Fitness Makeover: How to boost your swim speed over the long haul?

Alex Kostich
Active.com

Aprils Fitness Makeover will focus on two swimmers with conflicting philosophies on ideal swim training.

Zena Courtney and Eric Dybdahl find themselves in the same lane at their Seattle, Wash., masters swimming program, but recently could not agree on the best way to improve speed and conditioning.

Zena, who has an extensive competitive swimming background dating back to her college days, has advised Eric that the best way to improve his 1,650-yard freestyle time is to swim 4,000 to 5,000 yards a day and focus on some faster-paced sets to quicken his average speed.

Eric, who only started swimming in his late 30's, insists that swimming a whopping 10,000 yards a day, five days a week, will provide him with the conditioning he missed out on as a youth. With such yardage under his belt, Eric claims he is bound to improve his long-distance swims. Ultimately, the goal is to get Erics 19-plus-minute 1,650 time down to under 19 minutes.

Swimmers and triathletes always seem to struggle with the yardage question. Generally a motivated and focused bunch, they know deep down that doing more may not always be the best way to improve. However, these athletes cant help but believe that if they slack off, they just might get beaten by the Slightly More Dedicated someone who may have done those extra miles during mid-season training.

Call it insecurity or justification of obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but the end result to swimming extra garbage yardage is usually a fitness and speed plateau and occasionally a shoulder injury or chronic fatigue.

That said, Eric is partially right in believing that lots of yardage will give him superior conditioning. If he recently began swimming or had been sedentary prior to his newfound exercise regimen, he will develop added endurance by spending more time in the water. However, if he is looking for improved cardiovascular ability after a few years of the same swimming schedule, then he should focus more on the quality, or speed, of his swimming rather than the amount of yardage.

By adding shorter, intense sets to his swim workouts, Eric will learn to swim fast while maintaining and even improving upon his cardiovascular conditioning. Because he is currently accustomed to swimming slowly for long periods of time, Eric does not have the speed to reach his 1,650-yard goal time. The faster he swims in workout, the more prepared and accustomed he will be to swimming fast in his race event.

Currently, he is probably in fine shape to complete a 10-mile ocean swim at a slow and steady pace but he is having difficulty repeating a mere 16 consecutive 100s at 1:09 pace to get under 19 minutes.

Eric need not cut his yardage down too much if he feels that his 10,000-yard workouts are manageable. What he does need to do is make sure that for at least 1,600 yards per workout he is pushing himself to race pace speeds (even if he does short repeats with lots of rest). By forcing himself to swim faster than his average pace, Eric will improve his cardiovascular endurance and condition himself to hold a certain time per 100 yards.

In addition, if Eric modifies his training to include other sports such as spinning or running, he will gain added endurance that will carry over nicely to his swimming. Physically exerting the body in different ways provides an athlete with a more well-rounded cardiovascular base. By taking up a sport that is more leg-intensive (hence working the bodys largest muscles), Eric will increase his cardiovascular ability for extended periods of time.

Another benefit of such cross-training is that it allows an athlete to improve upon conditioning while preventing injuries that result from too much swimming. Rotator-cuff inflammation (the February Makeover focused on this problem) and chronic fatigue can set in, especially among novice swimmers who ramp up their yardage too much, too soon.

Eric should be cautious not to over-rain; swimming 10,000 yards several times a week may do him more harm than good in the long run. If hes determined to cover 50,000 yards a week, I would suggest swimming 8,000 yards five times a week, focusing more on speed and pace work, with a 10,000-yard workout on the weekend followed by a day off.

Getting back to the goal at hand, which is to put Eric under 19 minutes for the 1650, here is a sample workout that manages to cover 6,000 yards while giving him an opportunity to try repeating his goal pace per 100 at 1:09. Even if he chooses to keep swimming long-distance workouts, he ought to incorporate elements of the main set below into his swims.

Warm-up
600 freestyle
200 backstroke
200 breaststroke

10x 50s @ 5 secs rest, descending effort 1-5 and 6-10

Main set
500 freestyle
5 x 100s @ 5 secs rest, faster than usual pace
500 freestyle
5 x 100s @ 10 secs rest, aim for 1:09s
500 freestyle
5 x 100s @ 15 secs rest, aim for 1:08s

1,000 pull, recovery

(25 easy, 25 sprint) x 10

Total: 6,000

This workout is a basic yardage-covering workout, with an emphasis on repeating 100 yards at a consistently faster time than one normally swims in automatic mode. It covers distance without sacrificing quality, and the repetitive nature of the main set provides ample opportunity to swim fast and maintain race pace.

The sprint 25s at the end of the workout are meant to further jolt the swimmer into sprint-form. Over time, such sprint drills condition an athlete to swim faster for distances and this eventually results in swimming faster for longer periods.

For example, if your normal pace is 1:11 per 100, it makes sense that one way to drop that time is to drop your sprint time from 1:02 to 1:00. The easier it is to swim a sprint 100 at 1:00, the more feasible it will be to repeat several 100s at 1:09 pace.

Swimming 10,000 yards per workout is a great way to prepare for swimming extreme distances. To put Erics dedication into perspective, when I trained for the 13-mile Swim Around Key West, the most I ever covered in one session was 15,000 meters. I only did this once a week for a month before the race (and I subsequently shortened my training the following season to a maximum daily 10,000 meters).

Generally, I recommend the two-thirds rule to swimmers who ask how much they should train for extreme endurance swim events. For a 15-mile swim, it is only necessary to feel comfortable training 10 miles at least once before your event (likewise, when I have trained for running marathons, I have usually only ramped up to an 18-mile training run as my longest distance before the race).

Unlike such above endurance events where the goal is to finish, a shorter race like the 1,650 requires focused training that emphasizes a different kind of endurance: the consistent pace held per 100 yards.

am willing to bet that Eric would still be clocking in more distance than his masters competitors if he committed to a daily 4,000 to 6,000 meters. The important thing for him to remember if he wants to improve his time is that learning to swim fast is more important than swimming long and slow.

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