Training is testing and testing is training!

Dear Swimmers

Well, the 10 Week CSS Development program is complete, all that is left now is to re-test and see how everyone did!

If you recall, I hypothetically stated that a good goal for improvement would be 5% over 10 weeks, albeit knowing that some of you would see more than this, and some of you less. The big thing is that it's given us some great structure and something to work towards and that in itself has been very worthwhile.

I'd LOVE to hear your thoughts (good, bad, indifferent) about the program (even if brief) and equally how you found having the goal times to still focus on in my absence this month from the squad. I know the coaches found it useful to have a point of reference for each lane and every swimmer which I hope you could feel whilst in the water.

So we will re-test at the following sessions this week:

Wednesday 9.30am
Friday 5.30am
Friday 6.30am
- within various sessions next week via "appointment" (i.e. for those who can't make it this week but would like to be re-tested).

The test will be exactly the same as before - a 400m time trial and a 200m time trial (separated by ~10 mins of easy swimming / active recovery) - and we shall run waves within the squad if numbers are large to ensure a 10s gap between swimmers as per last time.

I will collate everyone's results and work out your new CSS pace. I'll then be able to work this back and say (for example) if you had a 3s improvement, this would mean that you made it to Week 6 in the program and had ~3% improvement over the 10 weeks. Everyone will be different no doubt - this is not a name or shame exercise, just chance to see how well you did and more globally how effective the whole exercise has been.

If possible have a day off or easy day of training the day before and come set with the view of knocking out a good performance but in a controlled, well paced way. Enjoy!

When I take down your times it'd also be really useful for me to know how many of the 10 weeks you've been able to attend in this last block for my reference against improvement.

Going forwards we'll still be doing a lot of this type of training at these sessions but will probably add in a bit of speed work for something slightly different for the next couple of weeks and certainly won't be asking you to do the monotonous 10 x 100 at the start of every week for a while!

Thanks everyone, see you on the pool deck.

P.S don't panic - just come and do your best, enjoy, and pace yourself out well...if nothing else the 100s at the start of each week should have really shown you how to pace yourself properly!!

Cheers

Paul