‘No Fatigue’ 100s

Todays session is taken directly from a Swim Squad session we did in early July. It is aimed at helping us feel sharp in the water, working hard, but not creating too much fatigue.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you do this session you will be pushing, and you will feel tired, but because of the rest intervals and the recovery sets, you will be able to push on throughout the session.

The Session

Warm Up (500m)

1 x 200m smooth – lifting the pace on the 4th & 8th length

1 x 150m smooth – lifting the pace on the 3rd & 6th length

1 x 100m smooth – lifting the pace on the 2nd & 4th length

1 x 50m – first 25m smooth, 2nd 25m strong

We’re taking 20s rest between each of the reps above.

The idea behind the ‘lifting the pace’ lengths is to help us focus on what we’re doing. We don’t just swim up and down, waiting for the warm up to finish, instead we are thinking about our swimming and controlling our pace.

Pre-Main Set (500m)

This is a short set of 25’s where we are thinking about our stroke and then putting that stroke work under a bit of pressure by swimming a little quicker.

16 x 25m – comprising of two sets of …

• 4 x 25m – distance per stroke (long & strong)
• 4 x 25m – strong swimming (keeping the long, strong strokes of the DPS above, but increasing turnover slightly)

4 x 25m – easy and smooth to finish

After this set of 25s we should be feeling quite powerful and swimming strong, yet feeling smooth too.

Main Set (1,000m)

You should be feeling smooth and fast at this stage. Not too much fatigue has been created so far.

As always, the main set can be done with various interval distances. Today, we are are using 100m intervals for our strong swimming, and 25m intervals for our recoveries.

The aim for this set is to swim our 100s at a really strong pace, holding the great form we’ve developed and honed in the first part of the session. Whilst the 25s are easy, and very much technique-focused.

It is a simple set, which we are repeating five times.

1 x 100m strong and fast (45s rest)

4 x 25m smooth and easy (15s rest)

To do this set well, you need to be recovered for the 100s, ready to swim fast. Swim the 25s very easy, giving yourself a chance to recover and then go strong again on the next 100m.

Cool Down

Some easy swimming to finish the session.

How does this session sound to you?

Quite clearly, you will develop some fatigue, despite the name of the session! However, as mentioned above, you are really trying to recover on the 25s, to shed much of the fatigue. To do this, you need to focus on making the paces very different – in other words, don’t be tempted to push the 25s to ‘keep the average pace up’ or anything like that.

Give it a go – and have fun!