Anaerobic IM set

During the regular swim season, I always recommend doing one anaerobic session per week (typically we do this on a Saturday) unless there is a competition. This can be increased if implementing a build cycle. The challenge with having regular anaerobic sessions is keeping it interesting for the swimmers while also targeting specific race skills. In my current coaching role I’m an assistant to the head coach and one of my duties is to come up with the weekly anaerobic session. For this session we wanted to do something new, we wanted it to focus on IM, we only have access to a 50m pool, and we wanted to have the swimmers do change-over turns while fatigued and under pressure. So, an IM version of the classic or the nauseator was out, and we could hardly expect the swimmers to go all out and sprint 200s IM. Instead, we came up with this main set. Our reasoning was that it would cover the trickiest turn (backstroke to breaststroke) and the swimmers could go all out for the fly without fear. My personal training went off the rails recently so this is the only anaerobic session on here that I have not done myself, but we were really happy with the results when the squad did it.

As always, I must point out that if you are going to have a go at this session or parts of it then you do so at your own risk.