How to Write a Swim Workout for Beginners

[Music] what's going on swim fans welcome to whiteboard wednesday and on today's episode i am so excited to share with you how to write a swim workout for beginners you may recall if you're familiar with the channel a whiteboard wednesday session i did how to write a swim workout and that was a little bit more advanced and in this video i want to break it down to the basic elements so if you're looking to get into the sport of swimming or maybe you've already started but you're looking to add a little bit more structure and build the progression you've come to the right place because in this video i'm going to walk through how to set those smart goals exactly how a workout should be structured including the warm-up main set and cooldown i'm also going to share a few different example workouts that you can follow we'll go into detail about what you should actually be thinking about at each part of the workout and by the end of the video i'll share with you guys a few different training programs available in the my swim pro app that cater to specific goals designed specifically for beginners if you're new to the channel welcome to my swim pro where we share the latest and greatest to help you improve your performance and health both in and out of the water if you're not subscribed already make sure you're subscribed like this video and let me know in the comments what your swimming goals are now when we start out with writing a swim workout it's really important to understand what your goals are there's a number of different goals that i overview in that other whiteboard wednesday but i want to overview them really really quickly here you need to understand is your goal to get wet like are you trying to just get into the swimming pool are you looking to improve your technique enhance your speed improve your endurance develop a stroke maybe you already know how to swim freestyle and you're pretty comfortable but now you're looking to add some backstroke so understanding what your goal is for the workout is the first step because you can't really work on all of these at the same time especially when you're a beginner swimmer so once you've identified a specific goal let's say we're going to work on our technique our freestyle technique now we can move on to assessing the workout structure so similar to any type of physical activity it's going to have three core parts at the beginner level you have a warm up a main set and a cool down now this type of workout structure is actually pretty common anytime you're going to elevate your heart rate you're going to get some kind of muscle engagement so whether you're training out of the water in the water same concept applies typically in this format the warm-up will be anywhere from 10 to 20 percent and the goal is to activate your body both mentally and physically you want to increase your heart rate you want to do things that are very dynamic so if you're out of the water this would be something like dynamic stretches when you're in the water you're really focusing on your technique you're not sprinting you're not spiking your heart rate up you're going to gradually build up your momentum and build up your heart rate that's about 10 to 20 then the main set at the beginner level couldn't be anywhere from 60 to 80 this is really where you're spending most of the time in the water so if you have a 15 minute workout you know maybe 10 minutes of it is really the main set and then you're going to finish with a cool down we're working on lowering your heart rate so you're going to have your peak heart rate and peak physical exertion in the main set and then you don't want to just completely stop and let your lactic acid just sit there in your muscles you want to flush it out with a cool down and that can be anywhere from 10 to 20 percent as well so in the beginner stages you know your main set is the main set as the name implies and then as you move to the advanced level of how you actually build a workout and this is what you start with before you write anything down you think about what is the warm-up going to be that's part one then you're going to introduce a preset and the point of the preset is to really focus in on whatever skill you're trying to develop so if you're focusing on speed you might actually do a speed set in your preset before you hit the main set now the main set is still the main set is 40 to 70 of the workout duration and maybe distance and then you're gonna have a post set which maybe you're gonna polish up something that you worked on in the main set so again if we're talking about improving and enhancing your speed if you're doing a more advanced workout the preset you're going to do some maybe a shorter burst you're going to work on technique to really get the heart rate spiking and then you're going to hit it with the main set you're really going to focus on speed you're going to develop that lactic acid and then in the post set that's only you know 5 to 20 percent then you might hit the speed again in a very very specialized way before you do your cooldown now i mentioned this is more for beginners so let's not worry about all these different uh insertions of sets really focus on these three main set groups the warm up the main set and the cooldown now let's walk over to the this side of the whiteboard where i have actually two workouts written one is 500 meters and one is 1000 meters long and actually before i go into that i want to i want to note two important things number one it's important to focus you really should only have one skill that you're developing at a time so if we go back to what are the goals if you're just trying to get in the water then that's your goal so it's really you know is the gold 500 meters 200 meters 1000 meters just get in the pool and get it done check the box off if you're focusing on technique that's great it should be really emphasized through the duration of the workout from the warm up the main set and the cool down if you're focusing on endurance same thing so it's really important to focus on one of those