Tackling TriDot Workouts: Broken 200s, Broken 1500s, Broken Ladders, Threshold 150s and Sprint 50s

TriDot Podcast Episode 331      

Tackling TriDot Workouts: Broken 200s, Broken 1500s, Broken Ladders, Threshold 150s and Sprint 50s

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Vanessa Ronksley: Welcome back to the TriDot podcast. Today we're going to be tackling another set of workouts for our explainer series where we break down some of the key swim sessions that you'll see in your training, what they're designed to develop and then how to approach them. We're going to also look at how they all fit together into the bigger performance picture. I'm Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. And today I am joined by TriDot staff member and coach Ben Sommerville. Today we're hitting broken swims, ladders, threshold work and sprinting. Lots of good stuff. Let's get to it.

Announcer: This is the TriDot Podcast, the triathlon show that brings you world class coaching with every conversation. Let's get started with today's warmup.

Warmup Question

Vanessa Ronksley: Alrighty, Here we are for the warmup question. It's my favorite part of the entire TriDot podcast. Ben, today I am going to be asking you if you could go anywhere in the world for a practice swim, where would you go and who would you bring with you?

Ben Sommerville: This is such a great question. And normally as a pool swimmer, right my very beginning, I was a competitive sort of pool swimmer indoors and so I would have probably given you some boring answer of, you know, a nice Olympic sized swimming pool. But since becoming a triathlete, my idea of a really good swim now extends into the sea and lakes and rivers. And it might sound cliche, but I would go to Kona, to Hawaii to swim the Kona swim course. I would take my fiancé Ella with me and we would just have the most amazing time swimming without a wetsuit, just in the sea. Yeah, that's on our bucket list for sure. Whether it happens, we are yet to find out. One day it will happen.

Vanessa Ronksley: Ben, I have no doubt in my mind that you'll be there someday. And my answer for this question is actually the same thing. I was going to say it's Kona. I've already had the pleasure of doing a practice swim in Kona at Digby beach and I was with none other than Elizabeth James, which is like a dream come true. Swimming on an iconic course with the most amazing, amazing human and professional triathlete right next to you was just absolutely incredible. But I'm going to change up who I'm bringing with me this time because I've done it with Elizabeth already. So I would bring my, my friend and my, try my, one of my favorite TriDot athletes, Kristen Mirror. And I would bring her because she is so amazing at taking in all of the things in her surroundings. And she makes everything really special. And she would make me pay attention to the fish and hopefully the turtles and hopefully the dolphins that we would see in Kona, where as I would just be like going straight at it and forgetting where I was and going for a swim. So I want her to. I would want to bring her with me so that she would bring me to being present with where I am. So that's what I would choose as well. Now we're going to throw this question out to the audience. So wherever you are listening to us today, please let us know. If you could go anywhere in the for a practice swim, where would you go and who would you bring with you?

Ben Sommerville: Let's go.

Broken 200s

Vanessa Ronksley: Alrighty. So the whole point of this podcast is to get to the workout explainers. So for our audience members who are watching us on YouTube or Spotify, we're going to be pulling up examples of the different types of sessions that you might see on your athlete dashboard. But keep in mind, the title may be the same, but your distance, your paces, and your rest are tailored specifically to you. So it might look a little bit different. And that's totally okay. So here we go. Ben, I have the first tough question of the day for you. When an athlete sees a workout labeled broken 200s, what is the pattern that they should recognize right away? And what is this style of workout designed to stress physiologically?

Ben Sommerville: All righty. This is one of my favorite workouts. I'll be very honest. I like really sort of short and sweet, impactful swimming sessions. So the first pattern you're going to notice, regardless of where you're currently at with your swim training or your triathlon training, is you'll see a generally ascending scale of shorter to increasingly longer swim reps, with a relatively short recovery period in between. And that both the scale of shorter to longer reps and the short recovery periods are there for a reason. And in doing so, we're going to target almost all of your training zones in this swim workout. So if you are short on time and this one's in your program versus another one, get this one done. It's great bang for your buck. You can get a really good training stimulus in a short amount of time. And the volume of the session is relatively low for most people. And the scale, both shorter to increasingly long reps, also scales with some speed. So the speed will increase across those shorter efforts. It will drop down some of these slightly longer efforts, as you can see in the graph for those watching. And it's going to come right back up again for the final and the longest effort. And this is pretty much an all out effort to finish each round or to finish the workout in total. And I love this one because it is a test of both your fitness, your technique, crucially, because some high intensity, some short recovery, you need to stay on it. But critically, it's all about your ability to recover quickly and go again. That's really testing kind of your physiology to its absolute limit here. And so as the volume of session is low, the intensity is high. You've got to be efficient. When fatigue, which is really, really mentally challenging just as much as it is physically challenging, that accumulation of effort and fatigue throughout the workout will mean that for sure, if you've got multiple rounds, two or three potentially, that third round will be a really tough but highly beneficial round. So just a really great bang for your buck workout to raise the ceiling of your performance, get you moving faster and stronger. I love this one. Every single time it hurts. Love it.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's awesome. Thank you for explaining that one. It's funny because I've been looking at these workouts for years and I still don't even recognize that there's a pattern here. So I find that it's really funny. I just, literally just go and do the workout and get her done. But I'm curious here what you think. Should this one feel hardest physically or do you think the mental aspect of this kind of a session is harder?

