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Structured Swim Workout Builder Redesign

The Structured Workout Builder for swimming workouts needs to be completely redesigned for high performance swimming in my opinion. Trying to apply what we do for running and cycling to swimming doesn't work. The new Garmin sync for structured swimming workouts just further drives down the wrong road.

Here's what we need for a Structured Swim Workout builder.

  1. The "Units" in the Swim Structured Workout interval would just need to be 3 options. 1) Perceived Effort, 2) interval including rests, 3) interval excluding rests. This helps the swimmer learn how to swim on an interval.

  2. The interval is determined from the swimmers "Base" pace from the Zones Section. (The athletes long distance swim pace per 100 yds/mts).

Interval Including Rests = The amount of time the swimmer has to both swim and rest.

Interval Excluding Rests = The amount of time the swimmer has to swim, with an option for the rest to be specified separately.

In the case of the interval specifications, configure the desired training intervals to be plus or minus “Base.” (e.g., Base plus 10 seconds, Base minus 5 seconds...etc.)

For intervals, configure the workout details editor to allow set blocks to be built as follows:

10 x 100 @ Base +10
3 x 200 @ Base -5

….etc. Can configure including or excluding rest interval. All details have a notes field for ad-hoc instructions.

The top 4 blocks to be dragged would just need to be: Warm-Up, Pre-Set, Main Set, and Cool Down which is a standard swim training workout structure. The bottom blocks repeat step perhaps: Descending Interval, Ascending Interval.

Show all interval-based instructions in workout details with the customized intervals (just like power for cycling) and create a print friendly option so the athlete can print the complete customized structured workout details with sub-total and cumulative yardage and bring it to the pool.

This is how we train swimmers with purpose for performance. I can provide a mock-up if you’d like, please let me know.

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tony shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
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  • Rodrigo Caballero commented  ·   ·  Report

    Creating workouts is a pain because basic functionality is missing.
    This becomes specially frustrating for swimming workouts because we need to interlace different sets, repeats, and ramps to vary the intensity, but those repeat over the course of a workout.

    For example, in the following is a typical swimming workout:

    4 times 25 kick + 50 easy endurance R=20” 25 6-1-6 and 25 easy R=20" 25 6-3-6 and 25 sprint R=20" 25 right arm + 25 left arm + 25 2 left + 2 right arm + 25 mod

    Base Interval
    200 @ 80% R=40"

    4 times 25 kick + 50 easy endurance R=20” 25 6-1-6 and 25 easy R=20" 25 6-3-6 and 25 sprint R=20" 25 right arm + 25 left arm + 25 2 left + 2 right arm + 25 mod

    Base Interval
    200 @ 80% R=40"

    Base Interval
    200 m @ 02:22 sec/100m

    Base Interval
    200 @ 85% R=30"

    Base Interval
    200 m @ 02:31 sec/100m

    ******* Threshold
    200@ 95% R=1'

    Base Interval
    200 m @ 02:15 sec/100m

    Repeat 5 times
    4 times 150 (75 end + 50 95% + 25 sprint) R=30"

    Base Interval
    75.0 m @ 02:31 sec/100m

    Harder
    50.0 m @ 02:15 sec/100m
    ******* Threshold

    Sprint
    25.0 m @ 02:02 sec/100m
    VO2

    Cool Down
    300 m @ 02:51 sec/100m

    I have to manually enter the reps for the technic drills, and for each Base interval with its recovery multiple times to build the workout.

    The following improvements would make building it a lot easier and faster:

    Add the ability to copy and paste intervals, ramps, and repeats in the workout builder.
    Add the ability to drag and drop a intervals, ramps or repeats to change their order.

    That way we could just copy paste the intervals with the intended rest and move it to the right place.

  • Alison Freeman commented  ·   ·  Report

    I started setting up my swim workouts to sync with Garmin, but when you set up the rest intervals as durations within a workout set up for distance, the display in the Library is horrible. The swim intervals are tiny little lines and the rest intervals are giant gaps, so you can't tell anything about the workout when looking at it in your library. Also it no longer auto-calculates distance. As a coach, if I don't know how long the workout is or what the workout intervals are like, there's no way to know what I'm putting on an athlete's calendar. I won't set up my workouts to sync with Garmin until this is fixed.

  • Jan Steinberg commented  ·   ·  Report

    Swim Workout Builder - „Pause“ function

    I compared the usability of native Garmin Swim Workouts and TP Workouts created in the Workout Builder.

    The main problem is the unavailability of „pause“ in trainingpeaks, what means that in the pool after any kind of intervals the next step could never be a pause. Only workaround to stop the hole session on the watch while not knowing the recovery time.

    Second thing would be the possibility to use the „drill“ function which is helpful to deactivate the automatic swim style detection.