Part XI · Swim workouts
Sprint Swim: Get Your Top Speed Back
Warm up 12 minutes, swim 4 to 8 all-out 10-second sprints with 2 minutes of easy swimming between, then cool down 10. Your whole body works at full power.
Workout at a glance
30–40 min
- 01
Warmup
You could keep this up for hours
12 min
RPE 3/10
- 02
Sprints
You could hold this for only a few seconds
2 min recovery · easy swim
4–8 × 10s
RPE 10/10
- 03
Cooldown
You could keep this up for hours
10 min
RPE 3/10
The lesson
- 01
Warm up a full 12 minutes
Easy swimming, longer than feels necessary. No drills today. Your body needs to be warm before it goes all-out.
- 02
Start from a float
Float or glide gently, then go. No dive and no big shove. The sprint is your stroke at full power.
- 03
Sprint for 10 seconds
Everything you have. Long body, strong catch, fast kick. Count it or let your watch tell you. Ten seconds, not fifteen, and stop early if you feel yourself slowing.
- 04
Swim easy for 2 minutes
Slow, relaxed swimming. Start the next sprint only when you feel ready, so each one starts as fresh as the first.
- 05
Repeat 4 to 8 times
Your app sets the count. When the freshness stops coming back, the sprints are over. Swim the rest easy.
- 06
Cool down for 10 minutes
Easy swimming, any stroke. It will not have felt hard and your breathing settles quickly, and that is right.
Watch for
- Sprinting longer than 10 seconds. The effort turns into hard interval work, you tire, and the next sprint is slower.
- Cutting the easy minutes short. You start the next sprint tired and never reach full speed again.
- Thrashing instead of swimming. Your head lifts and your arms spin, and the power goes into splash instead of moving you forward.
- Sprinting before you are warm. You cannot reach full speed, and the first sprints are wasted.
What does sprint swimming do? It trains your body to produce full power, the top gear that easy and hard aerobic swimming never reach. Ten seconds is short enough that every sprint is at full speed. In water you get that full effort with no impact on your joints.
How much rest between swim sprints? In MONS, 2 minutes of easy swimming after each 10-second sprint, and you start the next one only when you feel ready. Swim coaches give two to three minutes between all-out sprints so each one starts fresh and stays at full speed. If the freshness stops coming back, stop the sprints there.
Why don't swim sprints feel hard? Ten seconds is over before your breathing has time to climb, and the easy swimming between lets you start each one fresh. The work is in going all-out, not in getting tired.
How often should I do sprint swims? Your plan spaces them for you: at most two a fortnight, counting hill sprints, sprint rides and sprint swims together, added as your body handles them.
Next
Base Swim: Build Fitness With No Impact on Your Joints→The easy swim at any length from 20 minutes. Most of your swimming is this, and it is what lets you recover between hard days.
From the book
31Learn to feel the right effort by heart rate→