Swim Workout... any good?

[JLPestkeJr]

Hey guys,

Bruised my shoulder and wrist up pretty bad trying to learn to snowboard this past week so I decided to ease of the weights and stick to the pool. Anyways, i was bored so I came up with this workout and didn't know if it's decent or not, let me know what you think, I dont know if some of these distances were too long to be sprinting or not...

50m
50m
100m
Pushups/Situps/Pullups (30/30/10)
300m
P/S/P
500m
P/S/P
250m
P/S/P
150m
P/S/P
100m
50m
50m
P/S/P

All in all a pretty easy workout, but you end up clocking a mile and over 150 each of push/situps. Mind you I was squerming like a little bi*** trying to get those last pullups out but thats not the point...


Let me know what you think, feel free to add some suggestions.

~Jim

[deadly nedly]

What are you trying to drive home with this workout? It looks something like trying to work on your kick with the CSS, because your arms would be tired.

A respectful criticism would be: Those push/pull/sit numbers look a little low to me. How far are you out from your PST? I can do about 100 pushups in 1 go on a good day right now, and I'm still 6 months out. That's only 50 less than what's in your whole workout. The warning order has you doing 400+ per workout when you're about to go. If you feel like you want to branch out from the warning order, make sure it's really better, or you might be in for a rude awakening when you get to Coronado my friend.

My suggestion would be: either follow the warning order, or do the crossfit WODs on this site. If you go the crossfit route, I'd recommend doing the runs in pants + boots and adding in some more swims. That's what I'm doing right now and it works like a champ. Crossfit in the mornings and swim at night, using fins every other day.

If you're not going to (attempt to) be in NSW, then yea that workout looks great. If you are, time to kick it up a notch my friend! HOOYAH!

[JLPestkeJr]

Point taken but i typically aim for sets of 50-60 rather than 30 as I put up there, only reason they are lower is due to my wrist injury I mentioned. I do 'em on my fists rather than 'open-handed' cause the pain just gets un-bearable. Nothing serious, just don't want to injure myself so until that heals I'm trying to keep the numbers down.

Side note, this is mainly to improve my form and speed on the CSS as it takes me roughly 10-12 strokes to get across a 25m pool which is far above where i would like to be. That said, I've noticed in a lot of training videos that people tend to use flutter kicks inbetween the main scissor kicks to maintain speed through the arm pulls... is this allowed/encouraged on the PST or do you have to maintain strictly scissor kick and arm pulls?

Let me know if anyone has solid info. as I'm sure this would help cut down times considerably. (~10:15 500m now)

~Jim

[deadly nedly]

Yeah go ahead and flutter a bit in between for your 500, it'll go faster but of course you know that it will use more energy. Fine for the PST which has a pretty short swim but you should probably also do 1000-3000M swims and 50m sprints to figure out subtle differences in your stroke when you have to swim fast and when you have to swim slow and long. Personally, it's natural for me to flutter a little during my pull, but when I'm doing 3-5k swims, it's more of a force of habit rather than me kicking hard enough to produce any forward movement. If you're told to stop fluttering during your PST, it shouldn't be the end of the world, but it does help shave a little off the 500.

In the practice PSTs I've done, you can do pretty much whatever you want so long as your arms are recovering under the water. Even breaststroke. However, once you get to bud/s, from what I know you'll be CSSing mostly, but none of us will REALLY know until we're in the cold *** water. My advice is to learn both versions and everything in between. Then sprint it, jog it, walk it, do it with no air, no arms, no legs... do it in open water, choppy water, pool water .... you get the idea.

[SilentSnake]

The other day I worked out with a former SEAL and he advised me to flutter kick during the PST, because it will 1. help my time, and 2. it helps maintain speed between kicks. It will definitely make you more tired, but in a 500yd swim it shouldn't be too bad. My swim was around 11 without the flutter kick, so i'm going to implement it to see how it effects my time. Something that's help me get better (from around 12s to 11 so far) is mixing up the types of swims I do. Usually once a week I do a sprint workout doing 6 or 7 100yd sprints, trying to beat my 100yd pace from my last 500yd (just divide your 500yd time by 5 and beat that by at least 2 seconds). I was actually getting these in a 9min pace, which I guess means I'm either not swimming hard enough in my 500 or that I lack endurance. I also try to swim some longer swims each week, increasing the distance each week. Just get to the pool a lot! When I first started I couldn't even swim 200yds without stopping, and that was about 2 1/2 months ago I think.

These are simply my experiences from what i've been told and from what has helped me improve.

[deadly nedly]

silent: if you want to swim it in 9 minutes your sprints need to be way way down from there. It's not that you lack endurance, no one can sprint for 9 minutes. But you can put out medium-hard effort for that long.

Same for the 1.5 mile. I can do a 400 in 1.05 that's 4:20 mile pace. Can I run a 4:20 mile? Hell no! Get me? Sprints are an awesome tool, but the link between your sprint time and your event time is going to be a little more complicated than multiplication. You start to get into more high level stuff involving metabolic pathways and stuff..


Keep it simple, just swim alot and put out and you'll see good improvement.

[mhw9505]

deadly nedly what are your pst numbers?

