#202: Front End, Back End: Training the Whole Race

0:00Hello everyone, welcome back to the freestyle media podcast. I'm Julie, your co-host of this podcast and we are back for our second episode all about the sets that you love, that you hate and that stuck with you forever. Thank you so much to listening already and thank you to Joe Malone for helping get this episode live and running. Today's episode is a conversation with Oli Espinas. He is a lifelong basing stoke bluefin swimmer. He's held British and European record in both individual and relay events and he's also been a coach and he's coming to talk to me about three of his favourite training sets spanning the three decades of his swimming life. Hey Oli, thank you so much for coming on the freestyle media podcast to share your sets, your favourite sets, sets that have stuck with you from the past or sets that you really love doing at the moment. It's really great to have you on the show. Hi Julie, hope you're well. I felt really inspired by the podcast that you and Helen did

1:05a couple of weeks ago now and I just thought, oh, this is a great opportunity to talk about the suffering I went through as a young star and then to moving on to maybe stuff I actually enjoy doing more so now as a master swimmer. Yeah, but I think some of the suffering probably prepared you for some of the brutal sets that you might enjoy now because you've done all the suffering in the past. Maybe it's a kind of right of passage as a swimmer isn't it that we can all learn to suffer in the lane together and it forges us to maybe newer heights as we get older. Absolutely, absolutely. Now for those of you who don't know Oli, Oli swims for the blue fins, the basing stoke blue fins, but Oli, for those who don't know, can you tell us a little bit more about your swimming background and what kind of events that you do and maybe are they different for what you do as a kid? I swam for blue fins from a very young age. So from about the age of eight to nine so now 42 so that's a very long time. I swam at like national age groups and then when

2:07I went to university I was at Lafayne University swam there for a little bit, did a bit of water polo there, bit of life saving there and once I returned from university I was back at basing stoke blue fins as well and then as a blue fin and the masses I have broken breached records in 50 fly, being part of relay teams that have broken European records across in the hundreds, 200s, 50s, meddled European champs and well champs. So I hopefully I've got enough experience to pass my credentials onto those of you. I kind of know what I'm talking about but it might sound like I'm blagging it a little bit at times also because it's just the way it can. So I think who masters swimming? But for someone who's been involved in swimming so long, have you spent some time doing some coaching as well or have you just been purely a swimmer? I think a lot of us will have done some swim teaching just as a part time job when we were very younger but also I helped to do some coaching with blue fins for a period of time and then

3:08I moved to actually being a full time coach for Windsor in about all 2013 to 15 periods. So about 18 months I did coaching with youth level swimmers and masters swimmers so I have got all my various qualifications so hopefully I'm in a good place to understand why I've been hard to do the sets as well otherwise I guess I wouldn't have been a very good coach or student. Do you find that more interesting now as a master swimmer that when you see a set and you've been given a set that you can understand what the purpose is of the set and does that change your mindset into how you approach it as well? Yes and no. So as a child you're kind of like a bit care free and fearless so that sometimes the less you know the better because you just do the set I suppose as an adult when you're looking and viewing the set as a coach and understanding the science behind it you can go and go and all I know exactly what this set is going to do and why it's going to do it do I want to then step up and do that set is a very different approach and I think

4:14there's someone said some of the best swimmers are the ones who have the worst kind of memories. They like the goldfish. Exactly exactly just like Dory. Okay brilliant all right then well let's take a trip down memory lane because your first set is something that you used to do as a younger swimmer. So tell us a little bit about the set what is it and how often did you use to do it and what was your favourite or not favourite thing about? So when I was a child I used to do 50 100 200 400 1500 meters freestyle so when we were thinking about oh what's a set that stuck with me when I was a young star that I probably wouldn't do it now because I'm you know training for a 50 or 100 is very different to training for 1500 meters this set very simple one 20 times 100 meters of two minutes the idea is to hold the best average time and keep your heart rate 20 beats below your maximum. So it was more

