Testing Swim Fitness

Highly effective swimming is considered to be roughly 70 percent technique and only about 30 percent conditioning. A person may have a high fitness level for a variety of sports, but if he lacks effective swimming technique, he will be unable to swim very far or very fast. His ineffective stroke wastes most of the energy he puts into the effort and produces minimal forward motion. On the other hand, consider the former elite-level competitive swimmer who has been sedentary for 10 years and is now in poor condition. Though he doesn’t have much energy to spare, he’ll likely be able to swim farther and faster than many people who are in better shape, because the excellent technique habits he ingrained long ago still allow him to take long, smooth, effective strokes that are highly propulsive and waste little energy.

For a swimming training program to be enjoyable and productive, the training regimen must enhance both elements of swimming effectiveness—technique and conditioning. I encourage you to think of this book as a detailed roadmap leading to highly effective swimming—swimming that combines the efficiency of great technique and the fitness and energy reserves of great conditioning. Before a map can help you get anywhere, you must locate the “You are HERE” mark. The two swimming tests described here will mark your starting point on the road to highly effective swimming. They will precisely test, in two ways, the effectiveness of your current swimming. And as you engage in the Fitness Swimming program, these tests will be used from time to time to mark your progress along that road. The improvements you chart after each test will help motivate you to continue. It’s time to get your new swimming suit wet. Your entrance exam is about to begin.

T-20 Swim

 

The idea of the T-20 swim test is to see how far you can swim in 20 minutes. This test is an excellent practical indicator of your swimming ability and is an ideal way to assess both your technique and conditioning levels at the same time.

1. Swim any stroke or combination of strokes as far as possible in 20 minutes. You must count your laps. (A lap in a pool is two lengths, which means, as on a running track, returning to where you started. In a 25-yard pool, one lap is 50 yards; in a 50-meter pool, one lap is 100 meters.) Strive for an even pace throughout the swim. Do not speed up in the last two minutes of the swim. During the swim, if you need to stop and rest for short periods, you may do so. The clock keeps ticking, however, and these rest periods are part of your elapsed time.

2. At the end of the swim, finish the lap you are on when 20:00 ticks by. Note your elapsed time when you complete that lap. This means you will have an elapsed time that is a bit over20:00. (For example, near the end of the swim, you arrive at the wall and the pace clock shows that you have been swimming for 19:40. You need to swim one more lap. When you complete that lap, the clock shows 20:30. Now you are finished.)

3. Upon completing the swim, take your immediate heart rate (IHR) reading. If you have a heart-rate monitor, use the reading that appears immediately after you finish swimming. Otherwise, take a manual heart rate (more about heart rates and how to take them is included in part II).

 

Once you complete your swim, record in your waterproof notebook three pieces of information, as shown in the following example. Note that these figures provide a sample of possible outcomes for the T-20 test and are not a guideline for you to shoot for.

Once you have recorded the information, swim or tread water easily for at least five minutes in order to cool down.

After your swim, you will look up and record your T-20 cruise pace—your average pace per 100 yards (or meters) during the swim (refer to page 206). This is the fastest pace you can swim for an extended time, and it indicates your combined swimming fitness and ability level (in the above example, it would be 1:38.4). Later you will learn to use your cruise pace to determine training speeds and intervals during some of the practices in the workout section of the book.

You can repeat the T-20 swim test often, perhaps once per week. There are three ways to note an improvement in your T-20 performance: if you swim at a faster average pace (T-20 Cruise Pace Per 100 Chart in appendix A), if you swim the same pace but show a lower IHR, or if you have a lower average stroke count (as you read this book and start doing some practices, you will become aware of how many strokes you take to swim a length of the pool). Over the long haul, the best way to make the largest improvements in your T-20 swims is to focus your efforts on technique and efficiency.

After you have swum a few T-20s, you will feel confident enough to do T-30 swims. The concept and execution are the same as with the T-20, except that you swim for 30 minutes instead of 20 minutes. Use the T-30 chart in appendix B to chart your progress in the T-30 tests. See page 202 for a blank chart that you can photocopy and then use to keep track of your T-20 and T-30 swim performances, which will allow you to easily see your progress over time.

 

Be sure to take your heart rate immediately after finishing the T-20 swim test.

Swimming Golf

 

Swimming golf is more a test of technical ability than conditioning, and it can be used as a benchmark to indicate technique improvement over a period of time. The rules are as follows:

1. Swim 50 yards (or meters), counting the total number of strokes you take—count once for each hand as it enters the water. (If you are in a short-course pool and you take 21 strokes on the first length followed by 22 strokes coming back, your total is 43.)

2. At the end of the swim, note your elapsed swim time in seconds. (Let’s say the swim took 47 seconds.)

3. Add the number of strokes to the number of seconds. The total is your score for that swim. (Add the 43 strokes to the 47 seconds for a total of 90.)

4. Take as much rest as you want, and repeat from number 1, this time attempting to get a lower score—hence the name “swimming golf.”

5. Do this four times and average your scores. This is your par the next time you include a swimming golf set in your workout. (Say your scores are 90, 89, 89, 88. Your average, or new par, is 89.)

   

Over 50 yards, better swimmers take fewer strokes in less time than less-accomplished swimmers. In a typical Masters group, 50-yard freestyle golf scores can easily range from the high 40s to more than 100. Start lowering your scores by lowering your stroke count. Once you get comfortable with a lower stroke count, try to increase stroke tempo (how often you take strokes) without adding any strokes. Every time you hit a new, lower score, you have become a better swimmer.

If you swim with others, swimming golf allows people of different abilities to compete head to head. Two experienced swimming golfers can take turns swimming 50s and then compare their score for each swim to their personal par, keeping score over several 50s. Jotting down numbers in your waterproof notebook between swims makes it easy to keep track of your scores. You can photocopy the blank Swimming Golf (SGolf) Performances chart, found on page 203, in order to to keep track of your swimming-golf performances so that you can easily see your progress over time.