Ben Sommerville: I think a session with short recovery periods can very quickly become very mentally challenging because you're not getting a great deal of opportunity in between even some of the shorter and slower efforts to actually just compose yourself, reset, get in control of your breathing and your heart rate and then go again. And so it can be very quick, whether you're in a group swimming environment or an individual sort of public swimming environment to maybe get distracted by things. This sort of session is mentally really difficult because you need to stay focused. Otherwise you may find yourself over or under swimming across the session. And in doing so, you're not really getting the purpose of the workout. And so, you know, in terms of getting, as I said, great bang for your buck in terms of training, stimulus adaptation, you want to be able to stay as sort of concentrated as you possibly can. But that's not to say it's not physically challenging, it really is. Those final, longest, max, sort of all out efforts are a real challenge. And if you can get through those, give yourself a pat on the back because that's really, really great.

Vanessa Ronksley: Something I'll say, yes, absolutely. I used to get this workout when it would say fastest time with fins. And now I actually get the workout that says fastest time with paddles. And for me, I swim slower with paddles. Like I don't know what it is. I'm way slower with paddles. But I'm just curious if someone were to finish this set feeling really tired, like they're absolutely destroyed in the early stages. So maybe after set one, maybe halfway through set two. As a coach, what would you say to an athlete who talks about that?

Ben Sommerville: So there are a variety of things and I'll give you a really coach answer. It depends. But I'll go through in reasons for why it depends. I think I've probably said this on this podcast so many times, it depends. It depends, but it really does. The first sign of if someone's feeling really kind of sort of tired too early, like they're sort of, they're checking out after one or two rounds, is they've probably gone off too hard. So those first 50s and 100s, where it's perhaps just a zone three or a zone four effort, with that freshness, with that shorter rep, there is a tendency for some people to kind of get carried away. And even if you're over swimming it by a couple of seconds per hundred, those couple of seconds beyond your threshold can make all the difference when you're then being asked to swim 100, 150 or even a 200 all out multiple times after accumulated fatigue throughout a session. And so that's the first indicator, they've probably just gone out too hard. The second indicator, and what I'm victim of sometimes it's just I didn't turn up to the session in the right frame of mind or particularly fresh. And this sort of session, when you are working throughout your training zones, again, stay mentally concentrated. But it's really important to get there kind of physically fresh as much as you possibly can given the circumstances around your training week. This sort of session, I like to kind of cheat and put it right at the beginning of my week when I'm my absolute freshest, to give me that early confidence to make sure I execute it really, really well. And then if my later swim sessions throughout the week, I like to swim maybe two or three times a week if I've got the opportunity to. If they don't go quite as well, I'm not really going to be that bothered because I've got one really good, high quality session done right at the beginning of the week when I'm fresh, and then I can move on and really focus on my cycling and my running, which are going to take arguably the most amount of time and energy from my rest of my week. And so those are kind of the two big indicators as a coach that whether I'm on poolside watching or someone's reporting back to me remotely, I would like keep an eye on and keep it. Keep a check on for sure. But as, again, it can depend so many other things, but those are the two big ones for me.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah. And I do have to say I am guilty of both of those things. I tend to jump straight into the pool and, like, smash out a threshold pace for my warmup because I just feel so great. And that's me not knowing that I, you know, I'm fresh. I have to be disciplined. This is what my coach tells me all the time, is I need to be disciplined. So I think that those first few efforts, regardless of what workout you're doing, they're really, really key to making sure that you're not going out too fast and feeling amazing at that moment. And then later on in the set, you're like, oh, man, I shouldn't have done that.

Broken 1500s

So broken 200s introduce the idea that how a distance is structured can matter just as much as the distance itself. And that concept gets taken into a much bigger scale in the next workout. So we're going to jump straight into our second workout explainer. It's a broken 1500 here, which could sound kind of intimidating at first to some people. Now keep in mind, if you are watching us on YouTube or Spotify, your broken 1500 might look a little bit different than this one here because that is how the program is being or your training is being catered to you specifically. So tell us, Ben, how athletes should interpret this pattern of this workout and what system of the body are we really targeting here?

Ben Sommerville: This is another one of my favorites. I'm going to probably say this about every single one, but I just love swimming. So it's going to be very hard for me to look at a swim workout and go, I don't actually like this, or I don't see the benefit of this. So for this one, a broken 1500, or for some people, you may see a broken 1000. So don't be intimidated by the idea of a 1500. We are looking at your maximum aerobic capacity here, your speed limit, as I've mentioned earlier. So the fastest you can go whilst maintaining the perfect technique and control that you possibly can. It's all about your fastest possible average across all of the intervals that you're going to be asked to do now to make sure that you are able to hit those paces and to do so with control. You are going to get long rest periods. So please do respect and take that rest. It is there for a reason. Recover fully and hit every rep with all that you've got and maintain that highest possible average across all of the efforts that you have to do. I like to chunk this one for a lot of people to kind of really help them understand as to how this sort of effort should kind of feel as you progress through, particularly when you've got 15 by 100s. That's a long time to be swimming and to be doing a focused workout. For if you do this correctly, the first three or five should feel quite controlled. Those rest periods are really doing you a favor here. You're still quite fresh after a relatively good warmup. And so I want the rest period to kind of feel so long it's almost silly. So those first three to five are really controlled. The next five should start to feel like working efforts. Okay. You're having to really think about your technique, really apply that pressure and get those legs moving. So just really stay tuned into your technique here. And then those last three to five and certainly the last couple will just be a real challenge. Give it all you've got on those last couple. Most swimmers can pretty much do anything for a couple of hundred meters right at the end. So this is the real crunch point. If you've gone off too hard, we can talk about this in a minute. Too early. Those last few, you're going to start to drop off, that average is going to come down and you're kind of missing the purpose of this session. And so as I said, there's going to be some volume adjustments for some, for various levels of swimmers. Someone like me will see 15 by 100s. Some swimmers may see only 10 by 100 or a variation within that. So it's the same stimulus, the same training stress for everybody. And overall it's the same physical and mental challenge, but just the volume is more appropriate to you to meet you where you are in that moment.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's awesome. Again, for this one, I feel like when I first started swimming, because I am an adult onset swimmer, I didn't get 15 right away, I think I got seven and then there would be a little break and then there was seven more or something like that. So I think that it's broken up as well. But I find this is really typical of athletes when they're not following a training plan in any way or even a training program. Like those two things are different. But a lot of people will say, okay, I'm doing a 70.3, I'm going to show up to the pool and I'm just gonna swim like 2,000 meters. Boom, done my workout. So I'm curious why broken work like this in the broken 1500s is more effective than swimming the distance flat out.

