🐍 🪜 Consistency: What Gets Monitored, Gets Maintained!
In this vivid AI-generated illustration, the ladders symbolise the gains in fitness from consistent training, propelling swimmers upwards, while snakes depict the setbacks from periods of inactivity, causing a slide backwards in progress. This cool visual not only captures the essence of competitive swimming but also the strategic challenges faced by swimmers in maintaining & improving their fitness levels.
If you've ever played the game "Snakes and Ladders," you'll know that progress isn't always linear—sometimes you climb up quickly, and sometimes you slide back down unexpectedly.
This metaphor perfectly captures the ups and downs of swim training, and well I know it!
Such an image is simple to understand in abstract form, but with the latest version of our Fitness & Form Chart within the Swim Smooth GURU, you can see in the realtime the effects of your training efforts. You don’t necessarily need to be using a device either - if you log your sessions manually or just tick off any of our 1,000+ sessions within the GURU as you go, this chart will be created for you automatically. Just make sure you have your CSS (Critical Swim Speed) set correctly and we’ll do all the number-crunching for you.
The simple visual below is my own fitness curve over the last 12 months, zoomed out to 3 years, and then in to 12 months, 6 months, 12 weeks, 4 weeks and then the last 7 days, so we can easily see what’s happening:
The blue line is my fitness, the pink line is my fatigue, and the balance of that is my form (green). Preparing for an event, you don’t necessarily want your fitness to be at a peak, as this usually occurs with a peak in fatigue. By reducing some of that fatigue, by resting during a taper for example, you’ll see your fitness line dip a bit (and that’s OK!), but you’ll also see your form line rise to the occasion. And this is what you want. Knowing where you’re at any time within this process is great, even if your singular goal at the moment is just to maintain fitness or even delay the ageing process!
So today, I'll take you through the rollercoaster journey of my recent training as I prepare for the 2024 BestFest in Mallorca, Spain. This includes overcoming obstacles like COVID during Easter and a bout of salmonella food poisoning just last week—both as things were just going really well!
I'll show you how measuring and monitoring both progress and setbacks can help maintain realistic and motivating goals. Understanding these fluctuations is key to adjusting your training strategy effectively.
We'll dive deeper into how we can use your CSS and our new Fitness, Fatigue & Form Chart within the GURU to help monitor your Swimming Training Stress Score (sTSS) to not just swim smarter, but also more consistently too.
By understanding and applying these tools, we aim to climb more ladders and slide down fewer snakes, making each training session count towards consistent improvement. There’s nothing more motivating than seeing a visual representation of the work you’re putting in and the effect that it is having, and equally, when you’re not having a great ride (like me of late!), you can use this to prompt you to get started again. Because at the end of the day, the best time to start (or restart) isn't tomorrow—it's today.
So, whether you're training for a particular event, or just want to discover a motivating way of knowing how many sessions it'll take to maintain a base-line level of fitness each week to help you keep enjoying your swimming, this week's blog is for you.
Understanding CSS Pace
CSS is your golden pace—the speed you can maintain for a 1500m swim without burning out. It's about finding that sweet spot in your training that pushes you enough to improve but not so much that you crash. We’ve frequently highlighted the importance of this pace in planning your workouts to maximise both your aerobic and anaerobic systems effectively over the years. To skip right ahead and calculate yours, go here.
Introducing sTSS: A Real-Time Fitness Tracker
The latest gem in our Swim Smooth Guru is the new Fitness, Fatigue & Form Chart incorporating sTSS—a nifty feature that quantifies the load of each workout against your CSS pace. It’s like having a personal trainer in your pocket, always keeping an eye on whether you’re pushing too hard or not enough. By tracking your sTSS scores, you’re essentially mapping your fitness journey in real-time, making sure every session counts.
Linking CSS and sTSS: The Road to Consistency
Here’s where it gets really interesting. By syncing your CSS with your daily sTSS scores, we can map out your development over time. This dual approach helps manage your training intensity and ensures you’re building fitness without overdoing it. Too much accumulation of sTSS too quickly, or not enough, can throw a wrench in your training consistency. Remember, it's about climbing ladders, not sliding down snakes!