now of course technique is important on every single workout but for the scope of this really focus on one of those skills rather than trying to have each set focus on something different and then you also want to think about the density of the workout this is really important for beginners i'm going to break this down density of the workout really just means how much distance are you doing per unit of time so here's an example let's say you have a 1 000 meter workout and it takes one swimmer 30 minutes to complete now that's great if that same swimmer and if they're fast enough can do that 1000 meter workout in only 20 minutes it's going to be a lot different it's going to be a very different workout and really this is where the goal plays into effect so you can actually take this concept and apply it to a set group so for example let's say you're a beginner swimmer you've got your warm up and you don't give yourself enough rest so you fall into this category that thousand meters in 20 minutes so as a result it will negatively impact your main set and your cooldown so it's really important to think about just focusing on one thing at a time and really to give yourself adequate rest and think about the density of the workout that you want to hold and you want to be consistent all the way through if you're focused on endurance that density should if anything negative split meaning it becomes more difficult as you go through the workout if you're focusing on speed your density is going to be a lot lower you're going to get a lot more rest so as a beginner swimmer basically just make sure you're not going too fast in the warm up and you're not burning out all of your energy so that way when you get to the main set which is really the main thing you're not completely gassed out let's look at this 500 meter workout and i want to also remind everyone that these are no equipment involved so you don't need any equipment all you need is a swimsuit goggles are a good idea swim cap is a good idea but you don't need any kind of fins or paddles you can incorporate them if you'd like but let's focus on this 500 meter workout no equipment we've got to warm up main set and cool down three parts the warm-up is a total of 100 meters so this is about 10 i'm sorry 20 of the 500 meter workout and in this 20 you're not going to swim 100 meters continuously no no we're going to break it down we're going to go 425s freestyle if you're in a 25 meter distance pool you're basically going to take a break with about 10 to 20 seconds rest remember density 10 to 20 seconds rest between every 25 meters then we're going to go into the main set and the main set is going to be 300 meters total we're not swimming 300 meters continuously no no we're gonna break it out so that we can focus on technique specifically our breathing so we're gonna do six 50s so 50 meters take a 10 to 20 second break and then another one 10 to 20 second break we're gonna do that six rounds and free is short for freestyle the front crawl you can really do any stroke but for this we're going to focus on freestyle and we're focusing on our breathing so as we take that breath we want to be controlled we want to rotate onto our side try and keep one eye in the water and try not to rush it it's really easy to kind of get excited and then you move your arms too fast and all of a sudden breathing is way more difficult so really focus on breathing in this main set we're focusing on technique then the cooldown is again the final 20 not 10 percent and that is 100 meters we're going to break it out just like we did the warm-up 425s freestyle and we're going to focus on silent swimming silent swimming means we use all of our senses so we're going to listen to the sound our fingertips make as they enter the water we're going to before we push off we're going to inhale and we're going to smell the environment basically what you're trying to do is you're trying to stimulate your mind and really actively engage your body so that way you reduce the amount of splash that you make and if you reduce the amount of splash that you make you're going to be way more efficient with a cleaner stroke and you're going to use less energy you're going to swim faster you're going to get a better workout i skipped over what mdps means so mdps is an acronym that's short for max distance per stroke so when we do these 425s freestyle what we're focusing on in the warm-up in this first 20 these hundred meters we're actually going to focus on maximizing distance per stroke meaning when you slide your fingertips in the water you're going to reach and extend a few more centimeters extend another half meter before initiating your pull really maximizing your stroke getting as efficient as possible so that's the first 20 and then the final 20 is silence swimming sort of a combination of that max distance per stroke so this is how we structure a beginner workout that's 500 meters if it's a little bit more difficult for you to do that kind of a distance you can break this up you can instead go 225 instead of four you can go 425s or 450s or you can go 425s you can easily scale up and scale down this 500 meters to meet your current skill level and just really make sure you focus on one thing if you notice we're not trying to swim fast we're not trying to swim for endurance we're really focusing on technique for both of these workouts now if you think that's a little bit too easy and you're trying to get to the next level maybe you've mastered that this workout i have over here is 1000 meters so it's double and you can actually see how it's a very similar workout in structure and what we're focusing on it's just a little bit longer so we're again we're doing 20 the warm-up is now 200 meters instead of 100 meters and instead of 425s we're going to go 450s so we 50 meters 10 to 20 second break 50 meters 10 to 20 second break again the density is important if you need more rest to maintain that max distance per stroke take more rest it's not a big deal like the key is to be consistent so that way you don't only take five seconds on the first 50 and then you're