WoW #5 — Cal Aquatic Masters
Thank you Jeremy Cohen from Cal Aquatic Masters (CALM) for contributing to this week’s WoW (click on image to view full size).
Coach Overview
CALM has approximately 130 swimmers on our masters team. The age range of these swimmers is from college students to people in their 70s. People on this team are swimming for fitness and occasionally for competition in Masters meets.
Our workouts are one hour long. This includes 10 minutes of warmup time after which we have announcements and explanations of some of the parts of workout that might need explaining, such as drills.
Cive Commentary
CALM! (the “!” is mine). They have 130 swimmers in their Masters program and, knowing the enthusiasm and commitment of Masters swimmers, ‘calm’ is possibly an elusive atmosphere
The session is short course yards, lasts for one hour, including a 10 minute warm up which appears to be self-determined. Because of the large user-base they use two pools and offer five separate workout times each day, and train six days a week — usually two each of distance, middle, and sprint so a nicely balanced mix.
CALM use six lanes organized by training ability ranging from 1:15 to 2:00 as a base rep time for freestyle 100y repeats. The specific workout shown is for a group who can hold 1:20/100y.
WARM UP
Announcements and explanations of the body of the workout are given after the warm up. This is an excellent strategy which allows the swimmers to arrive, get themselves physically prepared, and then start swimming during which they can prepare themselves mentally. At this point, when they are receptive to general instruction and specific requirements they get the details of the major sets.
DRILL AND KICK SETS
The initial drill set focuses on body rotation. It’s a simple drill — six kicks one side, three strokes (one and a half cycles), six kicks the other side. Rinse and repeat. Masters swimmers tend to listen, to seek to understand and then to do. Conscientiously. They desire to improve. That’s why they are there. These are good qualities.
The rotation drill is followed by another hors d’oeuvre — a short kick set — and then they are good to go for the main course: a broken 1650 reducing in distance from 275 yards (11 lengths) down to 25 yards.
BROKEN 1650
I love ‘broken’ swims like this. Most distances can be segmented into pleasing numeric patterns and this one has an added advantage: the reducing repetition distance allows the swimmers to hold or increase their pace. The effects of fatigue are sidelined and the light at the end of the tunnel produces an incentive for them to raise their game and ‘bring it on home’. Coach Cohen sees three benefits: general learning of pace for distance events; experiencing the exhilaration of negative split pacing; and (possibly most pragmatic) a way of gaining group compliance for a 22 minute effort!
Ten rest intervals of six seconds each conveniently sums to one minute so the swimmers have a simple task to check their overall 1650 time and compare it with other swimmers who were in different lanes.
PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT OF BROKEN 1650
It’s a pretty solid set for any age or ability of swimmer but, as always, the effect depends on the intensity at which it’s performed and that effect is determined by the stroke rate. The stroke rate is the cause of elevated heart rates and raised lactate levels. The swimmer ups their rating and, in order to comply, the muscles demand more oxygen and/or more glycogen. More oxygen is delivered by increasing the blood supply and that serviced by a faster heart rate. It is easy to monitor a swimmer’s intensity of effort simply by checking the stroke rate (SR).
Race-pace 1,650s will probably sit around a SR of 40–42 cycles per minute (cpm). This falls right in the center of the training zone termed lactate clearance which stretches across a range of around 35 through to 45 cpm. It is one of three training zones which together develop aerobic power (AEP). It would be unusual for swimmers to be able to hold race pace intensity for race distance during training but that is why broken swims were invented; the rest intervals allow some recovery and the next swim can be at a faster pace than if the swim were straight.
The six second ‘rest’ between distances is probably irrelevant to physiological recovery because it is so short, but it will be vital to the motivation necessary for perseverance, especially if the opportunity arises to ‘eyeball’ a competitive colleague during the brief respite on the wall. It only takes a raised eyebrow or a disbelieving shrug for a head-to-head tussle to appear up front and center. Maintaining the pace in the target training zone is a skill in itself and this break will help that. Swimming at a (s)lower intensity than 40–42 cpm may still produce a similar lactate clearance effect but it will not be as deep or powerful an effect.
Lowering the intensity below 35 cpm moves the swimmer into anaerobic threshold territory (33–35 cpm) and below that into the EN2 zone (31–33) which still overloads the aerobic metabolism but to a much lesser extent than the higher zones. Productive work at EN2 level is usually much longer than 1 x 1650 as it has to compensate for the reduced intensity by introducing increased time (distance).
Lower intensities still (>31 com) denote EN1 which develops the aerobic base or the aerobic capacity (AEC). If any of the Masters swimmers were new to the game or had a limited training background then this would be appropriate AEC work.
There you have it for Commit’s Workout of the Week! Looking forward to sharing a new workout next week and learning more from Clive Rushton.
If you’re a coach that would like to contribute to this series, please email founders@commitanalytics.com with your request. Thanks!
Commit & Clive
Originally published at http://wow.commitswimming.com on December 15, 2015.