5:18important to hold the heart rate and you would see the times change but as long as you held the heart rate it was okay. Yes and no so the idea is to get your heart rate in that zone that's really difficult for like 400 or 1500 so you're going at that kind of I don't know 90 80 90 kind of range for your pace and the idea was to not let the pace drop off so to in order to be successful with that set the idea would be to hold the pace your target times for like a 1500 or actually or faster than your 1500 meter target time but not to the point where you start off the set of going I don't know let's just say if you start at the set of going one five for I wouldn't say back in the day or one four you the idea would not be to go one five one five one five for like five or six and then go one seven and finishing up on one twelve the idea would be to hold 105 for every single 100 that you do within that set so it's in a way it was like kind of an advanced pace set

6:23at the before it's time for we all talked about holding pace and all that but I think the real point of the set back in the day would just be grind it out hold your heart rate go as hard as you can for as long as you can and and as when you first do that type of set you're correct your heart rate will be up there because you will go too fast and too hard right at the beginning in the first two or three and it's just learning to hold that pace throughout and your heart rate will start to gradually grow go up and then when it hurts probably in the round of third or fourth one hundred that's when your heart rate needs to hold and then that's when you need to really learn to hold that time because that's the kind of pressure you will find yourself under in a 1500 or an 800 or in a 400 meter so that's kind of like you see the logic at the time between doing that set to versus now how I would approach that but it was it's a really good set I find to do now for swimmers because you could easily adapt that by reducing the time or increasing the time or whatever

7:24but when we did it when we were younger the three stars we'd all do three stars we'd get loads more rest than the iron swimmers who'd all do hundred Ims because they were training for 400 I am all the 200 breastrowkers all the 200 backstrokeers who would all do it as a hundred's breast or all that no one did it fly you funnily enough so you said that you you would have done this as you would approach this set differently now as a master swimmer compared to how you approached it as a junior now I know you're training for different events now but safe as someone who is training for a 1500 or an 800 and they were to do this set how would you advise a master swimmer to approach this set well there's a couple of ways in which you could always adapt any type of set but this one in particular you can do it where rather than just back to back 21 hundred's best effort you could put in and just think of it as like a kind of fresh old set where you could throw in like an easy swim on one of the 100s and then you could do I don't know four back to back card and then do another easy

8:28and then keep doing that so you've got like kind of four blocks of five or you could do it where you increase the number of hard ones as you go so you could do one easy one hard one easy two hard one easy three hard you get that you kind of get the pattern for that and then you could kind of keep the same times throughout or you could do it where if two minutes is is too easy for you and you just think I want to replicate a 1500 you could of course just do 15 100 straight and my bias would be to maybe potentially take some time down and go to 130 or if two minutes is too hard for you you could go the other way and you go off like I don't know 230 but the idea is getting in the habit of trying to replicate that feeling of of a race and that kind of that hurt that you're going to experience and race if you don't hurt in training I don't believe you'll be able to step up onto

9:28the blocks and perform a longer distance type of set like a longer distance type of race like a 1500 or an 800 if you just think I'm going to breeze for a 1500 or an 800 or a 400 and I've never hurt myself in training or well I've got a lot of things I could sell to you my questions you then is you know you're focusing on holding a pace race pace say for the 1500 but you also want to get that heart rate pushed up but I imagine that when you're doing this for the first couple of times you'll find your heart rate will get high rather quickly and will then just keep increasing and your times will start dropping so is there a point where like what's that sweet spot where you like you hit the heart rate and you've got the time do you then advise people to stop the set if the heart rate starts going up all the time start going down or to complete the set and then hopefully the next time say if you do it in a month's time or in two months time that you'll see that you'll have been able to hold that heart rate and that time for more repetition. So historically speaking

10:31back when I did this in the 90s we just go the straight way through the set and you would learn through your training and experience that you would think about how you're building it up through time and then the next thing you did the set you'd be like right can I hold that pace for longer or can I get my heart rate and play around with it so that I can find the heart rate that is correct for me and then match that up with the pace that's one way you could do it so you could just keep head down plowing through the other option is as I discussed is do like free or do one on one off one on one off one off and you could just increase as you go so you just throw in that easy recovery swim 100 every now and again so you can start with four on one off three on one off and then that way you are kind of training your body because I don't believe in just like stopping I don't like the idea of just to stop and quit the set or anything like that I like to think oh let's just reset here mentally and physically give myself that mini break and don't

