As I've mentioned before, I usually prescribe speed sets early in the week with my swim club here in Colorado Springs. I do this, again, so that my athletes are still fresh from a recovery day on Monday and they're not fatigued by the cumulative effects of a week of training. While you can do aerobic work when fatigued, doing speed and threshold work becomes quite challenging.

I changed up my usual speed prescription for the workout my athletes did yesterday. I included some active recovery into the mix. The high-quality portion of the workout still had a 1 : 3 work-rest ratio. But the addition of some active recovery allowed everyone to keep moving (and not tighten up) while still getting the recovery necessary to sustain high quality efforts.

This is a SCY set, and will take about 1:15 to complete. Of course, you might need to adjust the send-offs on the warm-up set and the pull set (depending on base-100 times). But the times for the primary main set should remain the same.

Warm up:

250 swim

200 kick

250 pull

4 x (75 - 50)

75’s easy on 1:10

50’s on :55 - 1st length build up, 2nd length mod/hard effort

Main set:

8 x ( 4 x 25 - 50 )

25’s Max effort on 1:00.

50's Recovery on 1:30

4 x 100 pull on 1:35

Cool down:

200 easy.

Yes, this set only yields 2800 yards. But it's a nice quality high intensity speed set that, if done properly at max effort, will yield some tired swimmers at the end. And over time, some faster swimmers as well.

What is your best / favorite speed set? Reach out to me and let me know.