North Carolina Master's Article on Race Pace Training and a Workout

If you are looking at improving the quality of your workouts, check out this link: http://www.ncmasters.org/nl/jul14-article2.pdf. There have been a lot of successful swimmers using intense and Ultra-Short Race Pace Training, the most widely known of which is age-group swimmer Michael Andrew. If you are interested in more of the research into USRPT, check out http://coachsci.sdsu.edu/swim/bullets/47GUIDE.pdf or anything by Dr. Brent Rushall.

In the meantime, check out the NC Master's Workout of the Month provided by Mary Sansbury. The "Bears in a Bed" is something I do a good bit with the high school swimmers. The 100s are a little long for USRPT according to Rushall, but it still is a good workout to try. If 3000 is a little long, you could cut back to 50s and 75s still sprinting various parts of the distance while increasing the repetition before the active recovery.

Workout of the Month

The 200 pulls are active recovery. "Bears in a bed" is a fun way to get the heart rate up. Mary's swimmers named this set. Sometimes when there are several swimmers in the lanes, they will swim underneath each other. WARM UP - two times: 150 swim 150 drill/kick by 25. Drill set: BEARS IN A BED With fins, hold on to the wall and kick as if you are trying to push the wall (make the pool longer). Do this for 10 seconds. Release the wall, submerge and push off right into a 25 yard sprint. As soon as the first person (or two people) leave, the next start and to the same. The first sprinters push off from the opposite wall under the sprinter(s) coming in and swim back easy. Main Set: 3 x 100 - 1st 25 fast 1 x 200 pull 3 x 100 - 2nd 25 fast 1 x 200 pull 3 x 100 - 3rd 25 fast 1 x 200 pull 3 x 100 - 4th 25 fast 1 x 200 pull Total yards: 3000