11:36beat myself up I'm not holding the pace my own my end goal is to get to there and if I didn't get there today that's okay but just go in thinking about what the outcome you want to have and then work your way back from it rather than going in going I'm going to do this and then see what the outcome is all right so final question then about the set is when we were kids and we would do this set we wouldn't have the fancy heart rate monitors or watches or everything that exists now so for those people who still don't have those because there are some as that don't use the you know wrist watches or heart rate straps or whatever and say you're on your own and you want to have a go at this set in a pool on your own like how would you advise them to do the monitoring very very basic way to work out your maximum heart rate is normally 220 less your age so for me I'm 42 so my maximum heart rate is gonna be somewhere around that 180 to 170 mark let's just say for a argument say in order to do it back in the day which because we wouldn't have had heart rate monitors and fancy

12:40watches when we were little kids and I'd just come in I'd record my time I'm looking at the clock see my time put my finger to my pulse my neck and I would just count the number of beats so at half the six seconds and then just add a zero to that number it's very very simple to do that so it's more the heart rate should be a guide them ultimate guys you want to be looking at is the clock for the pace and time you go the heart rate is just to kind of get yourself in the zone think about am I kind of there or thereabouts yeah I'm thereabouts okay brilliant all right then so let's go on to the second set that you wanted to share which is very very different to that first one because it's now more of a focus on some of the events that you're swimming as a master's right so this is a set that you're doing at the minute so tell us a little bit about this second set and why why have you picked this for us okay so again this one's a real simple one that I think again you we don't need to over complicate it ill it's six fifties max and a method from a dive

13:48of five minutes and this one's primarily aimed at those swimmers who want to do fifties and 100s and that you just do a full send from the very first one you don't have any swim downs or anything like that you just sit in that lap tape and it's one in which you just attack it be aggressive goes fast as you can and if you fall to pieces that's absolutely fine because you're not trying to survive the set you're just trying to go as fast as you can go for as long as you can go and there's enough recovery in their terms of just doing no swimming in which you can attack every single fifty and so the idea of this set is to tolerate the elevated levels of lactate is that what we're going for here exactly that and that's why you don't have to swim down you will feel it in your legs while you just sat there over on the poolside or in the water and it's just to get you in the habit of learning of training your body to kind of buffer the lactate that you

14:52are getting in your in your system and that you can swim through fast when you have that feeling because in the back end of a hundred or even in the last like five or ten meters in a fifty if you're really a thickest that you will learn to adapt to that kind of pressure and then again is training your body to swim fast under pressure and you'll get the theme of what I'm talking about in the previous set learn to swim fast or on your pace when you are uncomfortable not when you are comfortable so now do you sometimes find that people are tempted to hold back a little bit when you when you start this set because you know what's coming because we all know what the lactate pain is like we all know what it feels like at the end of the race so do you do you see that amongst master system is and people that you're training with yeah there are some Sami Savers out there where they will they will send it 90% at the beginning and they will all of a sudden on that last one smash you up by about a second or two on that last 50 and there's a lot wherever has that come from I don't

15:56advise doing that I think it's good to learn to swim fast for when you're feeling fresh don't try and save you for the back end of a race because you can't control what's going to happen on the back end of your races I think because you know there might be more waves in the pool there might be someone next to you that's creating like has gone out fast and and you might think oh and if you then think in a race yeah I'm going to go out fast today if you haven't trained that way you won't perform that way in in a race and I just think it's a very good set to get the benefits of putting yourself in a really bad place okay so how often should swimers be doing this because the 2100 you said you did it sort of once a month so is this one that we were repeating on a monthly basis as well or is this something that you do more regularly once a week I would do sets like this maybe more towards once a week now now you can adapt it ever so slightly so that you could

16:59either increase the rest or you could decrease the rest ever so slightly and you could reduce the number so you could do four 50s or four minutes for example or you could do four 50s of eight minutes or you could do six 50s of like six minutes so you just see that I would do variations of the 50s or I would ever so slightly change it if I'm going for a more maybe more earlier on the season you might just do a 75 followed by a couple of 50s cycle you can adapt the distances but I would do the sets like this not exactly the same but an all out no swim down kind of set maybe once a week or once a fortnight okay and then when you're getting closer to competition so you're training for a big competition like the nationals which are coming up you know in a couple of months would you maybe say a few weeks before nationals like fully suit up and put on your race suit and make it like a real like really like you're having a go at these races but you're doing them five or six I would probably about one month out so three or four weeks out I would definitely think about

