After our rain-out on Monday afternoon, we got back to work on Tuesday with a Breaststroke or Butterfly-themed practice. Three of our athletes did a separate set -- some Freestyle or Backstroke.
Shawn (Fly), Matt (Breast), and Jack (Breast) led the way on the stroke set. We did a 150 on (2:00), followed by a 50 on (1:00).
The good part about the set was that the 50s were good or very good. Athletes were hitting 200 Pace throughout the set, and descending to back half 100 Pace or faster. In a few cases, athletes were hitting half of their 100 goal.
The part of the set that needed work was the technique and skill application on the 150s. The swimming, kicking, and drilling were sloppier than we should be on this set. Our top training groups back in 2013 and 2014 had a lot of trouble getting into this type of set (although we had a few people that were awesome at it)…but I'd say our group we have today is very good at it normally and we will get back to that excellence the next time we do this type of set.
Because our skills were not as good as we needed them to be, I pulled the interval back to 2:10 for the middle set of 3, and 2:20 for the final set of 3. The 50s stayed on 1:00. I felt like pulling the intervals back was necessary, particularly because we were working with Breast and Fly. Those strokes require a lot of energy output to swim well (on top of the water, quick open turns, fast tempo on dolphin kicks)…and we were better on the intervals at the end of the set. It's funny, pretty much everyone dropped a half second or more on their average 50 time after the interval moved to 2:20.
We had another group of athletes go 16x200 Free or Back. We did 4 on 2:30, 4 on 2:25, 4 on 2:30, and 4 on 2:20. Great job for all, particularly Paolo who did Backstroke and went 207 for 4, 206 for 4, 207 for 4, then 207, 204, 205, 204.0 on the final 4.
Paolo is a 1:55.1 Backstroker. Take a close look at this set….he's going "Plus 12" at his slowest (1:55 + 12 = 207). He's going "Plus 9" at his fastest.
Think about it Paolo….
If you're 200 Freestyle time is 1:42, to equal your Backstroke set you'd have to do:
16x200 Free…4 on 2:20, 4 on 2:15, 4 on 2:20, 4 on 2:10 (intervals adjust because your Free PR is 13 seconds faster than your Back PR)…..and you'd have to average 154s (142 Plus 12 = 154) on the set, and finish with a 151 (Plus 9).
So, I guess that means that was an above-average backstroke set! It also probably means that you're freestyle training can get better….you can swim sub 1:00 more often at this stage in the game.
Here's another reason why freestyle training should be better than backstroke training: The Diving Reflex (The teaser for this clip is this: all mammals have a reflex that lowers the heart rate by 20%, occurs when the face is submerged in water). Backstroke not only is a "face out of the water" stroke for half or more than half of the race, but it is using a larger group of muscles in the legs and encouraging a higher ventilation rate -- which affects the rate of the backstroker.
In other words, it's tough to train fast backstroke! Athletes who can swim fast backstroke in practice can swim fast at anything in practice.
Let's get back to work today everyone!
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