Intensity Swim Workout

Advanced Swim Workout

Most swimmers have a hard time finding their different gears, so your workouts will likely be at more or less the same speed. As you develop a better feel for what “easy” versus “hard” feels like, you can add harder efforts and even sprints into your workouts. You’ll want to add more rest time after these efforts – just like at the track when you’re doing speedwork – but you’ll cover more ground (err, water) in less time as you become capable of increased intensity.

• Warm-up (300 easy swims, 200 pull buoy or a second stroke, 100 kick)
• 3 x 50 build, 3 x 50 descend
• Repeat 100s for time*: 8 x 100, odds are easy, evens are hard effort.
• Cool-down (200 to 300 easy swim)

*Your time should be very close to the time it takes you to swim that 100 at a nice, easy pace—maybe just a couple seconds more. (So, if swimming 100 metres at an easy pace takes you 1:57, you could round up to 2:00.) For hard efforts, use that same time, but note your actual time to the wall on your first hard effort and try to come as close to that as possible on every hard 100 to follow. The remaining time is your recovery before going into the easy swim. (So, even if your hard effort gets you back to the wall in 1:30, you still won’t leave for the next easy 100 until the clock hits 2:00.)