Individual Medley Session

About 1,500 m, 40 to 45 minutes. Uses all four strokes, which spreads the work across more muscles and breaks up a freestyle-only week. Warm-up: 300 easy, any strokes. Main: 8 x 100 individual medley, 25 of each stroke in the order butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle, with 20 s rest. Then 4 x 50, one of each stroke in reverse order, with 15 s rest. Cool-down: 200 easy. Butterfly is where most fitness swimmers run into trouble: swap it for single-arm butterfly or freestyle and the session still works. Breaststroke kick can strain the knees, so ease into it if it is unfamiliar. Scale with 6 or 10 x 100.