Some people bring truckloads of implements to their pool session; others bring goggles and call it good. I’m ambivalent. Whatever suits your style. I'll talk about swim paraphernalia below, but here you go if you're just interested in Week-5 workouts for Guppies.

But I don’t believe in implements for the sake of implements. Each thing Speedo or Finis wants to sell you has a purpose, or should. In my opinion the mandatory things, to get fast, are a goggle of some sort and a timing device. You can mix the two together in a FORM goggle, our partner in the Guppy Challenge. Either way, you have to have these two items. A swimsuit is nice, but that’s up to you and the authorities. And a towel is handy.

Beyond these, what paraphernalia is important and why?

Most folks who swim a lot bring a kickboard, paddles and a buoy to their sessions. The kickboard is obvious and some folks use fins while some don’t. I don’t use a kickboard because of a nasty bit of spinal stenosis that makes looking up hard for me. (Yes, this is a problem for me when riding a tri bike.) I can still kick with a kickboard, looking down or to the side, but there are ways to kick without using a board.

You might ask why it’s important to kick anyway, if you get very little propulsion from your kick. Good question. I’m not the expert on this but I think it’s important that we all remember what a proper kicking action looks and feels like. As we’ve seen in prior weeks and in the videos posted by users, there’s a lot of leg splay evidenced in your kicks, which is a big but solvable problem. Kick sets give you a reference point for what the kick should feel like. (Nobody splays their legs during kick sets.)

Now, about paddles and buoys. What is the point of a buoy? Why can’t you just use paddles and omit the buoy? Well, you could. But the buoy serves its own purpose and before we get to that let’s tackle paddles. If you ask 10 people why you swim with a paddle, 5 will say it’s about strength-building, and 5 will say it’s about technical improvement. They’re all correct. Paddles amplify what you do, that is, they shine a light on what you do well, or badly. We’ve been working, the past several weeks, in keeping your hand near the surface of the water during the extend phase of the stroke, then creating a pulling surface with your entire forarm. You bend your arm at the elbow, keep your elbow high during the pull, and then you pull straight back. When you do any of these things well, you can feel it with a paddle on. When you do any of the above tasks badly, you feel it with paddles on.

Back to the buoy. If you concentrate on keeping your feet together with the buoy in place (some folks will band their ankles to make sure this is the case) it’s pretty hard to swim with bad technique, especially if you’re using paddles. You’ve isolated and accentuated every part of the stroke. If you swim horribly, and much more slowly, with paddles and a buoy rejoice! You have a lot of improvement in front of you.

I wouldn’t go crazy on paddle size. Don’t strap a pair of trash can lids to your hands. Some folks omit the paddles and just swim with the buoy. All the above implements are helpful, or can be.

Like kick sets, center snorkels help remind you what a balanced stroke feels like. This isn’t replicated by bilateral breathing, which at its worst gives you an opportunity to breathe with poor technique on both sides. If you find swimming with a center snorkel really awkward, all the more reason to do it.

The Guppy Challenge gives you 3 workouts a week. If you need an extra credit swim, here’s another one that I like to do. It features a lot of short swims, the first 1200 yards as warmup. Yes, it’s a long warmup. But we’ll need it.
• 12 x 50yd repeating on an interval that gives you 10sec to 15sec rest. Swum easy.
• 8 x 75yd repeating on an interval that gives you about 20sec or 25sec rest. Swum moderately hard.
• 4 x 100yd, repeating on an interval giving you 20sec to 30sec rest. These are swum easy, to leave you primed for the finale. You may choose to do these drill, or pull them. Whenever you swim easy, that’s a good time to think about technique.
• 8 x 50yd swim hard. All-out, pretty much, with a long rest, on the order of 25sec to 40sec. Swim some of these breathing every 4th stroke. This is not a hypoxic set. Rather, swimming fast without taking breaths gives you a reminder of what good body position feels like.
• Choice of warmdown.

Take a minute or so between each set.

The Guppy Challenge Series, in partnership with FORM goggles, thus far:
Guppy Challenge Week 1
Guppy Challenge Week 2
Guppy Challenge Week 3
Guppy Challenge Week 4
Guppy Challenge Week 5