Set Of The Week: 20 x 100’s

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Welcome to Swimming World’s Set Of The Week! This week’s set is an intense test set that is great for advanced high school, club, or college teams. This set emphasizes consistency over 20 x 100’s, trying to hold the fastest average possible with no easy swimming in-between. Take a look at the set below:

20 x 100’s freestyle hold best average on 2:00

The concept of the set is pretty self-explanatory: hold your fastest time possible through 20 x 100’s on a 2:00 interval. This is not a set to do during the first week of practice. Ideally, this set would be repeated 2 or 3 times throughout a training cycle as a test set to gauge fitness. Swimmers should get their times on every repeat and coaches should record them, leaving a record of how they did that can be referred to throughout the year.

To be useful, the timing of this set should be similar throughout the season. For example, say a season had four cycles that are each four weeks long. If each four week cycle consisted of three weeks of increased volume and intensity and a fourth week of maintenance, this set could be included in every third week as one way to gauge how swimmers were progressing through a season.

Aside from being one way to determine fitness through the year, this set can also serve as a great team builder. The set is not challenging unless swimmers are truly holding their fastest average; there is little point in holding 1:00’s through 19 x 100’s only to drop a :51 on the final 100. Doing this set with your teammates and with ample rest creates an opportunity for swimmers to challenge each other to hold the fastest times throughout the set. Additionally, having swimmers get their times for the purpose of being recorded adds a level of accountability to the set. The times do not matter so much as the effort, encouragement of their teammates, and an awareness of their own consistency. Nothing can give a swimmer more confidence going into a taper than being able to look back at actual progress they have made throughout the year. Happy swimming!

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Ignacio Herrero Knohr

7 years ago