Advice on Endless Pool Swim Block
In my quest to find a 1:00 swim in 2014/15, I've been taking an informal "Miles Build Chamions" approach for the last little while. Over the next 2.5 months, however, I'll be using a facility with an endless pool in an effort to get some more work done - the place is a 6 minute jog from home with a ton of pool availability. In other words, very very low admin.
Any tips on how to maximize this? I'm thinking mainly clock-based sets, continuing to video for form, etc. I can't swing augmenting it with Masters, so it will be more time solo.
It will conincide roughly with the first two months of OS, and my objective is 4-5 swim sessions per week, or until it starts to bump up against and impact run and bike CTL.
0
Comments
How easy is it to change the "speed" in the EP? Rich's set of swim wkos for the OS is what I followed when I was adding 4-5 swim days a week at the start of this OS I'm just now finishing. But that has two basic sets. One is builds from 20 >> 40 x 50s on 10-15", alternating fast and easy. The other is a set of descending 200s. So each interval would be a different speed than the previous.
You don't need the first 4-6 weeks or so of that plan, which focuses on technique.
To those two basic wkos (he only provides 2/week), I added one of my personal favs, which I call 6/5/4/3/2/1. First 600 is warm-up, any way you want (I often do 2 x 300, first 300 is with a slow turnover, second picks up spl). Then I do 500/400/300/200/100/50/50, starting out with the longer ones @ IM pace, and progressing down to sprint pace for the 100, then do swim golf for the last two 50's. Watching my times improve over the course of six weeks is motivating.
Doing a lot of lsd in the OS, even in swimming, is counterproductive, it seems to me. An Endless Pool might tempt one to just get in and swim at a steady speed, but I think that's a waste of time now. Fast before far applies to swimming also.
For me, 45 minutes for a swim workout in the OS is my sweet spot. YMMV.
Hey Dave--
I have done 99% of my swim training over the last 2 years in my Endless Pool. The only swimming I have done outside of my EP has been races and the very occasional dip in a real pool to do a couple drills to "feel" real water. I think maybe I was in a real pool maybe 3 times in 2011 and 1 time in 2012.
First question is what type of speed control does the EP at your gym have? Mine is a digital readout with a remote control and a digital "per 100" pace readout on the wall in front of you. But all of the "public" EP's I have seen use a simple analog dial to control the flow. They work the same way, but the digital readout simply gives me more control around the accuracy and precision to be able to repeat paces on different days. I'll give you the things I have learned with the digital readout in mind, but the same concepts will apply with an analog controller.
First thing to consider is that some "normal pool" workouts are not possible in an EP. Other things you can do are not possible in a real pool. One of the things I really like about mine is that I have a mirror on the floor so I get constant feedback on form. i.e. I can see when I am crossing over the centerline with my arms, etc. At the pace you will need to be swimming at in an EP though there are some inherent negatives such as very choppy water and inconsistent flow in certain spots. I've also found that the EP is more like a bike trainer in that you can get more work put into your body in a shorter period of time. When I used to go to a "real pool" if I did less than a 1 hour workout, it wouldn't feel as though I did much. In my EP, I rarely did longer than a 45 minute workout and would usually feel pretty thrashed afterwards...
Now to the things you can NOT do in an EP:
-- Sets that alternate between fast and slow are nearly impossible. So some of the EN swim workouts are written as 100's where you do 75yds at threshold pace -2s then 25 yds easy.
-- Golf Score. You never really know how far you are going, so this is just about impossible
-- Counting strokes to determine spm (use a wetronome if you want to work on turnover)
-- Workout sets based on time are also very hard because unlike in a real pool when you get a "break" at the wall on every turn, you are continuously swimming at a constant pace in an EP so you can't actually do things like glide to glance at your watch.
-- Use a fancy swim watch. The 910XT or Swimsense, etc. use accelerometers that know when you've turned at the wall and they use this known distance (i.e. 25yds) to keep track of how far you swam and back solve for spm, and length per stroke, etc.
With all of those "can not's" I still believe an EP is an awesome tool for improving your swim times.
Tricks I have learned:
-- I rarely (other than Race Rehearsals) do long duration sets at a steady pace. if you think this is boring in a real pool, it is 10x worse in an EP so I simply don't do them.
-- I have made a basic assumption that for me, 60 strokes is 100yds. I assume that this is always the case regardless of the pace I am swimming. I know this is not realistic, but I don't really care. There is nothing magical about swimming sets that are exactly 100yds long, it's just convenient to do so in a real pool. So if some of my sets are 95yds and others are 110yds, I don't really care because I know I'm doing the work.
