11 February 2022
Noone will ever walk by a weight room and mistake me for Caleb Dressel, not with this massive weightlifting routine I did this morning in my home "gym" (e.g., spare room), going 3 rounds of:
30 crunches
15 x 15lb dumbbell curls
15 x 20lb weighted calf raises
15 x 30lb Tricep press
20 x 20lb weighted twists
15 x 25lb dumbbell bench press
20 alternating side toe taps
15 x 25 lb dumbbell rows
But, since late December, I've slowly been working back in "drylands," alternating between a bodyweight workout, a day of PT focused exercises for my shoulder stability and the above "weights" session. It's a surprisingly small amount of weight for real people with real strength, but I am actually starting to feel the benefits both on land and in the pool.
After another busy day at work, I was then able to get back to LA Fitness before dinner, doing my "short standard" warmup followed by an aerobic set. I'm working on building up to doing one workout a week of 30 x 100 at a target pace; from a podcast I heard from Bruce Gemmell, one of Katie Ledecky's earlier coaches (post London Olympics and before Stanford), she used to do variations of this frequently. Just like I'm no Caleb Dressel, I'm no Katie Ledecky, but both inspire me greatly.
Short Standard Warmup (1,050 yards)
1 x 400: IM, kick-drill by 25s
3 x 100: on 1:30, freestyle swim, descend wearing a Finis snorkel
1:12, 1:11, 1:07 ... but I was operating at a very high efficiency, starting #1 using 8-9-9-10 strokes per length (SPL) and then adding 1 SPL each 100
8 x 25: on 1:00 per pair, odd lengths fast IM order, even lengths easy
1 x 100: fast kick with board, alternating dolphin-flutter by 25, going 1:26
Half a Ledecky (1,700 yards)
Went straight through this, using the first small set of 50s to get to my target pace (1:08) and then trying to hold that throughout
3 x 50: on 0:45, aiming to be at 0:33/0:34 and did that
15 x 100: on 1:20, aiming to never be slower than 1:08. The majority were 1:08s, but I saw 3-4 1:07s and about the same number of 1:08+s, but never 1:09
1 x 50: easy
TOTAL: 2,750 yards
Not a massive swim, but the aerobic set got more challenging as it went on. The 1:08 target time was roughly my average 100 from the 3 x 300 test set earlier in the week. Next week, I'll aim to go 20 x 100.