Swim Workouts in a Pinch

Sometimes it is hard to come up with a workout set when I'm swimming...either I'm swimming alone or don't want to swim the workout the group is doing.  When I'm not feeling it I usually break my main set into a workout with a lot of variety to keep me motivated.  Today was one of those days...I was the only girl in the pool and felt intimidated by my male swimming friends.  The set that they were doing was 10 x 100m on descending interval times.  The starting point was not one that I could maintain and then drop down from and it just intimidated me from the initial discussion. 

I decided rather quickly to swim my own set instead.  I started out without a clear plan in place and worked up the plan as I swam the first part of my set.  I ended up deciding to do a 4 x 300m main set.  I broke it down by 300 and did each 300 as something different.  This is also something that I do to make it easier to keep track of my distance especially when we switch back to short course swimming!  Overall the workout looked like this:

Warmup - 500m swim
Main set -
   300m pull
   2 x 150m Hannah's (middle 50 breast stroke)
   3 x 100m free
   6 x 50m free (easy/sprint)
Cooldown - 200m swim

It wasn't the greatest set ever but there was another variety to keep me going for a total of 1900m. 

If you get into a rut and need some ideas here are some great places to look for workout ideas. 

Effortless Swimming on Facebook.

Andy Potts Workout of the Day

Swim Planner app - you supply the workout distance and your 100 time trial pace and it gives you workouts specific to your pace.

My other tip would be to ask others what workout they are doing! This has helped me to really improve my swim times through trying out other people's workouts.  You have to make sure to maintain balance in your workouts.  Every swim can't be a sprint session but try to keep some variety and hopefully that variety will translate into improved fitness for you!