How CSS Swim Training Works

I may be eight years too late (since you launched this clip) but it was a real eye opener for me. I’m much clearer now on what I must and will do to swim faster. I’ve invested in a beeper this week and really like it. I’m going to follow your advice and use setting 1 when I get back in the pool to increase my sprint pace. It’s turned my daily swims on the head. Instead of ploughing up and down (which feels very meditative) I’m going to invest half my daily swim sessions to swimming 100m sets with a short breather in between at a slightly faster pace (my CSS pace) than my longer swim pace. Thank you for your guidance. It’s really motivating me.

Lol, so on one hand I am definitely athlete C type in that my 400 time is like a 1 second drop off from my 200 time.. but on the other, both my times are super slow... 😭

I find this interesting. However, you are using CSS as Critical Swim Speed. An acronym also used for the Combat Side Stroke (CSS) or Combat Swimmer Stroke (CSS). I think distinguishing the variations, the Critical Swim Speed Test (CCST) or Critical Swim Speed Training (CSST) should be the standard to avoid confusion for more common uses of CSS. IMHO.

How big is the drop off between 200m and 400m to be optimal? In other words, how close should the 400m Test Pace be to the 200m Test Pace? What Percantage of Max Speed has the Threshold Pace from Athlete C?

Hugh Jackman !!

Superb presentation! I am swimmer A. I'll be pursuing the CSS training now. Thank you.

Does this also apply to a swimmer training for 200 to 50 meter races because especially with the 50 meter race i think that ur max speed has more importance than ur threshold.

Very informative.cheers

Do you encourage males to train wearing drag suits?

Using the 400m and 200m method to calculate my CSS it comes up with a figure that is 20 seconds slower per 100 metres than my pace on an easy 1km swim. How can this be of use?

How can you explain that I did a test 2 months ago and another this week and did better on 400 and even better on 200 but end up with a slower css result? Shouldn't better result in both distance give faster css?

Very Intresting

de_lake

Ok I missed it . . . how do I use a 200m and 400m time trial to come up with a CSS? I understand the concept presented here but the presentation neglects to demonstrate how to determine the CSS based off the two time trials. Do you use the drop off from the 200 to 400 to estimate the 1500 pace? 

I find this very helpful but have to question the foundation of the concept. CSS being measured and called a threshold speed by using 1500m. 1500m greatly falls short of 1hr all out effort in terms of duration, actually at the World class level, it is a 15min event, swum at speeds far above threshold or CSS. What is the logic in this presentation correlating 1500m to threshold, thanks. 

The vertical axis of the line graph, are the units (unit time)/(set distance)? For example, are you using the seconds/50m time swam in each distance in your graph to compare your athletes?

Thank you for taking the time to really explain why we should do CSS training.  Would it be possible to do a follow up on how to incorporate it into regular training?  

Great video Paul