[deadly nedly]

It's high time I took another one, last one I took was in August. But back then my scores were around:

Run- 10:15
Swim - 9:10
Push - 100
Sit - 100
Chin - 16


I have a ways to go, obviously. I'm definitely not trying to come off as some kind of hardass on the internet, so I apologize if it seemed that way at all. During the PST I keep getting smoked on the run, I know my time qualifies but I feel like it's my weak point. My swim isn't flashy but I can keep that pace for awhile after 500m, need to work on knowing how hard to put out for the 500m distance, I tend to work sprints and long distance but ignore 500 for some reason, guess I should start working on that huh?

Also the ever elusive 20 chin goal, I have a feeling crossfit will help me with that, I used to be on it, then got off in febuary, now I'm back on!

[SilentSnake]

deadly nedly- I understand what you're saying there. The Naval PST guide I was following recommended beating your 100 split times by 2 seconds. I was beating my splits by 15 seconds, which I was happy with. I'll try doing 100's faster. The fastest I've done a 50 in was 45 seconds. I'll try to get my 100's in 1:40 or so. How fast do you do your 100s in when sprinting?

I need to figure out how to get faster. Mainly, I think just losing weight is going to help me get faster. The less weight I have to push through the water with each kick, so I shold go faster I hope.

[deadly nedly]

Beating your 100 splits would be a good tool for learning the pace you have to keep. Both sprints and pace splits have their place. I don't generally time my 100s anymore, just swim it as fast as I can. Hard to swimswimswimswim, stop your watch! Wish I had a decent workout partner over here :( I'm guessing they are around 1:35-1:40? I'm usually pretty blown up by the time I get done so I don't know exactly.

Swimming is like 70% technique, 30% conditioning. So the real purpose of pool sprints in my mind is to figure out how to actually move faster when you start to pull harder. Also it gives you a little taste of swimming while hypoxic which is always a good time. Alot of swimmers decide they are going to go faster, so everything starts moving faster, but they aren't really moving faster at all, just thrashin around in the water and making it harder for everyone else to swim.

Also keep in mind that due to the nature of the CSS, there will be a point of diminishing returns, because of the underwater arm recovery and the glide. It's alot more important to say.. keep a 10:00/500m pace for 3k than it would be to do a 100m sprint in 1:15.

[JLPestkeJr]

Silent,

What's your current 500 time? I can do 42-44 sec 50m all day with a minute break inbetween but as soon as I get past 100m my times drop by at least 10-12 sec per 100m. Endurance is a b*tch in the water, just takes time to get there I guess...

~jim

[PaulieP]

It's high time I took another one, last one I took was in August. But back then my scores were around:

Run- 10:15
Swim - 9:10
Push - 100
Sit - 100
Chin - 16


I have a ways to go, obviously. I'm definitely not trying to come off as some kind of hardass on the internet, so I apologize if it seemed that way at all. During the PST I keep getting smoked on the run, I know my time qualifies but I feel like it's my weak point. My swim isn't flashy but I can keep that pace for awhile after 500m, need to work on knowing how hard to put out for the 500m distance, I tend to work sprints and long distance but ignore 500 for some reason, guess I should start working on that huh?

Also the ever elusive 20 chin goal, I have a feeling crossfit will help me with that, I used to be on it, then got off in febuary, now I'm back on!


Pullups come a lot easier then swim times go down. I've been rocking 20+ for a few years now, but in the Marines, you do them all the time and your they are a big part of the PFT. But being a 150lbs helps. You're pullups will improve from losing weight well before your swim times. I duno, someday a sub 10min 500m will come along. But we all know, BUD/S is more finning then none finning. No sleep lost over my current times.

[SilentSnake]

JLPestkeJr- My last time was 10:42. I will feel semi-comfortable if I can get it to sub-10. Maybe i'm not kicking hard enough or something. I believe I streamline well. I try to keep my body as stretched as I can throughout the entire stroke.

[mhw9505]

My problem is pullups...im lucky if i can get 12 max. On the last pst i only got 9. My run and swim were both under 9min and my pushups and situps both above 90. What can I do to get in the 15-20 range on the pullups???

[king henry viii]

My problem is pullups...im lucky if i can get 12 max. On the last pst i only got 9. My run and swim were both under 9min and my pushups and situps both above 90. What can I do to get in the 15-20 range on the pullups???

do 1 set of 6 pull-ups each day 5 days a week. after 2 weeks do another max pull-up test.

the trick is to do 1 set of 70-80% of your max. so if you're doing 9 pull-ups max, then do 6-7 pull-ups.

1 set per day 5 days per week. after 2 weeks do another max test, then adjust your pull-ups accordingly and continue. i've done it, it works, i was doing 10 pull-ups per set effortlessly. so my max was about 15.

[deadly nedly]

Good tip King. Kind of a low intensity version of "greasing the groove" if you speak pavel, or synaptic facilitation if you speak exercise science. GTG is the idea that if you just do something, like chins, at a low intensity but fairly constantly over a few weeks, you can get sick progress. Not from muscle getting stronger but your nervous system getting more used to moving in that way. ALOT of exercise has to do with training your nervous system, but it's not what gets chicks so it's not what gets focused on. To get better at chins, do a whole lot of chins. You already know how it goes cause your run and swim are so fast, so you've obviously worked on them alot. Same story for chins bro. Good luck!