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 afternoon’s workout was submitted by Harold Baker, the founder and head coach of Virginia’s Williamsburg Aquatic Club. He also has served as head coach of the Lafayette High School swim team for the past 20+ years, where he has ranked 300+ wins and eight Team State Championship titles.
Here is his workout, specially designed for distance athletes:
This is a set for distance swimming. I get bored with assigning a series of long swims. I also want my swimmers to push the long swims and not just swim mindlessly to survive the set.
We do this twice a week (Monday & Friday) from the 1st week all the way to taper.
Week 1: 10 x 100 @ 1:20
Week 2: 15 x 100 @ 1:20
Week 3: 20 x 100 @ 1:20
Week 4: 10 x 100 @ 1:15
Week 5: 15 x 100 @ 1:15
Week 6: 20 x 100 @ 1:15
Week 7: 10 x 100 @ 1:10
Week 8: 15 x 100 @ 1:10
Week 9: 20 x 100 @ 1:10
And so on.
We usually work our way down to the 1:05 or 1:00 range depending on how many weeks we have until taper. Generally at about 1:10 we start to have some of our 15 or so Senior swimmers fall off. I move them back 5 seconds and have them redo the cycle.
This way the stronger or more driven swimmers can move on instead of being held up. I have started at 1:25, 1:20 or 1:15 depending on the Age or ability in the group.
Our top swimmer this year was Carter Kale at 15:48 (15 year old) Miler. When we got down to 1:05 he could keep them under 1:00(many were in the 56-57 range). One day as a variation he went as many as he could by himself. I believe he got into the mid 30’s before missing an interval.
Since we have some good distance swimmers coming back this year we will try to start at 1:15 for part of the group and 1:20 for the rest.
I like the set because there is a lot of action and they have to push through a distance set. There is no place to hide. Generally I follow up with a little recovery set of mostly kicking and working on 6-8 fly kicks off of each wall. That seems to be enough for them to recover from the push set. I usually can hit them with another push set at that point. We train mainly I.M, so that is usually the follow-up set with some speed play involved.
Got a workout that you would like to share with the swimming community? Submit it to Olivier at [email protected]
Thx Coach Eric. As stated we swim scm this set is designed for our yards season. Given Rough conversion the set looks like:
10 @+1 @2nd 50 p100–finding rhythm and rate
8@ p100
6 on big rest trying to swim faster then race speed
We have a :53yd 100 br that would go:
10@ :33
8@ :32
6 @:31
It’s translated well for us, we broke NAG records this year as well as had multiple Jr Nat wins and podium swims.
Thx for thoughts.
As I previously said, your set is very good, however it has a whole different intent than the set of the author. He specifically said it was mile pace work. By doing it twice per week I don’t think he is going overboard. On average this set will take about 18 minutes over the course of the season. Assuming his group practices 15 hours a week, they will spend a grand total of about 4% of the time on this set. It doesn’t seem like too long to devote to mile pace work (I think it could easily work for the 1000 free and coming home in a 400 IM as well). As an age group coach I think we… Read more »
Distance sets are somewhat tricky, because distance swimmers can vary in which sets they excel in. For example, I was really good a short rest sets. Doing long sets on the 1:10 base long course was no problem for me. But have me do 100s @1:30 best average and that was pretty tough.
For milers, the 30x100s LC @ 1:30 is a great set for your upper level swimmers. It is a great indicator of 1500 pacing. Another really good set is 15×100 @ 1:15, again for the upper level swimmers, holding mile pace.
My favorite distance set was
Long course
4 rounds
4×400 (5, 4:50, 4:40, 4:30) by rounds
1 minute rest in between
That… Read more »
We used to do 30 x 100 LC on 1:30 every Saturday night holding roughly 1:05-1:07.
8×400 on 5:30 holding sub 4:40- SCM
12x 200 fly LC
5 x 1000 @ 1:25 per 100m pace
All these were when I was 12/13, except for the last set (did it as a triathlete earlier this year)
When I look back, some of the sets were stupidly long and hard, especially some not mentioned in “hell week”. Kind of ruins the attractiveness of the sport however with sets like these, no way your average kid is going to want to train 9-10 times a week doing high mileage, high intensity
You make a good point but it doesn’t seem like this workout towards your “average kid”. This is a senior group workout for the 15 most motivated swimmers on the team (according to the author of the set). I’m assuming they have alternate groups for kids that don’t want to work this hard (I.e a senior prep group or something like that) although I don’t know that for a fact since I’ve never spoken with the coach. Also, since it’s a senior group it most likely means swimmers aged 14 and older so they wouldn’t necessarily be giving 12/13 year olds these sets. The set presented in the column were actually quite different in nature than the ones you presented.… Read more »
Oh yeah I definitely agree with you, now as a coach myself, I find that excessive endurance sets like this are just silly, but that’s my opinion. Yeah back then, it was the national group so we had guys ranging from 13 to around 19/20. I actually think sets such as the one given is better for swimming, as people are likely to push themselves harder, as well as teenagers more likely to put the work in and be motivated as you said, knowing that they don’t have to grind through 20 hours a week of high mileage/high intensity workouts.
Long course or short course?
I’m going to say short course because he referenced a swimmer holding 56’s.
Yeah, I was trying to decide whether this was pretty hard or easy (without pushing hard).
Just to clarify, HISWIMCOACH is not Harold Baker
Didn’t mean to be sensitive. I just know from previous posts that you don’t seem to be a fan of “long distance” sets. I think as age group coaches (the person who wrote this set is an age group coach) we need to offer all kinds of practices. Both yours and the one that the WAC coach posted are solid and have different purposes. Thanks for sharing.
PooPool I like your set but it is not a distance set.
Hisswimcoach set is a simple distance set (which I believe this topic was about) which is perfect when managing larger groups, simple to create progressive overload from week to week and ideal for swimmers to note whether they are improving aerobically or not. Obviously there are a million different sets that can written. Good job coaches
This is a forum, opinions are welcome, dont be so sensitive.
Done SCM– benchmarks hopefully relate to races. Transferable to 200, 500, by varying set. Cheers
10 x 50 @1
1/2 best 100 yd + 4 Extra 1:00
8 x 50 @1:05
1/2 best 100 yd + 3 Extra 1:00
6 x 50 @1:30
1/2 best 100yd +2 Extra 1:00
8 x 25 max effort !!@:40
Since this internet/forum thing is encouraged, lets look at your set relative to his.
I find it ironic you blast his set as just lap swimming when he explains it is a distance set, shows the season progression and when you look at that final time relative to the pace he was holding in the 1:05s, he was doing an approximate broken mile. If you look at USRPT and Rushall’s work, this set, when he gets down to it, is very relevant to the mile. Going projected mile pace on a short as rest as possible seems as close to race simulation as one can get in practice. If each of these sets through out the season was set to… Read more »