Practice + Pancakes: University of Arizona Throws Down After Mesa (Video)

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.

Hot off the Pro Swim stop in Mesa, the University of Arizona wildcats were back in the water Monday morning. SwimSwam was not there for that. However! We did join them for their afternoon workout, which looked a little different for each group.

For the distance swimmers, they had a pretty extensive ab workout. Their first set was:

4x

• 10 heel touches
• 5 left-arm to right-leg zulus
• 5 left-arm to right-leg pike ups
• 10 heel touches
• 5 opposite zulus
• 5 opposite pike ups
• 10 full sit ups
• :30 rest

After that, they went through plank work, streamline holds, and finished with 100 of their choice abs. For sprint group, they had a lift followed by running stadiums. The swimmers said that their stadium work varied by session, but today was powered focused. They started at step 40, and had :10 seconds to make it to the top, then rested, and went through that 4 times.

Back to distance, coach Cory Chitwood said he liked doing 400/500 work on Mondays. Their main set was as follows (SCM):

4x (rd 4 add up 400)

4×100 @ (1:10, 1:20, 1:30, 1:40 by rd)

400 active recovery @ 7:00

The sprinters were only in the water for an hour this afternoon, and they worked through a power tower progression. They would kick with fins, then swim with fins, then take the fins and tower strap off and sprint a 25. This culminated in some very speedy swims, and a battle or two as you’ll observe at the end.