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How to Set Up a Week of Swimming Training

How To Arrange Swimming Workouts Within A Week

From , former About.com Guide

In general, if I want to swim faster, then I need to do most of my training by swimming. If I workout 5-6 days a week, then I would swim 4-5 days/week and go to the gym once or twice/week, with one of those gym sessions on a no-swim day and one on a day when I swim. Increasing stress each week, then recovering from that stress at some point, is the idea behind all training plans. It works that way for swimming training, too. You can alter stress within a workout by changing:
  • the distance of each swim (duration of work)
  • the speed of each swim (effort)
  • the number of swims (total distance)
  • the rest between swims (recovery time)
More on swimming training plans can be found here.

How to arrange the specifics of swimming training workouts within a week is the tricky part, and that varies for each person's set of individual circumstances.

A rough idea on a week's training workouts might be:

  1. HARD DAY: Speed - Main set = short repeats with long rest at high speed.
  2. DAY OFF
  3. HARD DAY: Fast Endurance - Main set = medium repeats with short to medium rest at medium to fast speeds.
  4. MODERATE DAY: Endurance - Main set = long repeats with very short rest at medium to slow speeds.
  5. EASY DAY: Gym + Technique - Main set = Mix of medium and short repeats focusing on technique.
  6. HARD DAY: Fast Endurance - Main set = medium repeats with short rest at medium speed.
  7. MODERATE DAY: Gym only.
I would do some kind of technique work during every workout, I would do at least a few (3-4) very fast 25's at each workout, and I would do some short, fast kicking (6-10 x 50's or 25's with 20-30 seconds recovery) at every workout.

Swim On!

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