Originally Posted by
RUOkie
I was talking swimming with a friend and coworker who swam in college. He told me that he swam 800yds a few weeks ago and promptly threw up (its been a few yrs). He was depressed.
He told me that his worst workout in college was 100 100's, and his intervals needed to be under 1'36"(including rest). That is absolutely BRUTAL! Did your coach do stuff like that?
100 100s is a mental set. It's not a time effective way to generate fitness, especially considering that most races are less than 2 minutes, and the longest pool race is the 1650, over in less than 20 minutes. Closer to 15 if you're really good.
I never did crap like that, although making the 1:36 sendoff wouldn't be too bad. put them on 1:20 (I'd really struggle at the end, but be embarassed if I couldn't do it) or 1:25 (no excuse for not making them) and you'd have my attention, but at 1:36 I could swim easy and still get almost :20 rest per interval.
The worst (toughest long practices) we ever had were drop-down 100s or the monster kick set. The kick set is an all out 800 stroke kick, 200 easy swim, regroup, all out 400 stroke kick, 200 easy swim and regroup, all out 200 stroke kick, 200 easy swim and regroup, all out 100 stroke kick, 150 easy swim and regroup, all out 50 stroke kick, 150 easy swim and regroup, all out 25 stroke kick. Goal times for guys (girls in parenthesis) were sub 12:00 (14:00), sub 6:00(7:00), sub 3:00(3:30), under best 100 of that stroke plus :20, half of the previous goal, and half of the 50 goal. I could almost always make the goal time on the 200, and when I was in shape I could make the 400. I wasn't even close on the others.
Drop down 100s was a workout to failure. The first 100 the interval is 1:40, and the interval drops 1 second each repeat from there (i.e. 1:39, 1:38, 1:37) and so on. Go until you miss the sendoff. Goal for guys was to get under 1:06, I don't remember what it was for girls. Best I ever got was down to 1:08 or 1:09. Our D3 all american distance guy went down to :58 or so and stopped because he didn't want to go again. He was a couple seconds under his sendoff still.
Those last couple reps suck miserably, you feel like you're going to puke, your arms and legs aren't cooperating, you're getting bounced around by everyone else in the pool swimming hard, you can't hold a breathing pattern at all, can't stay underwater off the wall, both of which lower efficiency and force you to swim harder to go the same time. And you completely blow out anything anaerobic you have left, then try to go again on no rest. It hurts.
Edit: And nearly every time we did drop-down hundreds my shoulders bugged me for the next couple days. Of course we always did them a day or 2 before we went to florida for winter training where our training hours doubled, and the yardage increased more than that. I loved that
