Swim – Speed (Fast 50’s)

This is a swim session called Fast 50’s, designed to improve our specific swimming speed.

Swim speed is a product of our stroke length and our arm turnover. If we want to increase speed, we need to increase our arm turnover while maintaining a maximum stroke length.
This session helps us do this by promoting both of these key elements repetitively in short bursts (sets of 50m efforts).

I would normally incorporate this session (or a very similar swim speed session) once per week in my training program or introduce it after a big strength/endurance training block as training starts to get more race specific.

They say you can’t win a triathlon in the swim but you can certainly lose it there, or the chance of a solid performance. Even though the swim is the smallest part of a triathlon, it sets up the whole race, so it pays to be swim fit and fast!

THE WORKOUT:

Warmup:

• 400m easy/mixed strokes
• 200 kick with fins

Repeat this sequence 3 times.

Main Set:

• 4 x 50m Fr best pace/effort level (30sec recovery between efforts);
  - 50m easy kick, drill or back.
• Repeat this sequence 4 times

Cool Down: 

• 400m Fr easy (Paddles/ Pull Buoy).
  • focusing on maintaining maximum stroke length.
• 400m easy/ mixed strokes