Practice + Pancakes: IU Takes Pullies to New Levels

SwimSwam wants to give you an inside look at what a normal day-in-the-life looks like for any given swimmer, and how that differs from team to team or city to city. We send our head of production, Coleman Hodges, to be a fly on the wall at practice, then relay what he discovered back to you over pancakes. Or at least breakfast.

I took a trip down to Bloomington, Indiana to see what IU had in store for their post-thanksgiving training. It was quite a treat. I went to their morning and afternoon practice plus post-morning weight workout on a Monday, so I got to see all 7 groups in action (if you haven’t watched the video on that, here it is). As you might imagine, there was plenty of media to capture.

At the AM practice, nearly everyone was using pullies, with different sets specificed to their training needs. You had 100/200 swimmers going 20×25’s of 3 cycles fast, you had 200 and above swimmers going 20×25’s all fast, and you had distance group going 20×50’s maintaining race tempo, pulling weight for both 25’s of each 50. THEN an hour after all of those groups got in, yet another group got in that had a monofin set, a pully set focusing on 200 race tempo, and 50’s at 200 pace to finish up. After the first group finished up, they went to weights. Talk about a busy morning.

If you make it to the end of this article, and the end of the video, you’ll realize that they both only cover the AM practice… stay tuned for PM practice, coming soon.

If you didn’t see Coleman’s Carpool with Lilly King, Blake Pieroni, and Cody Miller, CHECK IT OUT!