18:01shooting up for this type of set put your hat on race hat and goggles on not just your training hat and goggles get you suit or dry yourself off before going in and then really attack it because cyclologically you will notice the difference of all the sudden like stuff's got real there you're stepping up onto the blocks so if you can't go from the blocks you can do this at absolutely from a push as well backstrokeers or those of you aren't allowed to dive in onto public claim but again suit up when it's about three or four weeks out I would say okay and then the last question about this set is more about the technique right so one of the things with the shorter events is that because you're pushing so hard technique might sort of fall apart a little bit and especially as the lactate builds during a set like this so is that something that you want to watch out for you want swimmers to think about during say they get to the tail end and they can feel this choke falling apart a little bit or do you want them to focus on that or is it just pure go go go doesn't matter what your stroke looks like just make you know make it to the end and hurt.

19:02Way over to approach this is is have a goal of what your ideal swim looks like and try and recreate that at the back end when you're under pressure so if you want to just do I don't know your goal could be I'm going to do four flight kicks off the wall let's just say for arguments say when in the back end of my hundred make sure when you are really really tired at the back end of this set you commit to doing your four kicks off the wall when you're tired. Don't not get into the habit of like oh I'm going to do this thing with my technique and my stroke and I'm going to do this and I'm going to slightly breathe differently and I'm going to make sure I catch properly that's not the idea of the set to be technically proficient is to make sure you try and do your skills when you're very tired and do it don't get too consumed by or I need to hit this number of strokes and and this I just think put yourself under pressure think about one thing you wish to achieve it could just be I want to swim you know it could be flying on the eight eight strokes or something like that that's absolutely fine but I just don't over complicate when you're swimming fast okay brilliant all right

20:06so now the third set that you've got to share with us we are going to over complicate maybe not over complicate just complicate lift things up a little bit we're not just going for like 650s or 2100s there's something a bit more substance to this one so tell us about this third set what it's about and why you've chosen it okay so this set is really useful for 100-meter pace so you are going to need a bit of kit for this if you have it but you don't need kit for it but for those of you who've seen you know the likes of a lot of elite swimmers online like Cam Mcaboy and all that and a lot of people using parachutes so it starts off with 425s of one minute and you will do 50 meters max and with a parachute and then the next 10 meters of that 25 is obviously easy then once you've done the 425s you'll lose your parachute and then maybe take a minute you're going to climb out and you're going to do eight fifties now the first 15 with no shoot or no kit or anything like that is going to be from a dive or from a push if you're not

21:10able to dive in and you're going to do 35 meters at your front end speed so your front end speed for a 100 meter race not a 50 the 100 meters so this is going to be fast but it's not going to be a pace in which you are looking to die or anything like it's a pace where you think I'm going to carry on at this pace for another you know 70 or meters of the race okay so that's of two minutes at first 15 you're then from a push this is why the dive is ideal on the first element is you're going to do 150 at your back end speed and then I guess the idea behind that is again what we talked about on the last set executing your skills and then pushing when you're going to be under pressure because you would have like built up a load of like a bit of lap tape from the shoot which is carrying the resistance and then you've been like unleashed on that first 35 meters and then this is going to give you that back end hurt for the 100 meter race then so then that back end 50

22:10is going to be up one minute 20 you then go into two 50s easy to just do a little bit of recovery you're then going to do another back end 50 from a push so you're again you accumulating all that load from it or want to get the idea is I'm working my back end I'm working my back end working on my skills you've done that 50 that's of 120 you're then going to do another couple of easy 50s and then you're going to do one final back end 50 where you just full send and just see what you have left okay so that's the third yeah exactly yuck is the word I would say it's going to get a little bit worse then so we've done all that then you are going to do like a little clearance set in between so this is to bring your heart rate down and get make sure that you recover so you're going to do four 75s you off of about you know this in 120ish pace I think and you're going to go um 75 like at your threshold then you're going to go 75 like mid-air row then you're going to go 75