Ben Sommerville: So for a lot of reasons, both in just time and also in just technique execution. For me personally, the ability to break up a longer distance, it just, it's more appealing. I'm more excited and more motivated to do it. It feels less intimidating even as an experienced swimmer. And also it gives me an opportunity to really make sure that I hit my effort, I maintain my technique. If I just went Hail Mary into the pool to swim 2,000, 3,000 meters, the likelihood is that at a certain point my effort versus my output are going to start to decouple because I just become more and more inefficient because of fatigue and quite possibly just distraction and boredom because you're just going up and down the same pool, seeing the same thing for however long it takes you to swim that particular distance. And so to break it up, you can really focus on those sub threshold or even above threshold efforts, do them really, really well. Stress your cardiovascular system, stress your muscles, stress your technique. It's a real stress test at the end of the day that is just far more time efficient. We're looking for time efficient training here to be able to get the maximum possible adaptation for the minimal possible input. And that input being time. That's the thing that we all have the shortest amount of is simply time. And so practically that's the reason why a broken swim is always going to be a staple on any swim training program.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah. And going back to even what you were talking about in terms of execution, one of the tips that I tried to do is I remind myself that I really want each of these broken or these 100s to be within 1 to 2 seconds of each other in terms of the time that I complete them. And so that really brings me back to, you know, making sure that you're not going out too fast on the first five, because it does feel a lot easier when you're not trying to just go as fast as possible. So I try. And whatever that first one ends up being, I really try and maintain that for the rest of the sets there now in terms of open water, because we all know that swimming in a pool is so different than swimming in open water. So how does a session like this broken 1500, how does that prepare us for open water racing specifically?

Ben Sommerville: I think first and foremost it's getting us swimming for a long, a long overall period of time and a large volume of swimming like meters done. For those who are swimming a thousand or you know, broken up, that's a significant amount of swimming to do and to do so at quite a high intensity with good control. That's the demands of an open water swimming race. We have to be out there for a long period of time and we have to swim strong regardless of whether or not we choose to swim the swim slightly slower. Let's say it's a really choppy and wavy swim. The sort of, the rate of effort you're going to have to put out to continue just to move forward is going to be increased. So as much as these sort of sessions are physically beneficial, they're more so just mentally beneficial. I say the same thing about any threshold test, any CSS test, any FTP test. Regardless of the outcome of that test or the outcome of this session, you're putting yourself in a position to intentionally work hard, to challenge yourself and to execute it as best as you possibly can. And that can be nothing but motivating just to, you know, quite frankly, just suffer for half an hour, get through it and come out on the other side in one piece. For me, that's sometimes just a really productive session. You know, I try FTP tests on the bike, sometimes I try CSS tests in the pool. The power number doesn't come out being particularly sort of exciting. But I've suffered. I worked hard. I stay focused. That's productive. And so to do this sort of suffering, but with structure, it's a win in my book, 100%.

Vanessa Ronksley: I so agree with you on that. A lot of times people put way too much value and emphasis on the numbers. Like what was my average power for this session or what was on the bike, for example, or what was my average pacing on my run or my swim. And I think that what you just said in terms of looking at wins in another way and recognizing that it's just as important to have a win that's you mentally toughed out something or that you were able to push through something that you thought was difficult. Those wins are far more valuable on race day than the average number or whatever it is. Cuz we can't, we just can't. Like we can have a specific number that we're aiming for on race day, but we ultimately just have to pay attention to what our body can put out that day. And so we have to be able to find wins in everything that we do. So I really appreciate that viewpoint.

Broken Ladders

So the idea of managing effort across a longer total distance is going to carry directly into our next workout. But there's a little bit of a twist here that challenges pacing in a completely different way. Broken ladders. These are a sneaky good workout. The distance is changing but the effort is held constant. And I'm hoping Ben that you can tell us the underlying pattern that athletes need to understand here and why is this such an effective and brutal workout for developing swim specific pacing?