-- The previous point means I have gotten really good at counting by 3's (I breathe bilaterally) and I have also gotten very good at counting by 60's. So for me if I want to do sets of 100's with a 10s rests, I simply count to 60 strokes then float back and sit on the rear bench for 10s then go again. If I want to do sets of 200s, I count to 120 and if I want to do sets of 500yds, I'm counting to 300, etc. etc. etc.
-- I bought an H2O Audio mp3 player and it makes the workouts way less boring... http://www.amazon.com/H2O-Audio-Interval-4G-Combo/dp/B004TBXUCQ/ref=sr_1_7?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1358711905&sr=1-7&keywords=h2o+audio Sometimes I'll just load up a bunch of songs on my iPod shuffle and do 1 set per song... or take a rest interval every 2 songs, etc.
I have found that the digital readout has been very helpful because I eventually learned where it should be for my warmups and where it should be for my longer sets, etc. Then I would do sets of 50's (30 strokes) on the fastest setting possible. I also found how fast I could do 100's or 200's. Then each successive time I would do a similar swim workout, I would do my 100's at say 1s per hundred faster than the previous workout. Over the course of several weeks, this meant that I was swimming my 100's at 5-10s per hundred faster than when I started. The other thing I would do was if I could get to my maximum pace at any given time for a hundred, then maybe the next workout I would keep that pace for an extra 3 or 6 strokes (remember you're no longer constrained by the wall of the pool. So if one day you were doing sets of 100yds (60 strokes) at 1:05 pace and you were literally desperately waiting to count down those last 3 or 6 strokes. The next day you could progress that training by mentally forcing yourself to do 63 strokes or 66... Eventually you'll be doing 200's at the same pace you previously could previously only hold for 60 strokes.
The big advantage (as someone without a swimming background) was that it was always hard for me to calibrate RPE in my mind of the difference in a couple seconds per hundred felt like when you were actually swimming in a pool. If I told the "normal" triathlete to go swim a hundred in exactly 1:45, they could probably get close. If I then told them to do a 100 in exactly 1:42 or 1:44, or 1:46, they'd have a hard time nailing that in the beginning of a workout and at the end of a workout... And If I told them to swim at exactly 1:15/100 pace for as long as they could, chances are they would hold that pace maybe for a 25 or 50, then would start fading... They might swim their 3rd 25 at 5s per hundred slower, and then their 4th 25 at another 5s per hundred slower but they wouldn't know it because they were still jamming ahead at max RPE.
That's a long way to say that the precision and repeatability of an EP has limitations, but I think they are outweighed by the efficient use of training time and the ability to gradually increase your paces or the amount of time you spend at a given pace and you either keep up with that pace or stop swimming. In many ways this actually similar to a Computrainer forcing a given power output or a running treadmill forcing a given pace. These can all make for effective tools (but are not exactly the same as biking or running outside or swimming in still water).
This is getting a bit long, but either post her or send me a PM if you're more interested in any detailed workouts or have any specific questions...
@John - I recommend you add this response as a wiki article about "How to Use an Endess Pool for EN Training". Yes, it is that good. And, yes, it really makes me want one in our next house.
[The big advantage (as someone without a swimming background) was that it was always hard for me to calibrate RPE in my mind of the difference in a couple seconds per hundred felt like when you were actually swimming in a pool. If I told the "normal" triathlete to go swim a hundred in exactly 1:45, they could probably get close. If I then told them to do a 100 in exactly 1:42 or 1:44, or 1:46, they'd have a hard time nailing that in the beginning of a workout and at the end of a workout... And If I told them to swim at exactly 1:15/100 pace for as long as they could, chances are they would hold that pace maybe for a 25 or 50, then would start fading... They might swim their 3rd 25 at 5s per hundred slower, and then their 4th 25 at another 5s per hundred slower but they wouldn't know it because they were still jamming ahead at max RPE.
That's a long way to say that the precision and repeatability of an EP has limitations, but I think they are outweighed by the efficient use of training time and the ability to gradually increase your paces or the amount of time you spend at a given pace and you either keep up with that pace or stop swimming. In many ways this actually similar to a Computrainer forcing a given power output or a running treadmill forcing a given pace. These can all make for effective tools (but are not exactly the same as biking or running outside or swimming in still water). ]
I still have 5 EP visits left on my punchcard, and will definitely be returning to it in the last few weeks of the OS: I think the long RRs or 500 sets I include in late-season weeks will be ideal in this gizmo, and will be much more race-specific than 25-turn-repeat-repeat-repeat.