Freestyle Drill, Baby, Drill Workout

Tonight's workout was the perfect workout for me.  It was all about freestyle drilling.  I know some people don't the drill portions of workouts that seem to take a majority of the workout but I love them.  Okay, so maybe not love them but I know I need to slow down and learn to swim correctly. 

Warm Up

600 Swim.  I mixed it up with some drilling and pulling.  I was really concentrating on keep my elbows up and my stroke long so I was doing fingertip drag and catch up drills. 

4x50's Kick

3x50's Pull

And that was warm up.  There also was 2x50's drill but I took a pee break and when I got back the coach held us to start the workout.  (950)

Drill, Baby, Drill Time!

We first started with some 25's.  A few Head Up Freestyle working on rotating your hips while at the same time looking at your hand entry.  My lack of kicking really made this difficult.  Felt with heads up drill my feet just dragged behind me.

So then we did Drill work which I can't remember but it was all about breathing correctly and head position.  We did a couple of 25's then a 50.  Normally my head goes way out of the water to breathing so trying to keep my head low I kept getting more water then oxygen.  Sometimes I would be afraid to open my mouth and skip breathing. 

Then we did some 6 beat and 4 beat kicking with our stroke.  Starting with 25's then 50's.  This was a tough one for me.  So many things to think about.  Head position, rotation of hips, hand entry, elbows up and now I gotta move my little legs.  Since we were on no interval I was able to slow up and do it right.  Pretty much for the rest of the workout I tried to hold all those things together.  Never kicked so much while swimming in my life. 

After the drilling I was beat.  Out of breath, tired, sore and we still had the main set to swim.  Swimming correctly or attempting to is harder then just sprinting back and forth.  But we only had 20 minutes left of our workout.

Main Set:

4x75's on 1:20.  This was all about technique and keeping with what we just did in our drills.  I really tried holding my technique and kicking.  I was out of breath at every 75 and still was taking in more water when breathing. (300)

6x50's on 45 (150/450)

something here...but what?

4x50's on 45 (200/650)

4x25's Stroke on 30 (100/750)

4x50's on 40 (200/950)

Hmm...I missed something so it was more then 950 yards.  Mostly for me it was working on my technique.  Intervals were generous enough to do that.  Well excpe thte last set of 50's but those were sprint and technique went out the window.

Workout was more then the 1900 I know of.  Don't remember how many drill 25's and 50's.  I was thinking about my stroke and not how many more.  Not that yardage matters as it was more about the focus of the swim to swim correctly.  Anyone can do garbage yardage sets.  Tonight's workout was part two of the Friday nights coach emphasis on freestyle technique.  I may email him and ask how long we'll be doing this so I can arrange my swim practices to allow Friday night swims.  I so need all the help on my stroke that I can get. 

Oh and I created a new category for my swim workouts that I like "Favorite Sets &/Or Swim Workouts".  Mostly I'm doing this for me to go back and look at what I like and what makes me tick.  I've swum lots of great sets that I really liked over the years but I'm too lazy to search for them all and mark them in this category.  But for future workouts they'll all be grouped together.