Ben Sommerville: This is not one of my favorite sessions. Me neither. I will be 100% and honest and say that right there and then. Even though this is stereotypically a very swimmer's swim session by design. And so for me the pattern here first and foremost is you're going to see a series of shorter efforts. Let's say for example, as you can see on the screen here at 3 by 100 meters at an effort followed by a continuous effort after a short recovery of the same total distance of those previous efforts. So for example a 300 meter continuous effort. Now those numbers will obviously be different for every person as you progress as a more advanced and experienced swimmer. You may start to see 4 by 100 and then a 400, 5 by 100 than a 500. As your training is progressing, as you're improving, we will see that level of challenge increase over time. And this session is for me, it's probably the first time I'll ever say it on the Internet. It's great to get locked in, very Gen Z of me get locked into that kind of sub threshold effort. These will feel comfortably uncomfortable for most of the session. And that kind of sweet spot like mindset wise, really, really challenging as and is where often I start to second guess myself and then subconsciously start to back off. And then again I'm not really hitting the purpose of the session. And again short rest periods are there by design. Please honor those, respect those and take those because we want to get that accumulation of fatigue across the entire set to get you a good challenge regardless of what your total volume for the session is. So this is a session that's really suitable for all swimmers, regardless of where you are right now, and as with all things, your technique and your strength will be your biggest limiter here. So for the newer or the less experienced swimmers, the example that I've talked about today, where it's 3 by 100 then 300 or 4 by 100 and a 400, you will definitely not see this in your swim program just yet in terms of volume, just because it's not necessarily suitable. And then the overall aim is, we want to hit the same pace. You can see that it is a broken ladder, but the pace is exactly the same on all of the short and the longer effort. So please avoid the tendency to over swim at the beginning and therefore suffer as you go throughout the rest of the session. If you absolutely need to, I give you full permission to build those first few efforts. So get slightly faster in each one, but still trying to hit that kind of target zone pace, roughly zone four, wherever that zone range is for you. If you need to kind of get into it, your warm up didn't quite hit the spot. Just build those first few efforts, lie yourself to get into it. Last thing you want to do is find yourself already under stress, under pressure, and you're flailing and sort of thrashing around to get that 300 or 400 meter continuous effort done. All about finding pace, all about getting control of your heart rate and your breathing and just being really, really diligent with your pacing.

Vanessa Ronksley: I find this session to be extremely challenging. What's a really good internal cue that an athlete can use to keep themselves honest for this kind of a session?

Ben Sommerville: I think first and foremost, whilst the rest periods are really short, the first internal, and again it's quite an external cue, is to honor that rest period, invite that level of challenge where you are going to feel increasingly worse and worse throughout and then that second kind of internal cue. I really think very internally and although it's quite difficult when there's a lot of things going on, your head's underwater, you know, your arms and your legs are moving, you're rotating, really try and concentrate on your breathing. If you find yourself, let's say you're doing a 200 or 300 meter continuous effort. If by the third or the fourth length you find yourself really gasping every time to try and take a breath, that's when you really need to recognize, oh, hang on, I'm starting to overreach here. I'm either becoming more efficient or more inefficient. Sorry. Or I'm just fatiguing more than I realistically should be at this point. So either you back off and finish that, the remainder of that rep at a slightly slower effort just to try and steady your heart rate and your breathing down, or sometimes I will just go right, I'm 100 meters into a 300 meter effort. I'm gasping, I'm panicking, I'm not in a good frame here. I'm going to stop, allow myself to just recover and reset for a couple of minutes and then I start again. Always just give yourself another shot if you're really not, if you're really struggling in that moment. So there's a couple of internal cues, internal decisions you can make in those moments, particularly as you get towards the second, third and sort of the final third of the session. That's when you'll probably start to make really poor decisions because you're really, really tired. Don't allow yourself to get too tired to the point where you can't make a sound decision and you can't really tune into how you're feeling. Really, really pay attention because otherwise you'll just be splashing and you'll be flailing around on that last few rounds. Again, not going to hit the purpose and the point of the workout in the first place. If you can really finish strong every single session that you do. That's where the magic happens for me, right there at the end.

Vanessa Ronksley: That's exactly where the magic happens. That's where all of the training gains are coming from. If we can actually adhere to the training zones that are stated for us. And I think what you've said many times already so far on this podcast is it's important to not over swim at the beginning so that you can get those paces towards the end. I find, particularly with this one, adhering to that 22 second rest period is really hard the deeper you get into this set. And I find myself wanting an extra 5, 8 seconds and I force myself to push off the wall. But in that same light, when I am pushing off the wall, I'm trying to stay calm and relaxed and really smooth. And I think that every person has a different style and they have a different cue for their particular swim technique and form. And for me, like, I know as soon as I start to feel really tired, I have to really think about those things. Few key items of making sure I get that full glide and making sure that I'm getting my full extension on both arms and that helps to calm me down specifically. But I think at this point with people, when you start to feel that way, it's important to go back to what drills you work on and then try and implement that into your swimming. When those sets get really long and hard towards the end there, just really curious about why holding the same pace across changing distances is so difficult. So in this swim session in particular, we see 100s, 200s, not 300s, 200s, 100s, 300s, 400s, potentially 500s. Why is it so hard for us to keep that pace going when the distances change so frequently?

