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In today’s Coach’s Intel Adam Ritchie, national team head coach at the YMCA of Burlington and Camden County – South Jersey Aquatic Club, shares a sprint set that his group did this May. Ritchie is in his third year with YMCA of B&CC-SJAC (that must be a heck of a cap!), is level 3 ASCA certified, and also spends summers as head coach at the Sunnybrook Swim Club. He works as a school psychologist in the public school system in N.J. after having attended grad school at Rider University, and has a philosophy of “creating both mentally and physically challenging workouts and pushes his athletes to achieve their personal bests, both in and out of the pool.”
Here is his workout that he did with his group, comprising of about 35 athletes:
This was a sprint workout that we did recently in May.
The primary focus was getting them up and going fast. We set up a little friendly competition at first to encourage them to race each other – and then for the 2nd half of the set they have to work with each other to beat a designated goal time from earlier in the set.
We did this set all freestyle – it’s a little heavy on the math too!
First we paired all the kids up – We did this based on each swimmers lifetime best 100 free – we had a couple groups of 3 but mostly all pairs.
2 x 50 Free From Dive – Race Effort
2 x 50 Free with Fins from Dive – Race Effort
- We did these in heats of 2 groups each – so lots of rest in between with the expectation being very fast swims.
- We told the kids that each time their partner beat them they owed 5 push-ups at the end of practice (we didn’t make them do it – just some extra motivation to go fast!)
- We recorded each person’s time to the tenth down on the board
4 x 100 @ 1:30 – Aerobic Pace – Active Recovery
While the kids were doing the recovery my asst. coach and I added up all the 50s to get a 100 composite time for each swimmer. Then we averaged the two 100s together to get a final time for each pair. So we now had two 100 times – 1 add up (averaged) with no fins, 1 add up (averaged) with fins. We subtracted .5 from each 100 to account for the relay start (see below)
Next we had the kids do 2 x 100s Free as a relay (1 w/o fins, 1 w/ fins) – so each pair did a 50 free (one from a flat start, one with a relay start). The goal here was to beat their add up times. This time we told them that if they didn’t beat their time they owed 10 push-ups as a pair – if they did beat their add up time the coaches would do the 10 push-ups.
Not a lot of yardage on this set but a big emphasis on fast swimming with perfect technique. The kids really liked pairing up and racing…and of course stepping up to make the coaches do some push-ups!
Got a workout you’d like to share with the swimming community? Send it on over to [email protected].
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what can i do to improve my timing
I am impressed that a coach would submit a set that isn’t mega yardage and impossible to do. Sometimes I think coaches try to impress others with sets that are way too hard.