Baseline Swimming Test Session 

What’s the deal with “hard send-off’s” you might ask? Well, let’s dive in. If you’re doing a swim workout with rest intervals you might not be getting the most out of your training. Here’s why.

Let’s look at a typical aerobic set: 10 x 100’s on :20 rest. While a perfectly good set, that rest interval doesn’t take how hard you’re working into consideration. Meaning, you could swim 100 yards / meters with good effort at the start. But if you start to get tired and slow down, well, you still get :20 rest. So you’re working with less effort and getting the same amount of rest.

To get the most out of a swim set, you need to “work for your rest”. If a set is designed to work your aerobic energy system then you need to keep your aerobic energy system working. A hard send-off requires you to put the effort in. So, instead of a rest interval the workout is written as follows:

10 x 100 on the 1:50 (assuming it takes you 1:30 to swim 100 yards / meters - your base 100 time)

Now, you have to maintain that pace and effort to get your :20 rest. If you slow down, you get less rest. If you swim faster, you get more. The bottom line is that now all workouts can be written with specificity to be aerobic, anaerobic, VO2, whatever is required. You just have to know how to structure workouts to focus on specific energy systems (stay tuned, that info will be coming soon.)

So, how do you determine your base 100 time? Do the following workout:

Warm up - If you require a longer warm up, swim a little extra.
250 easy swim
250 pull

4 x 50 on 1:00 or :15 rest
Descend 1-4 (meaning, swim faster on each 50)

Main set / test set:

100 @ 90% effort. Yep, you’re going to go really hard on this one
90 seconds recovery
400 for time. Shoot for 90+% effort. Please note, you have to swim the 400 as hard as you can swim a 400. Don’t go all out in the first 100 and crash and burn, but rather keep in mind that the “entire” 400 is as hard as you can go. So you do have to pace yourself. This effort will hurt a little bit.

Record your times. Take your total 400 effort time and convert to seconds. Then dividing that number by 4 will give you your base 100 time in seconds (then just convert back to minutes) and there you have it. Your base 100 time for upcoming workouts.

Then do the following set:

5 x 100 free at base 100 + :30. If your base 100 time , was 100 seconds or 1:40, then your send-off here is 2:10. Meaning, every 2 minutes and 10 seconds you’re pushing off for your next 100 effort.

Cool down
200 easy

Now, all your workouts in the pool can be 100% focused on the energy system that is the target of that session. And again, if you’re not sure how to structure workouts for aerobic, or anaerobic, efforts. Stay tuned. I’ll be talking about that shortly. But, if you want more info now, just email me at info@podiumtraining.com