Reply To: HIT vs Traditional Training Study
It’s great to see some current studies being done as it applies to swimming at “race pace.” It seems to me this was more like “swim every lap as fast as you can and do them all.” Maybe I missed something when I was reading it. I was lucky enough to work with a man at my school who was intimateley involved with some early race pace training work, and he was the one that helped me to put a program together for my then 12 year-old. We got great results, but it became highly frustrating for him to complete every rep at his max, regardles of whether or not he was swimming fast/goal times.
The key to me is the self-regulating aspect of true usrpt. It puts much more responsibility on the swimmer, and I think that is great. Now, when a swimmer misses a time, I have the chance for that quick conversation on how they can fix the problem. Plus, they don’t find themselves getting slower and slower as their rest time keeps decreasing because they aren’t completing their swims as fast as they were. Kind of a death spiral!
Do we know whether this study was true usrpt or just repeating sprint sets? To me, it is critical distinction. Having tried both types of swimming, I see usrpt as a much more sustainable approach. Either way, with only 75 minutes/5 days a week, I know our HS team can’t go back to the old way.