Ben Sommerville: At the end of the day? It's very simple accumulation of fatigue. And there's just the potential for that just to become overwhelming, to become distracting, to become so present that you are unable then to maintain that technique, to maintain that control. You'll see a lot of people, you know, that accumulation of fatigue just causes them to internally panic and they start thrashing and flailing around. Or what they do is they don't realize that they start holding their breath under the water. And there's another sort of little internal cue I'll sneak in. You're trying to calm yourself down. If you're trying to maintain that focus and that pace of these longer distances, despite the accumulation of fatigue, you know, the burn in the arms and the legs, the strain on your lungs really cue into your breathing. So when your face is down in the water, very obviously blow bubbles outwards. A really great way just to kind of settle the breathing. You know, it's a little bit niche. But breath work is so important for swimming because you spend half the time with your face not in the air, like half the time it's underwater. But there is an element of breath work that comes into play here. So the minute you start holding your breath, you start tensing your chest, which then tenses your shoulders, which then tenses your elbows, which tenses your wrists, your fingers, and then your whole body just tenses up. And then you just got that extra accumulation of carbon dioxide in your body, this quite literal physical structural tension as your body seizes up because you are holding your breath and trying to push through and swim faster, ever increasing distance and amount of time. So it is incredibly difficult. I have full. You know, I've been there, done that. I do these sessions whenever they're given to me. And so it could. It could be very easy for me to say just to kind of deal with it, but I don't want people to take that away as the only tip here. You know, it is challenging for a reason. Both mentally and physically. So lock into that breathing and just maintain the most effective and efficient form you possibly can. That's all I can ask of you as a swim coach. Whether I can see you on poolside or not be really intentional with how you're swimming in the water. Because if you fight it, if you give it an opportunity, it will win every single day of the week. And then, you know, you'll be just wasting effort and getting very little in return. And that's not a very motivating way to end any amount of swimming or a complete session at the end of the day, that's not going to do you any favors. When you then rock up to the pool two or three days later to do something equally as challenging, you'll just be going, oh, well, last time went really rubbish. What's the point? Give yourself every opportunity to find the positives and stay in control.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, and I think too, like whenever I think of TriDot sessions, TriDot doesn't ever give you anything that you can't complete because it knows everything that you've done up to this point and so it's not going to give you something that you just can't do. So when I approach any of my sessions that way and I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't feel like I have the energy for this or this is too hard for me and I'm thinking, nope, TriDot believes in you, so you better get on board and believe in yourself too. And that really makes a difference, I think, in terms of being able to execute it. As long as we go out with the intention of not overdoing the beginning part. Because this, as you said, this one really sneaks up on you and can get difficult towards the end.

Threshold 150s

So in one way these ladders are something that teach a lot of control. And the next workout that we're going to talk about builds on this control, but it's going to add in another layer by asking athletes to change effort within each swim. So here we have the threshold 150s, which introduces builds, it introduces mixed zones and then it's going to have varied rest as well. So what's the pattern that an athlete should look for in this workout and which physiological systems are being stressed here the most?

Ben Sommerville: Right. This is again one of my favorites and it's one of my favorites for a very good reason, because it can be very well suited to open water swimmers and triathletes for sort of race specific preparation, in my opinion. And so the purpose of this session informs the structure and vice versa. So we're looking, as you've just said, at manipulating and building effort here. And we're working with short to incomplete recovery periods. So it is a compound challenge. So it's very well suited to endurance swimmers and triathletes. There's a bit of swimming lingo going to happen here and I'll try and explain it as best I can. So, unlike a descending set like broken 200s, where you get faster across the session, across the rounds, in this building set, you are getting faster within each individual rep. So there's a few misconceptions when people start talking about descending building in swimming, it can get sometimes it's counterintuitive, but in this case, we are building across each individual rep, we're getting faster within each rep. And this is why it's so fun, why I think it's so beneficial for us as triathletes. We're really stressing our bodies out, that kind of lactate threshold. But we're asking you to then distinguish between multiple different paces and to make very sharp transitions between them within an existing swimming rep. And so rather than just like in a broken ladders, finding that threshold and holding on for as long as you can, really asking you to be very aware, very acutely aware of everything that you're doing in the water, it does take some trial and error. And so if you've done all that clock watching and that technique work in the first instance, you've got a really good mental, sort of mind, body picture of if I do X equals Y, then these sessions will be really, really sort of mentally fulfilling and really mentally satisfying. And so, in my opinion, why it is so great for race day simulation or just race day conditions, particularly for me, I'm a very aggressive swimmer. I like to swim at the front of the pack. I like to surge. I like to get the best line coming into turn buoys. So being able to sort of go from one pace to another within the space of maybe even 25 or 50 meters is an incredibly useful skill. If you are in an open water or a group swimming environment where a gap might be closing, you need to surge for 25, 50 meters, otherwise you're going to get caught behind 300 other swimmers who are going to block you. This is where a surge is really, really useful. And so this kind of session is a great opportunity to kind of give that a go. Whether you mentally kind of picture yourself chasing swimmers down or chasing gaps or finding the best line to a turn buoy, whatever works for you, go for it. For me, I'm always thinking about, okay, how can I surge the most effectively to get the best possible line, the best possible space in a swimming group. And so again, you know, a lot of these sessions are all about accumulation of fatigue and your ability to kind of maintain your effort really, really diligently throughout. And so your ability to do so in this session and the quality of your builds your ability within even a 50 meter rep to swim from zone 2 all the way to zone 4 by the end. Again, this is where the real magic happens and where the adaptation physically and then from a racecraft point of view really kind of comes into play mentally. So this for me is one of my favorite sessions. And again, the overall volume of each individual rep is relatively low. So you can really give yourself the opportunity to hit those paces without worrying about having to swim 500 meters at Zone 4, which is just to be honest, intimidating for anybody. And so this is, yeah, I could talk about this one all day. I love it. I've got one coming up this week. I can't wait. And yeah, I'll be sure to keep all of the tips I've just given you myself. I've got to keep myself accountable just as much as you guys. Don't you worry.

Vanessa Ronksley: I think that's one of the hardest things, is to take your own advice. So you better re listen to this before you go into your session.

Ben Sommerville: It's very easy as a coach sometimes to, you know, do as I say, not as I do, but I don't usually subscribe to that model. My fiancé will probably have other words to say about that in a variety of different ways. But please do as I say and as I do, and I promise you, I do everything that I say when I get into the pool each week to go and do my TriDot swim workouts.

