High intensity workouts are all the rage right now. On land, this concept is well understood. HIIT, short for High Intensity Interval Training is great for minimizing the amount of time needed to get a great workout in by focusing on pushing your body to higher levels of intensity.

If you want to swim faster, you need to train faster. It’s that simple. Focusing on increasing your performance on individual sets will yield the highest return on your time in the water. Training shorter workouts allows you to mentally and physically engage with the workout in a new way. The volume you do is not as important as the content of the workout. Don’t worry about banging out yards. Swim with more intensity. You can read more about the different training zones used in swimming here.

See Also: How To Swim Faster With Shorter Workouts

Workout Statistics:

Distance: 1,800 Yards

1,800 Yards Duration: 41 Minutes

41 Minutes Focus: Race Pace Training

Race Pace Training Dynamic Intervals: Based Off The Times Below

Warm-Up

A shorter warmup followed by some 50s kick will get the body warmed up for what’s to come but not too tired. It’s important to warmup only what’s necessary before the pre set and main set.

Pre Set

It’s important to focus on some element of technique before heading into a sprint set (or any set). The goal of this pre set is to not only warm up proper stroke technique but also train the body for speed. It’s hard to get into race pace without a proper pre set that pushes your body into higher heart rate zones.

Main Set

This main set goes two rounds. The goal should be to give it your max effort on both rounds, but pay particular attention to how your stroke comes together on round one. For the second round you’ll have a better idea of where your body is at and for the second round through, the goal will be to improve upon the times you went on round one.

This Main Set is intended to be run through twice although it’s at your discretion to run through it multiple times more 🙂

Cool Down

It’s important to let your body recover and cool down after a physically fatiguing set. 100-200 is the minimum recommended to flush out lactic acid that was built up during the main set. Three one hundreds helps flush out lactic acid that was built up during the main set. If you need more, do it!

Be sure to checkout 10 Steps to Swimming Smarter Freestyle and Five Ways To Improve Your Swimming Performance. Download the MySwimPro app in the App Store for iPhone and Google Play Store for Android!