Updating a Swim Workout with a Twist

Congratulations to Angela...winner of my Three Year Blog-iversary giveaway!

Our swim bunch always does workouts on Friday's that focus on 50 yd repeats.  We make changes to the workout each week but you know that if it's Friday then we are swimming 50's.  We even call it Fifties Friday! 

This Friday there were just a couple of us for the workout.  I had been thinking about a twist to our repeats for the last few weeks so I brought it up as an option.  One of our standard workouts is to do a set number of 50's like 4 on a descending time interval.  For example, 4 on the minute, 4 on 55 seconds, 4 on 50 seconds, and 4 on 45 seconds.  My idea was to make the descend but do it a little mixed up. 

In the new version, we would start on one minute, then go to 50 seconds, then back up to 55 seconds, and then down to 45 seconds.  The theory that I had was that by alternating between the ladder I would go into the 45 second set with a little more rest and thus be more successful at achieving the interval. 

The normal swims that we do for each interval is as follows:
1 minute = 50 stroke depending on your ability this could also be swam stroke/free.
55 second = Stroke/free (sometimes I do pull)
50 second = all free
45 second = all free

So our workout looked like this...
Warm up
4 x 50 on 1 minute (stroke/free)
4 x 50 on 50 seconds (free)
4 x 50 on 55 seconds (pull)
4 x 50 on 45 seconds (free)
Cool down

It would have been fun to take the ladder back up by adding on 4 x 50 on 55seconds, 4 x 50 on 50 seconds, 4 x 50 on 1 minute.  But instead we hit up the hot tub! It was a short workout for me since I got to the pool a little later than normal but I was pretty happy to finally stay on the interval for the 45 seconds.  I was touch and go for them but at least I made it.  In the end I think my theory worked out pretty well.  The variety between each mini-set was nice too compared to the straight descend that we normally do. 

I owe my training partners a ton of credit because without them I wouldn't be trying to hit 45 second intervals.  Over the past year, I have made a ton of improvement in my swim times.  Swimming more consistently during the week and swimming with fast friends has made a big difference for me.  If you have the chance...push yourself and try to swim with the faster swimmers.  Maybe sometimes you'll have to take a breather break but maybe sometimes you'll surprise yourself and hit times that you didn't realize that you could.