Variety of sets: Warm-up to Challenging

In my Blue Group, an advanced Age-Group group just below our lower level senior group, I do various kinds of sets throughout the season. We continuously do stroke work and skill development throughout, but the sets are what pushes them to develop aerobically and help develop the ability to get maximum speed from them.

There are the warm-up level of sets, these are sets that are more developed on rising Heart rates, and the intervals are not that hard. There is normally a concentration of stroke work in many of these style of sets. The next level is the day to day level. I expect my whole group to be able to make these. On occasion a new swimmer to the group may miss these, but after about two weeks they are able to make these sets.

The moderately hard sets, is where I push a little more. a small portion of the group may miss these sets on occasion. I always talk about trying to be able to make a set that you missed prior, to try to improve their training ability.

The hard sets, are to really make sure my top end is working hard. Unfortunately, the bottom end of the group normally miss these, but again I talk about recognizing the growth in ones training, so many of these swimmers who are missing at one time, will develop to become part of the focus group later down the road.

Then there are the challenging sets. These sets is where I look at what we have been able to do so far, and then I try to take it to the next level to see if my top end of the group is up for the challenge. So, far I haven't been dissappointed where everyone has failed the set.

The challenge sets are developed to make most of the group fail. It is not a bad thing to make them fail on occasion, in the attempt to see what you can pull out of them. These sets are where you always get pleasantly surprised, and find the swimmers really ready to go to that next level.

Test sets are the normal way to test your swimmers with their training progress, but I do enjoy giving them a challenge set on occasion. If growth comes from the occasional failure, then you need to provide them the opportunity sometimes. The top end doesn't get too many opportunities, so the challenge sets I have found can really benefit the top end. The bottom end of groups need to understand that they want to grow and eventually be one of those swimmers accomplishing the challenge sets.

We always try to push them a little bit more. It is not a constant thing, as they need to be able to build their training ability, but challenging can really allow them to step up and be above and beyond.