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Swim Workouts for Swimmers - Count Down 100's

As The Number Of Swims Go Down, The Swimming Gets Faster

By Mat Luebbers, About.com

The Swim Workout

    400 swim as desired
    8 x 25 (:20 Drilling (swimming technique work)
    8 x 50 (:20 Pull
    8 x 25 (:20 Kick
    Take about 30-seconds extra rest
    8 x 25 (:20 Kick
    Take about 30-seconds extra rest
    4 x 25 (:45 Fast efforts Take about 30-seconds extra rest now, but no extra rest between the 100's
    5 x 100 (:40 Start easy, do each one a little bit quicker
    4 x 100 (:30 Hold your fastest pace
    3 x 100 (:20 Hold your fastest pace - keep it up!
    2 x 100 (:10 Hold your fastest pace - doing great!!
    1 x 100 (:60 Hold your fastest pace - get it home!!!
    1 x 200 Loosen, mix in some drills - Nice work!
    TOTAL DISTANCE = 3,150
A swim workout for swimmers comprised of 100's, counting down from 5-4-3-2-1, aiming to hold a good pace.

About Swimming Workouts

These workouts are designed to take between 75-minutes and 90-minutes. If that is too much time or distance, then cut things out, but do not always cut out the same thing every workout. And never skip the loosen at the end of the workout. Use that as one last bit of technique work before you leave the swimming pool at the end of the workout.

There is nothing special about these swim practice sessions, other than what you bring to them. Lots of freedom here. You control how hard or fast you swim and what swim strokes you want to use while swimming the workouts. Normally the amount of rest per swim will limit your top-end speed on a workout, but that does not mean go as fast as you can all of the time. A few guidelines:

  • The more rest you get, the faster the swim.
  • The early parts of a workout should always be easy to moderate and very deliberate. Use your best swimming technique.
  • Stop the workout if you are too tired, go for it again in the future.
  • You get to be a better swimmer by recovering from the workouts you do, not by doing more and more swimming without resting and recovering from that swimming.
  • Have fun with the workouts.
  • Change the strokes you are doing from time to time, try new things, and don't get caught in a rut.

Each workout has:

After the description of the set there is a number in a half-parentheses, like this - (:30 - that is how much rest you get after each swim. For example, 6 x 100 (:30 means you are to swim a 100 (yards or meters), rest 30-seconds, then repeat five more times for a total of 6 swims. Have fun in the pool with these workouts.

Swim On!

More Reading for Swimmers on Swim Workouts:

Explore Swimming

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