Interval Training for Swimming is a highly effective workout.

In our post on lose weight swimming we mentioned that interval training is probably the most effective way to lose weight swimming. It is also one of the most effective swimming workouts to achieve both muscular and cardiovascular fitness.
In this post we will explain:

- How does interval training works?
- When is an interval training swimming routine good for you?
- How you can create a swimming interval training plan that works best for your level of fitness?

Interval Training for Swimming: the basics

Interval training is generally defined as a workout routine consisting in a high intensity work followed by a low intensity one in a repeating routine. This training workout can be applied to any kind of sport or physical activity, including swimming, by healthy people at any kind of fitness level. The level and length of the high intensity part needs to be set accordingly to the goal of the workout and to the fitness of the athlete. From a muscular metabolism point of view, interval training alternates anaerobic (Greek for without oxygen) and aerobic (Greek for with oxygen) workout phases. During high intensity activity, your muscles are consuming oxygen at a higher rate than the cardiovascular system is able to supply. While working in lack of oxygen the muscles produce lactic acid, which is responsible for the soreness sensation during and post high intensity efforts. During the low intensity activity the muscles work at a level of oxygen consumption the body is able to supply.  In the alternating of such workout phases the body creates lactic acid (high intensity phase) and then breaks it down (low intensity phase). During your resting time the body keeps working hard to recover from the burst of high intensity activity
using oxygen to convert stored carbohydrates into energy. Already after few training sessions the net effect of such routine is that the body adapts and improves the cardiovascular system to provide oxygen more efficiently to the muscles building up more capillaries. The muscles become better at working without oxygen so you can workout harder, and the heart gets stronger.

Interval training swimming routine, is this for you?

Average fitness swimmers usually swim continuously at a low level of intensity. This type of routine provides a mild training on the cardiovascular system, and burns a moderate amount of calories per hour. If you’re just starting an exercise program and if you are a beginner swimmer such a slow and steady swim is a suitable water fitness training. However, you will soon run into the risk of getting bored and frustrated for the lack of visible results in the short term. As you get more experienced and feel more comfortable swimming you can start making use of interval training for improving swimming speed and endurance as well as burn calories more effectively.  Following interval training routine in swimming your strength and endurance will improve and you will be able to train harder and harder. This will make you burn more calories and more fat and give you the body shape you deserve.

How can you create your swimming interval training plan?

I hope now you are convinced that interval training is a great way for swimmers to improve their fitness and their efficiency in burning calories during workout. OK, now let’s see how you can include interval training into your swimming workout.
As I have already mentioned in lose weight swimming every training session needs to start with a warm up. So swim few lap, up to around 400 meters on a slow pace getting ready for the real fun to come. Once you feel warm and your cardiovascular system is ready to sustain a higher effort start your interval training routine. I am going to give you just the general recipe to build your routine,
I will post some more specific examples on coming posts. Let’s say you prefer to swim freestyle,  and you are after a general improve on you fitness and body shape, without any competing needs.  You need to know how fast you can swim a 100′s and a 50′s  putting all you have into it. Done that, know that?  Good, now take the time you scored and add 20% to it.  In this way you get the time you would score if you were to swim at 80% of the effort, instead of 100%.  Good this is going to be the target time for you repetitions. Now, you need to decide how long you want to rest between one repetition and the other. The general idea is that you need to pick a resting time which makes you start the next repeat with breathing and heart rate still considerably elevated from the previous swim, but long enough for you to get the next 100s done in your target time. The resting time will follow your level of fitness.
So start with something like 20-25 seconds and adjust it as you get better. The next variable you need to set is the number of repetitions. Will you do 5, 10 repetitions or maybe 15? As you might understand by now, these three variables, target time, rest time and number of repetitions will give you the volume of your interval training set. Increasing your cardiovascular efficiency training means you will be able to sustain  a higher volume set. To increase the training volume you can work on each single variable; you can reduce the resting period, reduce you target time or increase the number of repetition.  To start with keep the number of repetition around 10 and as you improve,  and you will improve fast, work on the other two variables.
Keep connected with the blog for more information on how to develop further your interval training routine for swimming.

Interval Training for swimming: The bottom line

Interval training for swimming alternates swim high and low intensity activity to improve the fitness level of your cardiovascular system in a more effective way than long, low and steady workout routines.  It is suitable for everybody that wants to swim having fun with great results. It has been proved that interval training burns more calories then lower intensity training programs. Learn what is your level of fitness in swimming and improve it performing sets of repetitions timing your effort and you resting time.

If you want to Improve your training check out our “4 weeks swimming training plan” free for you to download here

Keep healthy, Keep swimming.

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Tags: lose weight, Swimming Training