You are more likely to reach your swim goals if you swim according to your fitness level and training zones. Performing a swim test will help you train at the right intensity for each workout session. This helps develop specific aspects of your fitness, as well as making sure you don’t overdo it.

Whether you plan to swim by pace, heart rate, or rate of perceived effort, it is good to be mindful of your intensity by using the training zones as a guide,   it’s even more important that you get out there and enjoy your training. ZONE 1 (Z1) Recovery 60 to 65% of your maximum. Easy pace, feels nice and light. ZONE 1, less then 70% of your maximum heart rate,  Steady zone 2, 70- 80% of your maximum. Fairly easy pace. Easy enough so that you could breathe just through your nose if you wanted to. ZONE 3 (Z3) Tempo  80-90% of your maximum. A fairly hard but sustainable pace. ZONE 4 (Z4) Race tempo 90% of you

If you plan to swim by pace, then I recommend swimming a 1k time trial. I discuss the details in this video. Warm-up with 200-400 yards or meters then 4X50 yds/meters build (start slow and increase your pace over the course of the 50) After the warm-up, start your watch and swim 1000 yards/meters as fast as you can at an even pace. Take your total time and divide it by 10 to get your average pace per 100 yards (or meters). This is your “T-pace”.

If you’re not sure if you’re ready for a 1000 yard time trial, just try it and see how it goes. The worse thing that can happen is you stop before you reach 1000 and that is your baseline.  If you 1,000‐yd TT in 20 minutes his translates into a pace per 100 yards of 2:00. This would be the pace you would swim for sets targeting Zones 4.  Zone 3 is T pace + 5 seconds or 2:05 per 100.  Zone 2 is T-pace +10 2:10, zone 5 is T pace – 5 seconds or 1:55. Zone 1 is an easy effort and should be used for warming up, cooling down, and for recovery sets in between harder sets. Zone 5 corresponds to all out sprinting efforts of short distances.

Keep in mind that for the calculations of your swimming pace zones to be accurate, the results of the 1,000‐yd TT need to represent a race‐level effort. In my experience coaching swimmers of different levels, I have found that a 500‐yd TT often works better for those swimmers who are unaccustomed to ‘racing’ longer distances. In such cases, you can find your pace per 100 based on the 500 TT results.