Sprint-a-Palooza: 60×25 All-Out for Speed and Glory

Hey, here’s a question: do you like going fast?

And learning how to maximize your speed, body positioning and overall awesomeness in the water?

Then this swim practice is right up your chlorinated alley!

The set is relatively simple, and low in yardage, but this is about as high quality as it gets in the water.

60×25 swim all out @1:00

Now, the inspiration for this set came from a few different places.

For starters, it’s a slightly toned down version of a ridiculous set that I tried out that world renown sprint coach Brett Hawke—an Olympian himself and former coach at Auburn University—used with his athletes.

That set was a monster, a series of 100x25s all out on a descending interval that tallied up to 2,500m of all-out swimming.

(Ouchie.)

Today’s variation of the sprint-for-an-hour set is one that legendary Olympic and former University of Florida coach Gregg Troy—who also happens to coach one of the fastest swimmers on the planet in Caeleb Dressel—uses with his sprinters.

My own take on the 60x25s sprint

Instead of doing them all straight swim, I tweaked the set a little bit for my own purposes.

Here’s how.

60×25 free swim all out @1:00

• ODDS: regular push-off, five dolphin kicks every time, explosive breakout.
• EVENS: from a floating start; I floated out to the backstroke flags, and from a dead stop would try to accelerate up to speed as quick as possible.

I also did the 25s in three rounds of 20 (no break between rounds)

• Round 1: I used light DragSox; target time of 2 seconds within 100 race pace
• Round 2: Regular swim with no gear; target 50 free race pace +1
• Round 3: Short-blade fins; target 50 free race pace

The aftermath

I’ve done this set a couple times now, and each time it has thoroughly kicked my butt.

Although it left me feeling fairly wrecked, it was extremely satisfying.

There’s enough rest between reps that you can maintain a high level of effort and focus while swimming.

Going through the different pieces of swim gear also challenged my stroke and neuromuscular system to be as efficient as possible under load and with a little speed assist.

You can use the format of the set in a myriad of ways.

For example, if you are coming in on a swim meet and don’t want to drop the whole set, you could halve it and do 10 reps of resistance, swim, and over-speed.

Or you can do the set in the same way that Troy does them with his swimmers at Florida—all the 25s are from a dive and to a foot-touch.

More Sprinty Delightfulness:

How to Develop Easy Sprinting Speed: The “Look Good, Feel Good” Set. Talk to any sprinter about what it feels like to go really fast and they will mention feeling relaxed. Here is a set to help you develop that relaxed, easy sprinting speed.

Train Your Ability to Sustain High-End Speed with this Set from Olympic Coach David Marsh. This set for sprinters is one of the workouts that David Marsh used at Auburn to turn them into a sprinting powerhouse.