Between clients this morning i put in 45 minutes of weight training. 7 shoulder exercises and one chest. Rep range was varied depending on the movement, but worked from 6 reps to 12. Around noon I jogged to the pool, about 20 minutes. My purpose today is to get to know and use a couple new training tools. One is the forearm fulcrum, designed to assist my stroke with elbow placement and the other is the tempo trainer to help maintain a steady stroke.
I did some easy swimming and drills for about 15 minutes and then tried the forearm fulcrum. Found that my hand was not as relaxed as i would like and that my stoke per length was shortening. Decided to put that toy asie and check out some videos before using it agein. The tempo trainer i really liked. The tempo trainer is like a metronome. You attach it to your gogggle strap or slid it under your cap and it provides an audible tone which you can set for a specific time. Whenever it beeps, your hand should enter the water. I started with a setting of 1.25 seconds per stroke and worked the pool a couple laps and then increased the rate slowly to 1 second. I like that it evens out my stroke, but found that 1 second was a bit rushed for the workout i wanted to continue with.
I left the tempo tainer set at 1.15 seconds, focusing on long strokes and swam 1500 meters. Each length was about 48-52 strokes and final time was 37:51. My HR ave was 134. This speed is pretty typical for my long swims. Next week i want to do some fast repeats using the tempo trainer and then follow with a long swim at a faster stoke and see how that goes. The stroke today felt slow and very controlled but i was hoping for a better stroke per length.
The pool deck was chilly as some clouds had arrived. I wiped off with my cool mini towl that's like a shammy and threw my stuff back into my bag for an easy, refreshing run home.