In Any Endeavour

I’m a lifelong swimmer. I’ve been swimming since I was 7, from memory at least. Here’s what I do to get back up to speed when I eventually fall off the bandwagon. You can just modify things to suit whatever pursuit it is you want.

First, I base things on percentage of effort. I like to do a set of 70%, 80%, 90%, then 100% effort, and do that say 4 times. Repeat this weekly and before long you’ll be able to at least somewhat hold your normal pace, from which you can work off.

The next thing to do is make sure you are doing some things at full effort, or at least near there. This doesn’t mean 100%. This means at a pace you can sustain for however long it is you decide to go that day. Do this a few times, and you can gradually build up the distance.

To help with that, balance these longer stretches with shorter bursts at the pace you want to go at. If you find you can’t sustain that for very long, which is to be expected, break it up. Do things at the pace you want to, but split it either into halves, or thirds even, as long as you are maintaining your pace. Then what you do is add as much break as you need to be able to sustain the pace, and then gradually reduce both the number of, and length of the breaks.

Before long you’ll be back at the pace you need, and you’re on your way.