gassed out and then you need a minute rest on the next one and then a minute 30 rest on the one after that you want to be as consistent as possible so you should feel actually pretty easy on the first couple of repetitions after the warm up if you notice here i slid in a preset from our more advanced so it's not the full advance of five different set groups but i introduced the preset just because i want to add a little bit more variety in this workout so the preset is 425's kick and so kicking means in streamline or with a kick board if you want fins go ahead throw them in here so we're gonna go 100 meters 10 percent of this preset is to activate your legs so that's why we kick we really focus on one thing here which is the technique of the kick and we're going to focus on short fast kicks so if you think about your legs as your arms your legs are going to be straight barely bending your knees pointing your toes you want a short fast kick you want to reduce the amplitude of what your total kick is that's our preset then we're going to move into the main set now this main set is 50 of the workout it's 500 meters long in total we're not going to 500 meters straight and we're going to go 550s freestyle maximum distance per stroke so over here actually we did 650s focusing on the breathing here we're going to focus again on the max distance per stroke and then we're going to go another 5 50s freestyle so two sets within this main set set group and we're gonna go max distance per stroke minus one so we're really going to focus on improving our efficiency by taking less strokes on these 50s than we did on these this is really really difficult so the way this works is you count how many strokes you take on each length of the pool or if you're in a 50 meter pool just count how many arm strokes you take so one two three count them for the whole duration of the 50 meters and then at the end your goal is to maintain that for 550 so let's say you take 20 strokes each length in a 25 meter pool so you take 40 strokes in 50 meters so your goal on the next set group of 550s is to take one less than that so instead of 40 we're going for 39 and we're going to try and hold 39 39 39 this becomes difficult as you fatigue and as you get tired and again we're focusing on technique in this workout so really important you maximize your distance per stroke and finally we have the cooldown which is 200 meters 20 percent of our thousand meter workout and this is going to be 450s just like we started out again silent swimming we're really focusing on using all of our senses we're trying to really focus on that the noise and reducing that as our fingertips slide into the water and that is a 1000 meter workout it could take you 30 minutes it could take you 40 minutes could take you an hour don't really worry about the total time make sure you plan it out ahead of time and if you're interested in following individual workouts that are already written for you in this kind of a structure make sure you check out the my swim pro app available for iphone and android in fact if you guys check out the link in the description below we're going to include a promo code for our beginner swimmers because we want to get you guys in the water and get started into not only a workout but a training program the fastest way to achieving your goals is actually following a series of workouts in a progression that develop off of each other so that way each workout has a specific focus whether it's focusing on technique or speed or endurance or one element of the technique and by following a progression you're going to improve way way faster so i highly recommend some of the training programs that we have in the my swim pro app that actually follow some of these goals so we do have a get wet couch to 1k training program we have a get fit training program that basically goes from the couch from zero building up to a thousand meter workout like this building up to a one mile swim continuously we have a few different training programs like that we also have a technique boot camp training plan that has a few workouts per week all of them focus on technique each day you're focusing on something different one day it's breathing one day it's your streamline one day it's your kick technique all of these things we have something for improving your speed your endurance and then of course developing your strokes if you want to do the individual medly you want to do your butterfly backstroke breaststroke the full im that's michael phelps's event you have a training program specifically for that so make sure you check out the code linked in the description below so you can get started and if you're looking for a even simpler way to get started join our my swim pro facebook group also linked in the description below we have thousands of swimmers from all over the world from different skill levels and abilities everything from your beginners who are just getting into the sport of swimming to more advanced swimmers who maybe took 10 or 20 years off away from the sport and now you're they're making their comeback and we have some triathletes in there as well so regardless of what your goals are you're going to find a place in our my swim pro global community thank you so much for making it this far in the video again let me know in the comments what your goals are we'd love to see how we can help you achieve those goals if you haven't already liked the video make sure you like the video subscribe to the channel and we'll catch you guys next time happy swimming bye you

Channel: Fares Ksebati

Views: 37,429

Keywords: MySwimPro, MySwimPro app, beginner swim workouts, beginner swimming workouts, beginner swimmer tips, beginner swimming drills, swimming tips for beginners, How to write a swim workout, learn to swim, swim training, swim workout ideas, beginner swim workout, swim workouts, swim tips, learn to swim for beginners, how to do a swim workout on apple watch, swimming interval, swimming interval training, swimming interval workouts

Id: 64ZLtsnhfrw

Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 29 2020