Location: Woodcock Sports Centre Swimming Pool, Aston University
Date: 1st June
4 x Front crawl length, 100% effort, roughly 30 seconds rest between each
About 2 minutes rest
3 x Underwater length, 1-2 minutes rest between each
Total time: 15 minutes
Post Workout Nutrition: none - still running on this from last night. In any case, I am experimenting with one meal per day at the moment - I will blog about this on PNLL soon.
This was a bit more structured than the session I did two weeks ago. But I have come to realise that the way this pool is set up, I will never be able to determine exactly the intervals between lengths - there are simply too many people in each 'section' swimming clockwise lengths at a slow pace. It's the swimming equivalent of a row of cardio machines.
So I kind of jumped in and out of the plodding rotation at moments when I could do a sprint length or underwater length without catching the person in front. This is exactly the kind of randomness we should welcome. The important thing is that I left the pool feeling like I had swum for my life.
I've said it before, but I will say it again - front crawl sprints, if you can do them, can be better even than running sprints.
With running sprints, I always feel like my legs give up before my lungs. Maybe I am not so good at balancing my workouts - my squats or box jumps may interfere; whatever the reason, with front crawl sprints, you can drive all four limbs with maximum effort but seemingly not fatigue any one of them preferentially.
If I had done 4 running sprint intervals at 100% with 30 seconds rest between, my legs would have felt it all day. Today they felt fine. I certainly won't stop running sprints - but will continue to judiciously use swimming as an alternative when my legs need some recovery time.
Was I Allowed to Workout This Intensely Today?
This was a 'filler' workout between my once-weekly Body by Science workouts. I explained a bit about why I am doing BBS here. I have just read chapter 1 of the book. What I am not yet clear on is how intense the between-workout sessions can be. When I get to that part of the book, I will let you know.
Monday 1 June 2009
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2 comments:
I think you're fine doing this ... especially since, as you said, you're not sore from it.
Also, there's some good research supporting the idea that increasing the rest between 100% effort intervals doesn't take away from they're efficacy, because being more rested simply allows you to put more into it. I certainly prefer to train that way with running sprints.
This makes me want to sprint in the pool again too.
I think skill training is also good for in between workouts, at least in accordance with body by science training. Spending an entire session practicing gymnastic skills, naked pistols, muscle ups, and etc would I think work well with BBS, provided you were never fatiguing your muscles, but simple working technique and resting lots between exertions.
I can't swear that this is what Doug McGuff would say, but he's pretty willing to answer comments on his blog.
-Bryce
Bryce - cheers - you've given me an idea for future between-BBS workouts. My Planche, handstand and pistols could all do with better balance and control. And I plan to do pistols for my BBS session and continue doing handstands, so the better my skills the more the focus can be on stength in those sessions....
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