23:14light-air row then you go 75 flop up and down for it all you then take two or three minutes and guess what you get to do it all you get to do it all over again and the benefit of this type of set is that yes we've talked about a lot about freestyle or not but it enables people like fly swimmers to then just break up that hundred fly so you're not doing that fly and survive kind of stroke because you're getting that little bit of rest and which is it's enough rest to kind of semi-recover but it's not but it's not enough rest so you're doing like we did in the previous sets we're talking about maximum effort this is all about putting yourself under pressure in 100 meters and learning to swim at your 100 meters speed and we can change this for 200s which you may already not ask about I guess okay well let's let's stick with what we've got for now um so how did you design this progression um like what how did you come up with this kind of set so um the coach who does it for us came up with it I can't claim that I um came up with the set

24:20or anything like that but the idea behind this is all about helping your back end because a lot of front end swimmers like myself force end are very comfortable doing that but this is the type of set which helps those front end swimmers get a lot of working your back end don't just think you are like I'm going to survive and die it's like yes you can go hard yes you can swim fast but if you gonna if you're gonna come back fast and beat yourself under pressure learn to do that as well learn to come back fast so I think the the logic behind the set is to get a little bit of lactate but not like absolutely break you and it's very different to like just doing I don't know 100s best effort with no swim down it's to learn to swim back end pace back end pace so that you again we talk about it's all all all pod is get used to swimming the pace you want to swim to swim fast I cannot emphasize it enough you will not swim fast or you will not do your race pace if you do not do or try and do that in training okay so what about the shoot then so the first part of the

25:23set was using the shoot in the dive so what is that targeting is there something physiological that we're hoping to get out of using that yes so the shoot element is going to be working on your power when you put the shoot on it will create resistance for you and force your catch so normally you can slip the water you won't be able to slip the water as much and you're able to apply the correct force to get you through so it's not enough to like absolutely hammer you because it's only like 510 to 50 meters of your best effort but it's kind of that kind of mini handbrake I like to think of it or it's being explained to me it's like a handbrake and then once you've done that you release that handbrake and you can just it makes you just feel like you're flying up that first 35 meters and then guess the idea behind it is get you in the habit of feeling great and we all love that I spoke about I spoke about this with Helen on the previous episode about training sets is that we all just love feeling fast and feeling good so anything to help there especially with the set that looks like it's going to be quite painful anything to help you feel good is definitely a win

26:27okay Oli one last question then to hopefully tie this all together you have told us a set that you used as a youngster 2100s it was long and boring but it got the job done at the time and you're now comparing it to some of the more recent sets that you're doing which targeting a different kind of race I understand but given that your rate your training has changed to suit your racing what about your mindset what what has been the single biggest shift in how you think about training now versus when you were a youngster I think I do it because I want to be a swimmer now whereas when I was a youngster it was just I swung because my mum and dad said no you're going swimming now and I was like I'm okay and and it kind of took me away from spending time for my school friends whereas now I see it as an opportunity to just meet and and make new friends in that's kind of how that full circle moment for me has come that I didn't want to be a swimmer once I got

27:29to university and now I want to be a swimmer so I have a much healthier relationship with swimming than I did you know 15 20 years ago that to me is why we should all enjoy swimming and and and yes I banged on about oh this is the time I want to do this and that's all of it but remember that this is a hobby and it should be fun and make sure that you do things that you enjoy in the swimming pool you think you're going to get a good result for you because ultimately that will bring you more joy absolutely absolutely all right listeners so you've got three different sets here that you can take away with you hopefully you'll find some enjoyment in one of them um and give it a try and if you have given it a go let us know let us know how it went let us know how it felt did you absolutely hate it or did you love the pain and the feeling and the challenge it'd be great to hear how you get on with it um Ollie thank you so much for joining me and sharing your sets with us I really appreciate that and then hopefully we'll hear again from you soon and

28:29keep enjoying the swimming and hopefully you'll get back in the pool again very soon too absolutely thank you three times today really enjoy keep up the good work