Lauren Brandon | The threshold workout

In training, whether it’s swimming, biking, or running, you will always have workouts where your goal is to keep a strong and steady pace throughout the set. In swimming, threshold sets are great to do because you can work on pacing as well as trying to maintain good form when you get tired towards the end of the set. You want to find a pace that is hard, but that you can hold for a really long time (think Ironman pace).

Warm up: 400 swim, 200 kick, 200 pull

First set: 12x 50 swim (descend 1-3) – make sure you get your heart rate up and are warmed up for the main set- 10 seconds rest between each 50

100 easy

Main Set: 2x (400, 300, 200, 100) on an interval where you get about 5 seconds rest per 100 (so 20 seconds after the 400, 15 seconds after the 300, 10 seconds after the 200, and 5 seconds after the 100).

*Take extra rest in between the 2 rounds

*First round is swim, second round is pull

100 easy

Last set: 12 x 25 – 1 fast, 1 easy – 10 seconds rest between each 25

100 easy

Total: 4000

*If you are looking to do less than you can do one of the following:

-Cut out one round of the main set = 3000 total OR
– Do a 400 warm up, 6x 50 for the first set, both rounds of the main set, 8×25 for the last set and then a 100 easy = 3000 total