A New Training Set

With an intention of swimming a 100 meter fly this coming February my attention has been fixated on trying to learn the stroke before I actually dive in on race day. There is still a question mark behind my ability to do so, but I’m gaining some confidence progress is being made. In the last stroke clinic we concentrated on one of my major fly weaknesses – coordination between my kick and pull; and then spent a little time on my weak dolphin kick (my second major fly weakness). So last night I devised and swam a workout which had fly as my main set.

Warm up: 300 free (3 strokes/breath)
100 kick (breast)
200 free (4 strokes/breath)
200 kick (breast/dolphin w/fins)
100 breast
300 kick (free/dolphin/back all w/fins)

Main set: 12x50 fly (25 dr/25 swim all w/fins) on 1:15
Sup set: 4x100 back on 2:00
Warm down: 200 free (easy)

Only 2,400 meters but I was unsure how I would stand up to 600 meters of fly. Plus, addressing another major weakness of mine, the workout had a lot of kick in it (jeez, for someone who thinks he's pretty good at swimming I sure have a lot of weaknesses). The intention was to work on integrating my fly kick and stroke as well as make a start on my fly endurance, and as it turned out I lucked into a perfect fly set for me at this time. First and foremost I wanted to practice my technique so I couldn't become too tired, but in the last couple of reps I did want to have to push myself to finish. It all worked out perfectly. I think I'll use variations of this main set for the next month as I gradually build to actually swimming some 100 flys in training prior to the race.