Workouts

The Workout Manager feature of TM is a coaching tool that reduces the time to develop effective workouts by 50% or more and provides training paces based on scientific studies.  The goal is to help coaches be more creative, more effective, and more efficient in their coaching style.  No prior computer experience is needed!

NOTE: The Workout Manager feature of TM and associated reports are a product Option for TM.  Please click Here for information about options.

The Workout Manager feature of TM is really three products in one.

These major features of Workout Manager enable you to:

•Create and print simple or complex workouts in minutes

•Save an unlimited number of workouts

•Analyze any number of workouts for percentages of energy use, percentages of swim, kick, pull, and drill, percentages done in each stroke/drill, total distance done over any period of time, and stress levels over any cycle.

•Include several pages of notes/commentary with each workout. The coach can easily "publish" his/her season.

•Print any number of workouts in 1 or 2 column logbook form with or without notes and with or without energy levels and stroke categories.

•Memorize an unlimited number of workout sets for instant workout creation.

•Import/Export workouts from one computer to another.

•Receive instant "help" from the software.

•Predict training paces at various energy levels using scientific methods.

•Custom design test sets and record results for every athlete.

•Predict meet times from standard test sets.

•Track athletes' attendance and weekly yardage.

•Electronically send up to 10 workouts (one per lane) to the Colorado Time Systems 4000/5000/6000 Pace Clock or the Daktronics Omnisport 2000/6000 Pace Clock.

Workout Manager was designed around four key concepts.  First, workouts need to be produced quickly, and so the concept of two libraries of workouts was conceived.  One library includes your actual daily workouts, and the other library includes your favorite workouts which we call your library of model workouts.  The idea of the model workouts is that once you have created twenty or thirty models for your senior distance group, for instance, you can page through them on the computer screen, select one that looks good for today, save it over to your daily library as the workout for today, add one or more lines and change or delete any lines.  The time to find a model, save it to the daily library, make changes, and print it, should be no more than a couple of minutes.

The second concept of Workout Manager is based on the reality that, on most teams, one coach is responsible for several ability levels at the same time.  It is also a reality that most athletes are not self disciplined enough to be able to do a workout "on their own" without the coach's close monitoring.  Therefore, in order to be most effective, a coach needs to be organized with several workouts that are not only parallel in nature but also match the ability levels for each lane.  It is imperative then that Workout Manager allow you to be able to create several parallel workouts quickly.  The idea is to first create the fastest group's entire workout either from a model or from scratch.  After the first one is saved, then use that newly created "structure" to create a parallel workout for the second fastest group.  This is where the power of Workout Manager comes into play.  By using the right mouse button when called for, a set of 20 x 100 on 1:05 can be converted to 18 x 100 on 1:12 instantly.  Both sets finish at the time, thus giving the one coach the ability to "control" the different workouts. (Click Here for information about  "Set Permutations")  In addition, an analysis of energy usage, stroke category, and type of work percentages are available anytime by simply clicking on the Analysis (F9) button.  After creating the second workout, it is saved, and a third parallel workout is created from the "structure" of the second one.  This can go on for as long as needed, and then all the newly created workouts are printed consecutively either on the same page or on separate pages, one per page.

The third concept of Workout Manager has to do with being sure the yardage you desire will be completed in the allocated workout time.  For example, suppose that you have one hour and 45 minutes to train and you want to get in about 5500 meters.  As you are creating a workout, wouldn't it be nice to know what the current total distance is and what the current finish time is as you are adding, deleting, or changing sets? Workout Manager does these computations for you automatically and instantly as you make changes to the workout.

The fourth concept of Workout Manager is that energy levels assigned to workout sets are useless without also being able to predict a "training pace" for each athlete doing that set.  Training paces are provided easily and quickly using the training module which links a athlete's best rested and unrested times to several well-tested pace predictors.  Probably the best pace predictor is the module for the modified T-30 which gauges anaerobic threshold speed for all strokes, whether swimming, kicking, or pulling.  Using this speed, 6 pace charts can be printed specific to each athlete, 2 for aerobic speeds, 2 for anaerobic threshold speeds, and 2 for MaxVO2 speeds.