This week (3) commencing Monday 15th January 2007:

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Week 1 | Week 2

The following program is designed for swimmers capable of swimming 1000m in between 12 and 25 minutes and whom would typically cover ~2,000 to 3,500m in a given session. We will post a once weekly training session, which should be supplemented with your normal training program of between 2 and 5 swims per week (depending upon your ability and aspirations etc).

Sessions will feature drills from the Swim Smooth DVD Boxset, so if you haven't yet got yourself a copy, add one to your wish-list!

You will also find the generic Swim Smooth Short Hand Reference sheet to be a very useful guide for helping your way around some of the more 'technical' swim training terms.

OK, so let's get started!

Week 3 of 52:

The purpose of today's session is to use the value for your newly calculated aerobic capacity (from last week's 400m and 50m TT and using the Critical Swim Speed Calculator) to train this week at a level appropriate to your current level of fitness. This week we will be doing some 200s at your sub-threshold level, or what some may call your "sweet spot", i.e. not super-hard, but not super easy either. Use the CSS Calculator above to ascertain your Critical Swim Speed in meters per second. Multiply this value by 0.968 (correction factor as determined by Dekerle et al. 2002). Then to turn this value into a 'usable' 100m pace in seconds use the formula (100m/CSS), i.e.

My CSS is 1.26m/s, multiply by 0.968 equals 1.22m/s, so (100m/1.22) equals 81.9 seconds or 1:22 per 100m. So in theory, given my current level of fitness I should be able to hold 1:22 per 100m until the cows come home! Whilst this seems like a lot of "messing with numbers" its important that we are both perfecting our technique with the drills that I will suggest AND also working to develop our specific swim fitness. So this week's session is going to be performed at sub-threshold level and to work out your 'zone' for that, take the value above (e.g. 1:22 per 100m) as your fastest pace and now multiply this value by 1.05 to give you your slowest pace, e.g. 1:26 per 100m in my case. So for today's sets of 200m, I shall be aiming to swim between 2:44 and 2:52 per 200m - phew! That was a bit long-winded hey?! Maybe so, but well worthwhile in the long run. You might be pleased to know that we're currently working on a Pace Calculator to make this all much easier!!

Warm-up:

300m easy f/s focusing on long, smooth strokes with excellent core body rotation.

2 x 100m kick building from slow to moderate over the 100m, preferably without a board.

200m easy f/s as before.

4 x 50 f/s with 15s RI building from 1 to 4.

Drill set:

3 x 200m as drill for 50m, swim for 50m. Set # 1 should be the Popov Drill, set # 2 the Corpse Kick and set # 3 the 6/3/6 drill. Take 30s rest between each and perform all but the last set with fins.

Main set:

5 x 200m at your pre-determined "Sweet Spot" pace. These should feel comfortable, but enough such that you still have to concentrate on your pace. We've done 1500m to this point addressing form and technique - don't let this go out of the window now. Aim to maximize stroke length and efficiency and by counting the number of strokes on your 3rd 50m of each 200m, start to identify your optimal stroke length / stroke rate balance.

For your recovery period, add 20 seconds to the slowest of your pace zones, e.g. 2:52 plus 20s = a leaving time of 3:12 or for arguments sake 3:10 or 3:15 (you choose!)

Cool down:

100m easy backstroke, 100m easy freestyle, 100m easy "leisure stroke" from the Swim Smooth DVD.

Enjoy!