My daughter Cari, lacking pool access, has been unable to swim since the summer, but resumed swimming this week. Yesterday, we went to the SUNY pool together. She asked my advice on a practice that would let her start to build some endurance, without compromising efficiency. As the TI definition of endurance is "the ability to maintain effective strokes for a duration of your choosing," I designed a practice to focus on that. Here’s what I suggested:

Swim Free 4 x 25 + 4 x 50 + 4 x 75 + 4 x 100 + 4 x 75 + 4 x 50 + 4 x 25.

My instructions were: "Count your strokes on the initial series of 25s and make it your sole goal to stay within 10% of your starting SPL for the entire set. Rest as much as you need to ensure that fatigue – or inattention – don’t compromise your efficiency." I felt that the first half of the set – increasing repeats from 25s to 100s – would test her focus, while the second half, with repeats decreasing again, would lessen the potential for lack of fitness to undermine her efficiency. Total distance was 1600, reasonable for her first practice in over three months.

While Cari swam that practice, I swam a nearly identical one a few lanes over, adding a set of 4 x 125 in the middle, for a total of 2500 yds

My set: 4 x 25 + 4 x 50 + 4 x 75 + 4 x 100 + 4 x 125 + 4 x 100…4 x 25

I swam with a Tempo Trainer. I set the TT at 1.20 sec/stroke and kept that setting from the 25s to the 125s. On the way down, I increased frequency by .01 sec each time I decreased repeat distance – 100s at 1.19, 75s at 1.18, 50s at 1.17, 25s at 1.16.

My rest intervals: 3 beeps after 25s, 5 beeps after 50s, 6 beeps after 75s, 8 beeps after 100s and 10 beeps (12 seconds) after 125s.
On each repeat I allowed three beeps on the initial pushoff – i.e. my first stroke was on the 4th beep – and four beeps on each turn, taking my first stroke on the 5th beep.

My goal was the same as Cari’s — to maintain stroke consistency throughout the set. With a few exceptions I took 13SPL on the first length of each repeat and 14SPL after that. (So my SPLs on the 125s were 13-14-14-14-14.) There was a digital pace clock easily visible by my lane, but I barely gave it a glance throughout my set. I focused solely on maintaining consistent stroke efficiency and matching those strokes to the beep.

Here’s what I see as the "magic" of this practice:

Pace: By keeping the same SPL and constant Stroke Rate (SR) for the ascending repeats, I swam at constant pace – i.e. my pace was as fast on 125s as it had been on 25s. If I (or nearly any swimmer) set out to hold a constant pace on repeats of ascending distance, while swimming on the pace clock, instead of with TT, my thinking would be "I need to swim harder to hold the same pace as distance increases." Instead, I simply kept the same SL and matched it to a constant beep frequency. Make no mistake, it’s not easy to hold the same SL, but the effort it takes to hold it is pure attention, while the effort usually expended to maintain pace is work.

Speed: As I descended repeats following the 125s, my pace increased on each round – again without "trying" which makes this similar to the Voodoo Speed I wrote about in previous blogs. Normally, we have to "try" or "work harder" to swim faster. I simply continued to synchronize my SPL to the beeps as they got faster. Speed "happened."

Clarity: Certain things we are usually unaware of become crystal clear while swimming a set like this. For instance, the cost of inefficiency. Few people count strokes for every lap of a 2500-yard set. But even those who do may not recognize the real consequence of inefficiency that we often "suffer" unawares.

When you know that each stroke consumes 1.2 seconds of precious time, you become hyperaware that increasing SPL from 14 to 15 on a given lap adds 1.2 seconds to that lap. Knowing that greatly increases your motivation to do every little thing well along the way, from the turn, to the breakout, to every stroke.

On the few lengths when my SPL climbed above what I was aiming to hold, I usually knew before I arrived at the wall, that the count would be higher. If I mistimed my turn by a bit and got a weaker pushoff…which might have caused me to "scramble" slightly on the breakout stroke…which made that stroke a bit less efficient…then it would take me one more stroke – and 1.2 more seconds – to complete that length.

This teaches us, with perfect clarity, the unforgiving "math" of holding a constant pace. Any pace will be made up of a certain combination of SPL and SR: 14 strokes at 1 sec/stroke MUST equal 14 seconds, and 15 strokes at that same SR MUST equal 15 seconds. Similarly 14 strokes at 1.1 sec/stroke MUST equal 15.4 seconds.

That’s very different from our normal way of thinking about pace. If we cannot hold pace – sometimes called "dying" – we assume it’s because we "got tired." We got tired because we’re "not in shape." And to get in shape, we need to "work harder."

But recognizing that any pace breaks down to a pure math problem – strokes times seconds – has the potential to completely transform our understanding of training. By swimming at a specific combination of SPL and SR, we train the nervous system to repeat the precise movement pattern that results in that combination. As we do, the aerobic system is trained to support the physical demands of that movement pattern.

As there is an absolute correlation between SPL, SR and pace – and no established correlation between any volume of training, or any combination of Energy System Training, or even any metric of fitness (such as VO2max), and pace – does it not make far more sense to do most of your training with a focus on how you combine SPL and SR?

Rather than "work more or harder" you improve upon your current performance level, by incrementally and methodically adjusting your SPL/SR combination and let conditioning simply "happen" as a function of the particular SPL/SR combination and how it taxes you physiologically.