Moreover, this tailored approach isn't just about avoiding burnout; it’s about peaking at the right time. By strategically planning your sessions based on CSS and sTSS data, you can gradually increase your workload to peak for key competitions. This means tapering your efforts just as your important races approach, ensuring you’re in top form when it counts the most. It’s like setting the stage for your own personal bests, guided by precise, personalised data.
Within the Swim Smooth Guru, we make this process visual and intuitive by mapping out three critical metrics: Fitness, Fatigue, and Form. Your sTSS workload not only contributes to your long-term fitness but also creates short-term fatigue. The balance between these two is what we call your Form. By visualizing these metrics on a day-to-day basis in the Guru, you gain powerful insights that guide your training decisions and help push your performance forward.
Practical Applications and User Experiences
Many of our swimmers have told us how these insights have transformed their training. Imagine tweaking your CSS after nailing a tough session and seeing your sTSS adapt to reflect your improved endurance. This feedback loop between CSS and sTSS not only boosts your performance but also fine-tunes your recovery, ensuring you're always training within your optimal zone.
Let’s Get Personal: My Own Fitness Curve Tale
Now, let’s get personal. Over the last 12 months, my own fitness curve hasn’t always been a smooth ascent. There have been dips and detours—times when I couldn’t keep the consistency I preach. But here’s the beautiful part: by monitoring my CSS and sTSS, I could quickly pinpoint where things went off track and adjust. It’s not just about pushing forward; sometimes, it’s about stepping back, reassessing, and jumping back in.
When you look at Ladders 1 and 2 with the very small Snake 1 in between (a short camping holiday with the family), you’ll see that I had an almost perfect build up to the UltraSwim event I won in early October 2023. This represented almost 5 months without a single hiccup and the result was therefore not a surprise. It was the best I’d trained and felt in over a decade.
Snake 2 is the short recovery period after that big event, before tackling an even bigger event of 20km just 4 weeks later (Ladder 3). I didn’t win this one, but jumped atop the podium with two of Australia’s best open water swimmers who’s combined age was less than my own. This brought about my biggest peak in fitness in the last 12 months (and likely the last decade).
Snake 3 is then the aftermath of those two big events, Christmas and some time spent with visiting family. You’ll see that all those gains were quite quickly lost, but critically, my baseline of 40 points was established and this for me is now where I try to always keep things at.
Ladder 4 was the build-up to our inagural 18km “Shore-2-Shore” community swimming event. But here’s where things have become interesting!
I had set myself the lofty goal of bringing my CSS down to 1:12/100m to tally with where I was 25 years ago as a triathlete on the British team. Ladder 5 was looking like I was going to be able to achieve my goal of a sub-18 minute 1500m long course freestyle swim before the 2024 BestFest in Mallorca, Spain. However, I then got hit really hard with COVID, and on holiday too! I couldn’t make a quick return because there was no pool to train in as well as being scared out of the ocean by a passing tiger shark! I made an ‘heroic’ return in Ladder 6, but have been hit with a bout of salmonella this week from some meat at a BBQ and have never felt worse (Snake 6!).
I’ll be starting Ladder 7 today which will see me tick over the 1,000,000 meters I narrowly missed hitting for this 12 month period because of these recent setbacks.
Conclusion
Using CSS and sTSS is like having a high-tech compass for your swim training. They guide you, challenge you, and more importantly, they keep you honest about your progress. But remember, the path to improvement isn’t a straight line as I’ve clearly demonstrated—it’s a series of adjustments, learning, and yes, restarting when necessary.
🪜 Get Your Ladder Out!
Ready to take control of your swim training with real-time insights that adapt as you do? Dive into the Swim Smooth Guru with a FREE 7-day trial of all of these features and let’s make every stroke count. Because at the end of the day, the best time to start (or restart) isn't tomorrow—it's today.
