I talk a lot about physiological profiling, and how getting tested in an exercise physiology laboratory can be really helpful for refining your training. However, I also know that many athletes do not have access to exercise physiology labs for this testing.

Accordingly, I’ve put together a couple of calculators on the Endure IQ website that you can use to get decent estimates of things like intensity thresholds using easy-to-access field test data.

In this section we are going to talk about the critical swim speed calculator. I’ll walk you through how to perform the field tests to get the necessary data. But we also include calculators for fat max/lactate thresholds, functional thresholds power, and critical running speed.

Field test estimate of critical swim speed

The Critical Swim Speed calculator needs to best paced time trials over 200 m and 400 m. This can be done within the same session, so it’s important to have a good warm up before the...