Turbo-powered training: Cam McEvoy's toughest sets.

Serious training means laps and lots of them. Unlike running, cycling or even open water swimming, where the scenery changes and the pursuit of the destination occupies your mind, swimming laps lacks eye candy but some say harnessing that blank mind-space is the secret to turbo-powered training.

Cam McEvoy is a big-picture thinker, so much so he has a diagram depicting the interaction of subatomic particles on his swimming cap! For Cam, numbers, what they mean, what they might mean and what they can teach him helps keep boredom at bay.

"I'm a very analytic person. I like to have everything analysed to the 'nth' degree,” he reveals. “In swimming, it's a very complex sport to have everything analysed [technique], let alone the best race plan or best taper.”

The physics student and Australian Swim Team member was the first Australian to complete a historic treble, winning the 50, 100 and 200 freestyles at the 2016 Australian Championships. But McEvoy’s swim cap got almost as much attention because it celebrated the first observation of gravitational waves that had been announced just two months earlier.

“I don’t think I would be as good as I am without the constant attention to all the details from an extremely young age,” McEvoy admits.

Some numbers McEvoy is very familiar with:
10 swim sessions a week
5,000-7,000 meters per session
2 gym sessions

One thing that helps Cam McEvoy keep up the work is the Tempo Trainer Pro.  McEvoy describes the swimming metronome like a secret weapon that allows him to create really challenging sets.  He explains how he uses it to keep his training leveling up.

The postponement of the Olympic Games’ and delays in selecting the Aussie squad mean major upheavals in conditioning. Cam McEvoy stands to become a three-time Olympian in Japan and only a small number of Australian swimmers have succeeded in doing this.

McEvoy has shared a quote from Australian swim coach Michael Bohl, stating, “The Olympics are simply about creating a predictable result in a very unpredictable environment.”

Here's some numbers that Cam calls some of his most challenging swim sets:

SET 1
18×400 on 5 minutes as:
6 freestyle
6 freestyle/backstroke
6 freestyle/butterfly

SET 2
3 rounds–
500 swim @1:10 base
5×100 @1:10 max effort
SET 3
12×200 every 2nd max and then 40×50 backstroke best effort @:45

SET 4
8×50 all-out from a dive to build up lactic acid @2
…followed by:
36×150 – 12@1:55, 12@1:50, 12@1:45

McEvoy calls on several FINIS products to help him get the most from every lap.  Here's the inside word on a couple of his training secrets...