Body Position |
All expert distance swimmers have one thing in common: great body position.
They organize their body into a sleek displacement hull, and then balance that
hull right at the surface. | 2011-04-04 |
|
Timing Part 2 | Whole body stroking coordinating the
kick with the arm stroke (with the balance shift). | 2011-03-21 |
| Timing Part 1 |
Balance shifting: coordinating the recovery arm with the stroking arm. (Because
it don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing.) | 2011-03-14 |
| Arms |
Focus on the arms using half-bad drills (where you exaggerate a flaw
for half a length, and then correct for the second half of the length). | 2011-02-21 |
Canceled until further
notice. Drill progressions in the teaching pool, for newer swimmers or anybody
needing focused technique work. Send Coach Bill a note ahead of time if there
is an aspect of your stroke that you think needs attention.
