Coach’s Intel: PRO Swimming’s Luke Stocker Shares a Speed Endurance Set

Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer based out of Victoria, BC. In feeding his passion for swimming, he has developed YourSwimBook, a powerful log book and goal setting guide made specifically for swimmers. Sign up for the YourSwimBook newsletter (free) and get weekly motivational tips by clicking here.

This evening’s set was submitted by Luke Stocker, who is the head coach of Bellevue, Washington’s PRO Swimming.  It’s a good set for testing and building speed endurance, and as you can see the set is quite adaptable for various strokes and distances:

5×200 fastest possible interval (FPI)

100 EZ @2:00

3×200 FPI +:15 seconds (swimmers must hold faster than they did on 5x200s

100 EZ @2:00

1×200 All out for time from push

100 EZ @2:00

5×100 FPI

50 EZ @1:00

3×100 FPI +:10 (swimmers must hold faster than they did on 5x100s)

50 EZ @1:00

1×100 all out for time from push

This set can accommodate any stroke, but it best done Free, Back or IM.  Short axis strokes usually get pretty ugly.  What I really like about this set is that the first part (5×200 FPI) fatigues the swimmers early on in the set.  Then they are expected to swim faster under stress.  Usually the middle part is the hardest for the swimmers to do properly.  In order to lock down the middle third of the set, swimmers have to be mentally tough.

During a Christmas training practice I gave this set to a couple JR Nat level male swimmers, except everything was IM and doubled.  So the first part of the set was 5×400 IM on fastest possible interval.  They still managed to pull out 4:20-4:30 for the all out 400 IM.  Not bad considering both were 4:05 or so at the time for their lifetime bests.

Wanna share your favorite workout or set with the swimming community? Send it in to Olivier at [email protected]