Workouts, in a Binder: for Swimmers, Triathletes, And Coaches

First, the waterproof pages, small size, and spiral design make this so easy to throw in your swim bag and bring to the edge of the pool. Second, the workouts are tough! 4,000 yards each. We usually swim 1500 yards so we do an abbreviated version of the workouts - having instructions to guide you is 10x more motivating than just swimming aimlessly for an hour. Third, they have various workout "plans" you can follow - 13 and 26 week training programs, each workout also has an A and B version. Lots of variety to keep the staring at the black line on the pool floor interesting. The price can't be beat. Planning to gift this as Christmas presents for my other swimmer friends. 10/10 would recommend!

I'm a former competitive swimmer and now enjoy swimming for a good workout and to train for triathlons. This book is great for former swimmers because it has longer/harder workouts, makes good use of sets, and has sections for distance, mid-distance, sprint, IM, and stroke. I'd say it's not quite fit for a beginner swimmer because the workouts tend to be longer and it doesn't really teach you good swimming technique. It makes good use of different training methods (negative split, sprint/recovery, kicking, pulling, building, descending, etc) and gives you a specific thing to work on with each workout. Another nice thing is that each workout has an A and B option. One option is longer and the other is shorter. Overall, I'm really happy with this book. Previously I would typically write my own workouts since most swimming books I found were more geared toward beginner or non-competitive swimmers. This book is a good fit for me and a great transition out from competitive swimming for 15 years.

I used to swim with our local high school swim team. I wasn't good enough for the Division 1 college team but I still enjoy swimming. I'm used to swimming with a team but without a couch, I was trying to make up practices in my head. This book is great for different practices and workouts. It contains a variety for distance or stroke for example. While you can swim exactly like it says, treat it like a guide and modify it even more as you work out yourself. Pro: Waterproof! Stands up like a triangle / tent so you can keep it upright at the end of your lane. Cons: All the pages get wet and it isn't the easiest to dry off since water gets in between the pages. Then again, I never had a problem with it yet. I also left it in the car in the winter and it also can freeze. It defrosts quick enough :)

I would like to give a rating without stars, just to let you know what's inside in an unbiassed manner. However, I like the book well enough to give it 4 stars. On a good day I'd give it 5 stars, on a bad day 3. What's good: I don't have to think much about what I'm going to do for a workout. The workouts come in two lengths. My time allows me to do the shorter ones. This book is just workouts. There's no fluffy stuff. The book is plastic. Plastic is waterproof, not moldproof or wetproof. I put the book in a baggie on the pool deck. Somewhere, somehow the baggie had a hole. The book got a little wet. I toweled the pages dry. Not ideal, but it would have been ruined if it were paper. I need to invest in some better baggies. What isn't so good for me but might be good for you: The book is divided into five parts: distance free, mid-distance free, sprint free, stroke, and IM. Mid-distance free is by far the thickest section, sprint free the thinnest, and I didn't count pages but the other three sections seem to be somewhat evenly sized. This makes the book 3/5 freestyle. I know most people swim mostly free, but I like other strokes and would prefer to have a larger variety of stroke workouts, especially since stroke workouts for butterfly are generally just a bit different than stroke workouts for the other strokes. People who love freestyle have the lovely option of purchasing Nick Hansen's other publication for triathletes, which focuses solely on freestyle. So I would love if Mr. Nick Hansen would publish me a book that's, say, 3/5 NOT freestyle, with a small focus on a few butterfly specific workouts for people who don't have the stamina to do an entire stroke workout of butterfly but would like to, someday...

This book is my cure for swimming boredom. Plus, I work so much harder with my book "coach" than I do on my own. The workout instructions are confusing as others have said, but guess what, there are pages in the introduction which explain everything. So it's really not that tough if you just take some time to read or reference the instructions. Workouts too long? I modified it myself to fit in the time I had allowed for swimming. I'm six swims into this summer, and I just started using the book after spending the first five swims getting my swimming arms back. My 2,000 yard nonstop freestyle time right now is 28 minutes and I'll be using the book all summer, so I can update on my progress at the end of July. Hoping to get that time down significantly..!

I've been swimming my whole life, competitively when I was younger and now for fun and general fitness. Sometimes I'll race open water, every now and then I'll join in a Masters meet and see how much slower I am then I was in highschool. I bought this for workout inspiration, which is gives. But it does not give ready to use workouts, for my purposes. The workouts are long, average about 4k. When I swim before work I usually only have time for 2.5-3k. I find many of these to be uninspired and somewhat boring, but there are also many that I like. I pull this book out, read the main set, figure out which bits of it I want to use and what I want to change, and I create my workout on the go with this as a starting point. Its a nice starting point, but I had optimistically hoped for more than that. After decades of doing a sport, no author is going to construct workouts the way you specifically like them. My main issue is the length, these are too long for an adult who is swimming for fitness and has a specific amount of time to workout each day. Again, you can edit them to make them fit the time you have. Sidenote, they don't have sendoffs. Obviously, I should have guessed this, how would they have sendoffs that could work for everyone? The workouts give rest intervals, and indicate what your effort should be. I use that to figure out what my sendoff should be.

I love this book, I trained for countless triathlons with this book. It is water proof and the spiral bounding makes it easy to display your workout pool side. It takes a little bit to remember what some of the acronyms mean, if that is too difficult for you to take 5 seconds to look it up you won't like this book. I am not exactly sure what happened to my first one, I probably just misplaced it. I have spring, summer, fall, winter bags of cycling, swimming, running, race, triathlon, etc. gear. It could be anywhere. I checked the pools I train at when I realized I did not have positive possession of it, not to be found when I went back. If I found this book at the pool and I was not feeling like doing the right thing, I may or may not slip it in my bag, it is that good. People ask me about it all the time, I always recommend it and kindly guide them to amazon to purchase it.

My husband and I are in love with this book. We found this book thanks to a swimming coach who recommended this to us. It has been the best purchase we made and it helped us incredibly during our swimming workouts. While we may not always be able to finish all the main set, these workouts are highly customizable and perfect for those who have little time in the pool. In addition, the great variety allows to work on technique, speed, and endurance without making the workout boring. Try it for yourself!