Swim Session: Learn to use & lose the toys!

Coach Mike’s Lost Toys #2 swim set

The focus of this session is on strength — strong swimming being about controlled power, not thrashing your arms more quickly!

Equipment needed:

Lots of toys!

• Paddles
• Pull buoy
• Bands (a cut up inner tube)
• Tempo trainer

Warm up:

Get started with:

Poolside mobility and deep controlled breathing.

• 200m easy

Technique Focus:

• 100m slow down, head a little higher so you can watch your hands (not the bottom of the pool!)
• 100m with pull buoy, concentrate on body roll and stretching out the rib cage to reach forward (still being aware and looking at your hands)
• 100m concentrate on tipping hands back and elbows high
• 4x 25m swimming down the centre blue line and ensuring hands pass along the edge of the blue line (not out to the side)

Main set:

• 500m with tempo trainer set at your CSS + 4secs (= add 1 sec to your beeper time for each 25m length) keep just ahead of the beeper, strong controlled pace
• 500m with bands, pull buoy and paddles
• 500m with pull buoy and paddles
• 500m with pull buoy
• 5 x 100m swim with beeper on same CSS time as before but keep ahead of the beeper with only the time you’ve made up over the four lengths as your recovery (= short recovery!)

Cool down:

• 200m mix of strokes

Total 3.3kms

You can decrease the distances if you’re short of time or it’s a bit too full on — make the main set blocks of 400ms or 300ms — but keep the focus on the ingredients for a strong, powerful stroke all the way through.