Vanessa Ronksley: Absolutely. I think coaching is one of the best ways to stay accountable because if you're going to expect that discipline and accountability from your athletes, then you have to expect it, if not more than from yourself. Now, in terms of the execution of this session, what separates a very well executed build from one that turns into like an all out sprint way too early?

Ben Sommerville: If you can finish this session and know and feel like you've got a couple more in you, perfectly executed build, okay, that's the sweet spot of where we want you to be at the end. And then if you're not willing to take the risk and wait until you get to the end of the session to find out if you have done a really well executed build. Don't rush into the main set. Take your time with your warmup. Do some short kind of sprint intervals, some short builds for 25, 50 meters, and just keep an eye on the clock. Give yourself a couple of opportunities to go, right, am I in the right place here? And just extend that warm up ever so slightly. What I do, again, I, you know, a little bit of sort of freedom around how I spend my swimming time. I like just to make sure that when I get to the main set, I'm going to be in the best possible position to execute it really, really well. And again it becomes very easy to say, just don't over swim the beginning. So everything I've just said is just a really good way to just not over swim in the beginning. No matter how long of a rest you've got or how short the build is, or what the building from Zone 2 to Zone 4 or 5 is, don't rush it. If you feel really well rested at the end of the first few efforts, that's not a bad thing. You should feel comfortable quite early on because you still should still feel fresh. Right. Just give yourself the opportunity to kind of hold yourself to that as you certainly progress throughout the session.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay, I have one other question that kind of goes hand in hand with executing a build. And it might not pertain to this one specifically because the build is like over a 50 meter period, but if you had a longer build, like 100 or 150 or sometimes we even get up to 500 build, what is, what does a good build feel like versus one that is forced? And I have a feeling like for me in particular, I tend to force them because I'm trying. I break down the total distance and then I'm like, by this point I'm doing zone two, and by this point I'm doing zone three. And so I'm just curious what that actually feels like.

Ben Sommerville: Yeah, so this is a really good question. It's probably one of the most difficult questions you've asked me, so I'm hopefully going to give you a good answer. And this sometimes can depend. The way I interpret a build swim is probably quite different to other coaches and to other swimmers, whether they're the same ability or the same experience as me. And so I don't want anyone to feel like having to force it a little bit in very strict intervals is a bad thing for me, given the style of race that I am. When I'm in open water, that kind of level of swimmer I am, when I need to build and need to change pace, it does. It has done so very, very suddenly. So when I'm in a pool and trying to simulate that, I will, like you said, if it's a 50 meter, I will do 25 meters at zone 2 and I'll do the final 25 meters straight off the wall. I will accelerate up to zone five and that's my build. For some people, that sudden change off the wall can be very, very challenging. And so the cues here are again, please don't just start flailing your arms around progressively faster and faster in an attempt to become faster. And it's very instinctive and I sometimes take it for granted and it is quite difficult to explain sometimes, but the pressure you apply in the water, if you start to think about, if your legs are kicking like 1, 2, 1, 2, start to kind of think of a rhythm in your head as you're progressing through that 50 meters. They're going to go 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Just simple kind of rhythmic cues like that, whilst not over stretching beyond what your normal rhythm is. So if you all of a sudden find your arms just going like sort of windmills, at that point, you're not swimming an effective build. So if it's still a bit of a gray zone for you, perhaps try separating it into very sort of distinct chunks and going, if it's a 50 meter build where I need to be at zone two, but then finish at zone four, do 25 meters zone two and then do 25 meters zone four and just get up to speed. The ability to surge, whilst might not be relevant for everybody, is still a really useful skill to have and you're still going to get a level of adaptation that is of high quality from there. The real trick is obviously in a swimming pool environment when you're navigating lots of people to progress that pace through even a short or a long rep. And so it is quite challenging to sort of do it gradually, particularly over a short amount of time. The longer the amount of time you may sort of extend it. So every 50 meters you change pace, every 75 meters you change pace and then you're effectively going up to a new pace and then holding it up to new pace and then holding it for the duration of each of those sort of small subsections. But just give it a go in the first instance and just see how you respond. For those of you who then want to kind of build gradually. It's really an instinctive, sort of rhythmic process of I'm going to apply more pressure through every stroke. I'm going to start to increase the amounts of kicks I do in any given time and also just sort of increase the force you do. Propulsion is still important. Whilst, you know, elegance and grace in the water is very important, you want to be as hydrodynamic as possible. Your force application is just as important. If you don't have that strength in that power, you won't go faster.

Vanessa Ronksley: Hmm. You've given me a lot to think about here and I can't wait to try some of this out for my next swim session.

Sprint 50s

So we've talked about here. We've covered endurance, we've covered control, we've covered sustained effort. Now let's talk about the speed. And this one is my absolute favorite. I know you've said that most of the ones we've talked about are your favorites, but this is my favorite sprint 50s. These are short, they're spicy, they're incredibly valuable. And I know seeing all of the pink in the effort bar on the calendar in the Daily View, that's an indication that you're going to build speed and power and most importantly, I think is building confidence. So the rest is just magical if we can get all of that. So if you want to feel like a total rock star in the pool, show up with this workout and let her rip. So I'm curious here. Now, keep in mind, for those of you that are watching, this workout might look different than yours depending on who you are as an athlete. So, Ben, what is the pattern that athletes should recognize and why is this type of workout so important for triathletes?

