You feel like when you train, when you race, you’ve only got one speed. How often do you vary your pace in training? Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. The shock the system. So recently I did a post in our membership which kind of went through the top, or the most common training mistakes that I see swimmers doing, especially if someone who’s quite new to swimming, a couple of those things are just non-stop swimming. So people will sometimes approach their training like they’re running, they might go out for a six K run at one pace and it’s just about getting back to the end. But with swimming, yeah, you might occasion want to do some longer swings, but really it’s about what are you doing in your training sessions that’s gonna help you get quicker. And so you ideally break it up with the distances,

break it up with the different sets that you’re doing and especially the speed. So if you feel like when you train, when you race, you’ve only got one speed, how often do you vary your pace in training? So I see a lot of new swimmers or new triathletes doing non-stop swimming. So their session might be two and a half K, but it’s just getting in and swim to a half K, or one pace only swimming where they still might break it up, but they’re not varying the pace, they’re not changing the effort level. So well, yes, it’s good to sometimes do some longer swims or have one pace if you’re doing an easy aerobic session. You don’t want to be doing that all the time. So sets like, a few sets that I really like for this, one of my favorites is 9, 150s, descending once a three with 30 seconds rest. So that set there, 150 meters, and you want to descend one to three. And all that means is you’re going to get quicker each one.

So let’s say the first 150 is you’re going 230. On the second one, you might go 220. And on the third one, you might go 210. And you repeat that another two times through to make 9, 150. So kind of going easy, medium, fast, easy, medium, fast. So a few sets like that, really good for developing your pace. Check the stop clock. Make sure that you’re actually hitting those times and gives you a really good reference for how, how much effort you need to put in for the pace and the speed that you’re going. So that set there I got from Daniel Kowalski. He, I was swimming with him occasionally a couple of years back when he was training for masters. He raced the masters nationals. And that was one of the sets that he repeatedly did. It was the 9, 150s. And he was sort of racing 400, 800. So just a good, good distance set. The second one I’ve got there is just doing some sprinting, some top end speed sprinting and sustained sprinting.

So it’s almost like that best average sort of stuff. So 8, 25 is best average. Now best average means as fast as you can hold across all eight. So it’s the best average pace that you can hold. So I did this one two days ago. So I did 8, 25s on 30 seconds. And it was basically trying to hit the same pace every single 25. Then we’d do 200 recovery. And we went through that three times. But those 8, 25s are hard. And by the end of it, you’re really starting to feel it. But you’re hitting that top end speed, which I see not enough smers doing that fast kind of work. And the last one I’ve got there is 8, 100s going one fast, one recovery. Very easy.

That’s it. When I started to get back into training this season, that was one of my favorite sets to do. So I’d do about a K of sort of technique and drill work. And then I’d do 8, 100s. Pardon me. Of one fast. So I was really going for it. Heart rate was right up. And then I’d just go an easy 100. And I’d go through that for 8, 100s. Then I’d finish off with just some easy smoothing, little bit of technique work and pool and paddles. But just really making sure that you do shock the system. Doesn’t need to be all the time if you’re training for an Ironman, if you’re training for a longer 5K, 10K swim. You don’t need to do a lot of that stuff. But it’s good to do occasionally. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming Podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.