Swimming: Rest Is Not The Enemy!

Swimming: Rest Is Not The Enemy!

If you came to our one hour Swim Squad sessions on a Monday evening and heard that we ‘only’ covered 2,000m / 2,200m / 2,400m in a session, you might dismiss it.

“That’s not enough for me, I need a longer session, I need to swim bigger distances” might be your reaction.

I’ve seen it from swimmers and triathletes.

I understand it, but I don’t agree with it.

Whats the saying (or is it a song?) …

It’s not what you do, it’s the way that you do it!

Rest

Often in our sessions, we are taking quite a bit of rest in our swim sessions – which has an impact on the amount of distance we can cover in an hour.

Why are we including so much rest?

Technique Work

Firstly, some of our sessions are about technique. This requires two things.

Firstly, listening to me speak about what we’re looking for, the technique changes we’re trying to make. Sometimes that can take a while!

Secondly, taking enough rest between intervals to allow us to focus on the technique changes – and allow us to hold the technique on every single length.

“Some fast laps but longer rests than usual” was a comment from one of our swimmers on TrainingPeaks recently.

“Some fast laps” is what I hear. “Fast laps” whilst focusing on technique.

Perfect.

Deliberate Set Design

Many of our sessions are designed with a little more rest than you might see if you went to a swim club or masters session. We rarely do 100s with 5, 10 or even 15 seconds rest. We usually take a little more.

I often design sessions with (roughly) a 2:1 or 3:1 work : rest ratio. So, our fast lane swimmers might do sets of 100s off 2 minutes, swimming them in 1.20 (ish). We have this much rest because it allows swimmers to swim 100’s a lot quicker than a more common 15s rest – so working at a higher intensity. This additional rest allows us to maintain a strong technique throughout, focus on more forceful pulling, producing faster interval times and hold that strong pace throughout the set.

Distance Isn’t Everything

If distance was the goal and the way to swim quicker (or make us more efficient), we would all swim continuously wouldn’t we? Why take rests at all? Why not just get in the pool, swim continuously for an hour and get out? A lot of us could probably cover 3,000m or more.

Is this better than our 2,000m / 2,200m / 2,400m session – where we think about our technique, work at different intensities, swim at high paces, and generally leave the pool exhausted?

Short Intervals

With short intervals – often my preference – we have frequent rests. When we have frequent rests, we swim less distance. Using myself as an example, if I was swimming 30 x 100m off 2 minutes, the most I could cover in an hour would be 3,000m. Doing this, and holding 1.20/100m throughout, would be a demanding session. If I swam continuously, I could swim slower (1.30/100m) and cover 4,000m+.

Which would be the better session?

Time And Place

There is a time and a place for distance work, for short rest intervals, to hold a 6 or 7 out of 10 effort for a long set of work, to swim 3,000m in an hour session.

But please don’t let ‘distance covered’ be the only criteria of a successful session.

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So, my message to you is to embrace those rest intervals and use that recovery time to make the swimming that bit bit better.

Swimming: Rest Is Not The Enemy!

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