Ben Sommerville: I'm so glad we get to save the best one to last. And I know I said the threshold 150s and the broken 1500s are my favorite, but I'll be honest, I was talking nonsense. Sprint 50s are my absolute favorite for many reasons. It brings me back to my sort of swimming club competitive days where we would do two hours in sessions and we would do 50s for an hour just racing each other. It's just fun, you know, swimming fast is fun, fast is fun, fun is fast. It's a saying I first heard from our very own Jeff Booher on poolside. My very first pool school. Swimming fast is fun and swimming fun is fast. And realistically, most triathletes and swimmers can execute a good controlled sprint for at least 25 to 50 meters. So everyone's got a great opportunity to get stuck into this sort of workout and get real good enjoyment and benefit from it. In terms of the structure, everybody will see there's lots of different variations here. It will be very different between individuals and then even for individuals themselves. Over time you'll start off with your warm up, you'll do some shorter kind of sort of priming efforts, I'll call them, where you're going to move through zone three and zone four just to kind of get your heart and your lungs moving, getting you ready to then sprint at sort of really good high intensity pace later on. And then you'll have a sort of a bundle of sprint 50s and then you'll have a short bit of downtime in between where you may just swim some zones one, some zone two. I like to do a bit of backstroke here just to kind of loosen off the shoulders and just kind of do something a little bit different. And then you'll just have a number of different rounds in that sort of thing. And you may have some longer kind of extended aerobic portions of swimming to break up the longest parts of these sessions. If you've got three or four rounds, then maybe a nice extended piece of zone two swimming in the middle. For me these are really important because more than anything they break the monotony and they're really, really fast and they're fun to do. And by design, both in terms of the speed we're executing over the amount of distance that we're doing so, and then the prescribed rest periods, these are much more anaerobic and neuromuscular type efforts. The type of effort that we haven't seen in any of the workouts so far. None of them have touched anything like this. So these are really unique and there are real tests and I want triathletes and swimmers to really understand that sprinting and explosive efforts are useful whether you're doing an IRONMAN or a super sprint triathlon. Because we want to test limits of your stroke mechanics whilst you're under duress. Even if it's just 50 meters of an explosive sprint. We really want to test the limits of those stroke mechanics. If your stroke technique is limited in one way, you'll very quickly realize it. Even in a 50 meter sprint, which areas are holding you back will become very apparent and you'll be just again expending energy with no viable return. You'll be splashing and flailing and kicking around and getting nothing really in return. That's actually very productive. And then, yeah, fun is fast at the end of the day. So really give these ones a good stab. Have some fun. If you can do these with other people. I love to do these sort of sessions with other people, whether I'm swimming next to them or they're in front of me or they're behind me. The element of competitiveness, or if it's just competitiveness of you versus the clock, you know, how fast can you do these 50s? But again, please don't go off too fast, because if you've got 20 50s to do and you do the first five like a hero, those last 15, you're gonna feel like a zero. And again, the magic happens at the end. Save your best till the end. Those last five, give them everything you've got and you can get out of the pool like an absolute champ.

Vanessa Ronksley: Yeah, I think that that's it is a really good feeling when you hop out of the pool and you're like, I just crushed all of my sprint 50s. And we all want to do that. So I think that the discipline that it takes to take a little bit off at the beginning, it takes a lot, but we can all get there. Now, I'm curious how this speed training could possibly help someone who doesn't necessarily consider themselves to be a fast swimmer. And I know that there's a lot of triathletes out there who would put themselves in this category. So how is it going to help these people who think that they're not fast?

Ben Sommerville: In many, many ways. And I'll keep it really, really short and really, really simple. The principles of training, in my eyes, can sometimes be overly complicated for the sake of complexity. But in this instance, whether you think you're a fast swimmer or whether you're wanting to swim fast or do shorter distances or you're doing longer distance swims, we want to train at the extreme. We want to be the most efficient and the most confident and competent we can at every extreme of the swimming spectrum. And that's being able to swim for long distances very well at a slower pace and to swim shorter distances very well at a higher pace. Swimming at a higher pace for a short amount of time, these explosive efforts are an anaerobic sort of exercise. They're a neuromuscular effort that's building strength and power innately at the core of your muscles, at the core of your physiological capability, you know, building that capacity. And to be honest, it's also really, really motivating and really, really fun. And I'm trying not to be too cliche and avoid the science of it all, but none of us are professional athletes unless there's some professionals watching. Hello, thank you very much for watching listening to our podcast. You're welcome here, of course, but the vast majority of triathletes are not professional athletes. And so the enjoyment of the fun of our training has to be just as important, if not in my eyes, more important in the actual, you know, the meat and the potatoes of the training, if that makes any sense to our non British viewers and listeners. It's a pretty rogue Sunday roast reference. And so they are just valuable sessions, but there's so many different reasons. And I said, it's my sneaky little favorite. It's my guilty pleasure is a sprint session. It reminds me of when I was a swimmer. It gives me an opportunity to kind of just push myself, to race myself, to race other people, to really just kind of. I'm a very acutely and internally aware person whether I'm training or not. And so when I start to feel and see, quite literally my techniques change as I'm getting tired, I love locking into that and going, right, this is what I need to do next. This next 50, I need to get on top of this. Otherwise I know I'm just going to be wasting energy. I'm not going to hit that same pace, and I'm probably going to feel like a bit of an idiot because I went out too hard and I'm not doing my technique properly. And so it is an exercise for the mind and the body. And it's probably the millionth time I'll say this, it is so fun. So just have fun with it, please. Give it a go and brace yourself. It's so much more valuable at the end of the day, even if the numbers aren't even that impressive at the end, I don't want anyone to feel like they can't swim fast. Give it a go, build that strength and that power and that competence and that ability to do so will just come over time. I'm not naturally a sprinter, but over time I've been able to kind of, if I need to, I can sprint pretty well for 50, 100 meters. Beyond that, not so much.

