ABOUT THE TRAINING PHASES
Establish Consistency These first two weeks are quite light and designed to get you rolling your arms over and establishing factors such as how your training will best fit in with daily routines. We recommend that you take up to eight sessions before you start to feel like you're 'training to train', as opposed to just going for a swim.
Recovery
It's important that you schedule a lighter training week every three to four weeks, where volume is reduced but a semblance of intensity is maintained. Failing to do this can result in burn-out, staleness, injury, illness and simply a lack of adaptation to the work you are puting in. With rest comes strength.
Stroke Economy Development During this phase you will be in the swing of your routine and looking to ensure that your form and technique in the water is sound. Enlisting a coach to undertake video analysis and provide useful stroke correction tips is highly recommended at this stage. You can also start to build up your interval distances at critical swim speed (CSS) pace plus between 6-8 seconds per 100m. Think of this as the pace you'll eventually swim during your 10km atempt. (For details on how to calculate your CSS pace visit swimsmooth. com/css). Making one of your weekly swims slightly longer than the others at this stage with intervals ranging from 600m and above is a great way to incorporate both form and endurance into a session.
Threshold development Of your four sessions per week in this block, aim to make one in the first two weeks and two in the final two weeks a CSS paced session. Here you'll be working on geting faster at CSS pace. Aim for a speed increase of between 0.5-1.0 per cent at CSS pace per week. CSS sets include: 15 to 20 x 100m, with 15s rest; 8 to 10 x 200m, with 20s rest; 4 to 6 x 400m, with 30s rest; and 3 to 5 x 500m, with 40s. Aim to hold great form throughout.
Sustained Endurance It's a common mistake to do too much long, slow swimming early on in a training programme and then struggle to pick the pace up as you get closer to your race. By developing your CSS pace in the previous block of work you can now look to start swimming longer sets at just a touch faster than 10km pace. Identifying your 10km pace is always tricky, as all manner of things can affect what time you swim on race day, including conditions, feeding strategies, and how straight you swim. It’s advisable to do a 4km continuous pool swim in week 13 at
your best possible pace and then to calculate your average pace from this. The result will be an ideal pace to train at for your longer weekly sessions. Try to do one long, continuous swim a week at this pace, and from week 13 add an additional 800m to the distance each week, reaching 8km by week 18.
Fine Tuning Your weekly volume is now starting to taper off, but don't let your intensity drop off too much yet. During this phase you can ensure factors like your planned race atire, race and nutrition strategy are all in place. Maintain a couple of longer, continuous swims of 6-8km and visualise
yourself actually doing the race while you do so. Now is the time to make any changes, not the night before or even during the race.
TRAINING PHASES Week
Training Phase
Establish Consistency
Establish Consistency
Recovery
Stroke Economy Development
Stroke Economy Development
Stroke Economy Development
Recovery
Threshold Development
Threshold Development
Threshold Development
Threshold Development
Recovery
Sustained Endurance
Sustained Endurance
Sustained Endurance
Sustained Endurance
Recovery Fine Tuning Fine Tuning Taper 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Sessions per week
2 3 2 3 3 4 3 4 4 4 4 3 5 5 5 6 4 4 3 2 + race
Average Session Distance (km)
3.0 2.5 3.0 3.0 3.5 3.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 4.5 4.5 3.5 4.0 4.0 4.5 4.0 3.5 4.5 4.0 3.5
Weekly Total
6.0 7.5 6.0 9.0 10.5 12.0 10.5 14.0 16.0 18.0 18.0 10.5 20.0 20.0 22.5 24.0 14.0 18.0 12.0 7.0 + 10.0
THE RIGHT TRAINING IS ESSENTIAL NOT JUST FOR BEING COMPETITIVE, BUT FOR ACTUALLY COMPLETING THE DISTANCE
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