HOW TO BOOST YOUR AEROBIC SWIM SPEED
Back in the 90s on the Gold Coast, Australia, I used to swim with a well-known squad coached by one of Australia's greatest-ever swim coaches, a man called Dennis Cotteril. Dennis has too many achievements to list here but he's probably best known as the coach of Grant Hackett, former world record holder in the 1,500m and multiple Olympic gold medallist.
Dennis set his squad up so that in the mornings, if you were fast enough, he would let triathletes and surf athletes train with his swimmers. This was when the ‘grunt work’ would get done, volume sets developing aerobic capacity and fatigue resistance. In the evenings it was swimmers only, where they would do their discipline-specific work.
One of the many great things about the squad and Dennis was that there was a very clear rhythm to both the year and the week, so you knew what type of set you were going to get on a particular day at a particular time of year. Saturday was always a faster set and probably the most ‘famous’ of these was the 40 × 50m:
16 × 50m leaving every 45secs with every 4th 50m max effort
12 × 50m leaving every 50secs with every 3rd 50m max effort
8 × 50m leaving every 55secs with every 2nd 50m max effort
4 × 50m leaving every 60secs, every one max effort
These turnaround times are pretty stiff but to give you an idea, you' looking for around 5secs recovery on the first
