GB squad fitness test - by Stapper

the hardest thing we had to do at training yesterday was 25m underwater every 30s for 5 minutes, so 10 lengths. Apparently the elites do it every 25s. Does anyone do this drill any quicker?

yes

just reduce the rest as you are able!

10 on the 30 is an ok warmup, fit guys can do 10 on the 25 and some can do lengths on the 20.... 10 would be a pretty good target to hit.

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it's more polite on the grating than on the subs bench

it all depends what you're training for

if you want to build speed with the sprints - then you have more rest

if you're trying to build fitness then reduce the rest to a level where you're pretty much dying by the end i guess

Many years ago when I was not a fat office bound slob I could do 16 lengths on the 25sec with a rugby jersey on.

Now I couldn't probably get that rugby jersey on.

Try 10 x 100's surface sprints on the 2 mins and time each 100. Total time under 11 mins seems good and under 12 mins seems acceptable.

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Tristan Reynard
Schools/Chair
Underwater Hockey NZ
www.underwaterhockey.org.nz

I'm going to assume that you allow breathing at the endwalls between lengths. We do this and call it an FU. Despite the obvious meaning, the actual meaning is Four Under. Idea is to go 4 as fast as you can on whatever interval you're doing. Breathe as many or as few times as you like on the endwalls, no breathing in the middle of a length. Obviously the longer the interval is the faster you should go. We do yards so it's a bit easier on the body, unfortunately. If you are just starting out with this sort of training it is better to start with a long interval and just make the set. In the early stages, the main thing this trains is the mental part of your fitness. And rather than only make 3 and then give up or fail, make all 10 and work on getting them faster on a faster interval. Success on these helps a lot.

I start those new to underwater training with a set of 10 FUs with the only goal to make all the lengths underwater. They do the first one with 10 breaths at each end, if they make it they do the next one with 9 and so on. Say you are down to 4 breaths and you don't make it within the breaths allowed, then you would go back to 5 and continue. When you have finished all 10 you are probably at a comfortable number of breaths at each wall for you to do a hard set. Use that as your guide and be sure that if you only get to 3 breaths that you don't go out on the first one and do a 1-breath turn-and-go. You will pay for it later.

I've known one who has done a set of 8 on 1:30 so they are doing 32 x 25 yards on :22.5. And I am sure that isn't the limit. I would suspect that going on 1:20 isn't out of reach, it will just take someone putting in the time to get there.

For the non-metrically challenged that would be like doing 25 meters on :25 or 8 FUs on 1:40 But given that you have a bit further to go underwater I would guess that adding 5 seconds to the interval would make it more realistic.

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