Drag and Drop Set

小臭贝

This week’s Speedo Tip of the Week came to us from Rick Shipherd, head coach of Industry Hills Aquatic Club. Shipherd shares an idea for a set called the Drag and Drop.

Shipherd’s Tip:
There is one set that I would like to share with you. It is a set we have been using recently to break down barriers of the mind. We constantly try to move our basic interval comfort zone downward. The following set and a hundred variations, has helped us do that. We call it Drag and Drop. Let's say that you have a group of five or six athletes who consistently train on a 1:10/100m base interval. Let's say that on their best day, they may make a few at 1:07. Here's what we d

Assume you have five kids, line them up in one lane and send them off on a set of 30 x 100 @ 1:06.

DETAILS:
Each swimmer leads once, the rest leave on the feet of the person in front of them. After each swimmer's turn leading, he or she sits on the wall and waits for the fifth swimmer to come through, after which he or she becomes the fifth swimmer by tagging along at the back of the pack. The result is that every swimmer leads six times; after each lead swim, he or she drops to the back, gets an extra 8 or 9 seconds while waiting for the back, and then resumes the set on that 1:06 interval.

You’re leaving right on the feet of the person in front of you, however, each swimmer imagines they are leaving on a 2 second send off. This way, each swimmer knows precisely when they should leave when it becomes their turn to lead. For example, the third person assumes he is leaving on the 4 to start and then the 10, then the 16 etc. When in fact they probably started a little tighter to the person in front of them (the feet) than the send off would suggest. It is essential that each swimmer maintain the draft connection.

The person leading must work hard to make the interval on their turn, but the rest of the time the draft makes this a 'doable' set. The team concept is intense, because everyone must maintain his or her draft position. The strength and weakness of the set is that you are only as good as the weakest link.

We have gone up to 60 x 100's this way and the net result is 6000 yards swimming at 1:06. You can do this with 50s, 150s, whatever.

We measure success by whether the group makes the overall send-off, in this case 30 x 1:06 = 33:00 (plus 29 x 2 for the drops) thus 33:58.

We have had some remarkable intervals made this way and then we carry them into our regular sets. Good Luck!