How do you coach IM? You’re clearly doing something right.

Question

Bob Bowman · Answer

Question is, how do you coach IM? And it's debatable if I'm doing something right, but we've had some success with it. Thanks, Brett. I believe in a couple things with the IM. Number one, you have to be technically good in all four strokes, so we're constantly trying to work on that aspect of performance. Number two, you need to touch all the bases and energy systems. So you need to have endurance, you have to have speed, you have to have lactate tolerance, you have to have lactate production. All of these things go into an IM swimmer, so you have to have a balanced program that touches on all of those things during the week as well as resistance training, power training. I think those things are important. I-- as an IM coach-- believe in giving them something they can sink their teeth into through the heart of the season, so I tend to touch every stroke in a major way-- except maybe butterfly unless they're a 200 flier-- one day a week. So we'd have one major backstroke set, one major breaststroke set, one major freestyle set. Then we would have an IM day, we would probably have a day where they do their best stroke-- which, if it's back or breast, they get two days-- if it's butterfly, they get a full day of butterfly. And then I tend to give small doses of butterfly throughout the week all the time anyway. I do that for everyone. I just think it makes you a better swimmer. So I think you have to factor into your plan, not only the energy systems, the type of resistance work you want to do, but also how you touch on each stroke each week to balance out the complete swimmer. And that's the challenge of IM training, and, I think, what makes it really fun.

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"How do you coach IM? You’re clearly doing something right. "