Monday 1/7/08 - My Madness of a Monday

Today is my first official Monday back to work in a few weeks. That means a FULL 5 days of work. YIPPEE. It also is the first Monday of the month, so I go and get bagels for my Monday morning swimmers. Most of them really look forward to them, but for me, its an additional 30 mins earlier I must wake up. But its fun and worth it.

It was a full and busy day for me. I woke up at 4:15. Showered and all that and then went and got bagels. Then I coached from 5:30am to 6:30am. That was fun, and I think I gave a decent workout. I am really trying to think of more creative workouts that will benefit my swimmers. I hate to repeat things or copy a workout from the internet, but I will if needed.

After workout I was off to work. After putting in 9 hours, I came home ready to begin "Brian's Workouts".

First up was Legs & Back along with Ab Ripper X. This workout involved squats, lunges and pulls for both the lower and upper body. The main focus for this is to strengthen and develop the glutes, quads, hamstrings and calves. To be honest, I felt like I really only gave it a 80 - 85% effort level. Being that its my first wee and still adjusting to this lifestyle change, I feel that it was just adequate. But the more I do this workout (all workouts), the more intense i want to become. After about 50 mins of Legs & Back, I went immediately into my Ab Ripper X workout. I can feel my flexibility getting better as well as my performance in these Ab workouts. This time around I was closer to doing almost all of them, working them harder and most of all, FEELING THE BURN!!

30 minutes after I finished my dryland, I was off to the pool. Since I am just getting back into swimming, I am playing it smart with my head. Last week was only 2K. Tonight must be at least 2600 meters, if not 3K. Suprisingly, I didn't feel too bad. I really think working out beforehand (lots of stretching) and the other workouts have woken up my muscles more and stretched them out. I never felt really tight in the water. Now this doesn't mean I was fast by any means, but I was faster than expected. Here was the workout:

500 w/u
3 X 200s (50 kick / 100 swim / 50 kick)
4 X 150s (50 back/50 breast/50 free)
Main Set
6 X 200s IM
1 & 4 straight through
2 & 5 break at 100
3 & 6 break at 50.

100 cool down.

I ended up only doing 4 of the 200 IMs. Ken "Snuggles" Bixler had planned on getting out at 8pm (for "dinner"), so I figured it was a sign for me to not overdue my training for the day. With a 100 cool down, it would place me at 2600 meters. The 200 IMs were decent. I was going just around 3 mins for each of them. The final 200 I went 2:55. I am working my breaststroke a little bit more too. Two key things. One, I am keeping my hands closer together when they come out of the water. I am not really doing a wave type of breaststroke, but maybe a tad. This appears to help me keep my hands close. The second and main focus, is my kick. Before I would just pull, then kick. Now I am trying to get more of a roll with my swim. Dr. Tom pointed out that I need to begin my kick as I begin my pull (in a dolphin sort of way). I feel it being faster when I correct it, but I am erasing 30 years of swimming. Its really hard to do and sometimes I feel I am drowning. But with time, I think I have found a key problem that will in time, make my IMs faster!