Bringing It All Together

Vanessa Ronksley: Awesome. So we've just spent a good chunk of time here talking about, you know, the patterns that our workouts have, the system that it's stressing and then some execution tips on how to do it. And I feel like when we pay attention to those things, everything stops to feel random. It stops feeling random and then we start to feel that these sessions are more purposeful. So coach Ben, when athletes approach their swim training with that mindset, how does it change their confidence and then ultimately their consistency in the water?

Ben Sommerville: I think fundamentally it will just, it does exactly as it says on the tin. It will just change your experience completely head to toe, inside and out. It will change your experience. And in this example of what we're showing with our TriDot swim training examples, that progression from the control of a ladders based swim to the flexibility and kind of cross energy systems of the threshold builds to then the just out and out power and speed of these sprints in these 50s, what you're giving yourself is an opportunity to build a complete swimmer in yourself every single time you go swimming. And then over a long period of time, you know, a complete swimmer who can pace intelligently, who can make smart decisions when things are not necessarily going right. In those sort of scenarios. You can surge strategically if you need to. Like I said, I love a good surge when I'm in a sort of aggressive open water swim environment kind of mindset. And also just being able to access some really good top end speed over a variety of different distances when absolutely needed. Your ability to achieve those higher efforts, those high paces does just raise your performance level at all zones. You know, that strong before long, fast before far. There's a fundamental training principle that I think is so undervalued in the wider triathlon swimming community because there is this just dogmatic obsession with more equals more and it just fundamentally isn't true. And so when we look at how to structure a training week, how to give ourselves every opportunity to be a complete swimmer, these sorts of swims and the confidence it will give you does exactly what it says on the tin. It just changes the game, it changes your experience and gives you really complementary skills and sort of really great fitness and strength without the need, as I said, for excessive volume and excessive fatigue, for simply the sake of doing so. I used to be like that a long time ago. That's what swimming used to be. You just used to swim as much as you could, as hard as you could, for as long as you could, and you hoped you got better. In all honesty, I was incredibly fit athlete. I wasn't very strong or very fast. I had one kind of just gear and that was it. And so I wasn't a complete swimmer. I wasn't a complete athlete. So swimming in this way and really locking into that mindset changes the game. It's fundamentally just the right way to go, in my opinion.

Cool Down Q&A

Vanessa Ronksley: On the cool down, we take an audience question and have our guest coach answer it. So if you have a question that you would love to get an expert to answer, please reach out to us through a DM on any of our social channels, including Circle. You can send us an email or you can even leave us a voicemail on the podcast website. Feel free. We love it when athletes do that. It's so fun to hear your voices. So submit those questions. Ben, are you ready for today's question?

Ben Sommerville: I am. Hit me. Let's go.

Vanessa Ronksley: Okay. It's really short and sweet, and it comes from Jack. Should I be fueling my swim workouts with carbs and/or electrolytes?

Ben Sommerville: I'm gonna say it again. It depends. But I will give you. I will give you Jack. This is an incredibly, incredibly good question and a question that not enough triathletes ask or even think about. And so when I said depends, my ultimate answer is yes, and in different ways, but different scenarios. A lot of people forget when they're in a swimming pool environment that they're actually still sweating. Whether you realize it or not, because you're exerting, you're exercising. It's warm and humid in a lot of swimming pool environments, even outdoor swimming pool environments, particularly when you're wearing a wetsuit. Wetsuits are warm. You will sweat. And so the importance of hydration should not be overlooked. And if you choose to do so and would like to hydrate with added electrolytes, by all means, please do. There are a variety of brands out there. I have a particular favorite, PF&H. Other brands are available, of course, but that's just my particular favorite. And for my longer or more intense swims, I will always take a bottle of water with added electrolytes in absolutely 100%. Carbs is a very individual scenario. It just depends on how you like to consume your carbs. Some people are very much kind of solid carb eaters, which is very kind of bike friendly, but not necessarily swimming friendly. The last thing you want to be doing is being on poolside with wrappers and solid foods, and it just it's not a good look. I don't think many lifeguards and swimming pools are going to be very happy about it. So if you are happy with liquid carbs, liquid calories, by all means, whack that in your bottles with your electrolytes as well and sip that one often throughout, particularly for those longer or those sessions with longer more high intense efforts. Importance of pre fueling is obviously very very important, but if you choose to, if you need to, particularly for those of you tackling an IRONMAN where your swims may start to exceed an hour in length, definitely carbs as early as you possibly can, sip little and often throughout just to try and maintain your energy levels as you progress and as you fatigue throughout the session, regardless of the intensity. So as I said, it very much depends, but there is an absolute use case in my opinion for it in every swim session, particularly hydration. It's like when you go running and cycling in the cold. Not many people drink as much as they need to because the cold doesn't make you feel thirsty. Kind of a really weird catch 22. You're exercising in the cold, you're trying to stay warm. You don't realize you're sweating and so you don't realize you actually need hydration just as much as you would if it was 10, 20, 30 degrees hotter in the summer or spring. And so Jack, amazing question. More people like you should be asking this question and thinking about this. So thank you for sending it to us. Hopefully that covers it. Yeah, it depends. But definitely yes.

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