u/LightVortex888

I play a team sport twice a week and I can usually add one hill or acceleration session on a free day. The hills feel useful for early acceleration, but I am not sure whether that alone keeps real top speed from disappearing over a long season.

If you have kept sprinting sharp while also doing football, rugby, or similar: was one quality speed day enough, or did you still need a short flat top speed session somehow? How short can that top speed piece be and still count, and what do you drop first when the legs are tired from matches?

Same weekly metres, mid-season. The first 100 of my 200 free is honest. On the last 50 the stroke gets long and late and the kick quits.

I do not want a bigger threshold set piled on the same week. If you kept the distance flat and the last 50 still moved, what did you change: a few race-pace 50s with full rest, a short kick set, or a breakout you had dropped? And what did you add that only made the next day heavy?

This is not a warm-up question, and it is not about coming back from a month out.

Mid-season meet coming up where I still want to race a 100 free clean, not invent a full taper. My usual warm-up has grown into a long checklist (easy, drills, a few race-pace scraps, underwater, kick). On race morning it feels like I'm already spending the race before the gun. If you've raced mid-season without a full taper, what did you actually keep in the warm-up for a 100 free, what did you cut without feeling cold or foreign in the water, and how long before the heat do you like to finish? Especially curious what protected the race underwater feel without another full kick set.

Looking at a mid-season meet where I still want to race, but the last block has a lot of underwater and kick work baked in. I’m trying not to either (a) keep thrashing kick volume into race week and show up with dead ankles, or (b) drop it so early that the race underwater feels foreign. If you’ve tapered or “soft-tapered” mid-season before, when did you actually start cutting underwater/kick volume — and what did you keep (e.g. short quality 15s) versus drop (long broken kick sets)? Especially curious what protected calves/ankles without losing the race habit.

I’m looking at a short window back into training after roughly a month with almost no pool time. Endurance and feel for the water both dropped, and I’m trying not to turn the first week into a crash set just to “catch up.” If you’ve come back from a similar gap before a meet or time trial, how did you sequence the first 7–10 days — easy continuous swimming first, technique + short race-pace pieces, or something else? What did you deliberately not do early (hard fly volume, max efforts every session, etc.)? Especially interested in what protected my calves/shoulders while the body re-adapted.