More Supporting Evidence
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I just thought I’d give a quick update that hopefully gives coaches and swimmers more confidence that what we’re doing is right. I hear so often from doubters that, “Michael Andrew is the only person who is showing results from this and he’s huge so it’s meaningless”.
I, along with another guy, are a couple of masters swimmers that train with an age group club. Our coach has been gradually introducing USRPT but we’ve not fully converted. We’ve been doing USRPT sets for about 6-8 weeks now. We’ve just had the masters nationals in the UK and the results were promising. I beat my 200 back PB by 4.5 seconds and my last 3 50s were bang on my repeat time. The other guy swam an 8 second 200 free PB and again his last 3 50s were exactly what he’s been hitting in training. We both beat our 100 PBs (on various strokes) or were close and once again the last 3 25s were the times we’d trained to.
My best result, though, was my 50 breast. I swam a lifetime best by nearly 2 seconds … at the age of 52. I swam as a national level age grouper and senior back in the 70s and 80s so this was quite surprising! This confused me because we have not been doing any 50 specific training. So where did the speed come from? I believe that traditional training just kills your speed and by using USRPT we just allowed the natural speed to show through. Any thoughts?
PS I should add that both of us having been training with clubs for around 10 years and had both pretty much plateaued until we tried USRPT.
Yes I should have mentioned that too. Both of us (being old!) are a bit cautious on the first half of 200s so we both took the first 50 very easy. My back was about 2 seconds slower than my target repeat time and the other guy was about 4 seconds faster on his freestyle. But For my back this was going really, really easy. The feeling I have is that USRPT allows you to go pretty fast taking it easy which then gives you more in reserve for the rest of the race. I also swam a 1.5 second PB on my 200 IM. My fly time was my fastest ever split by about a second despite consciously and deliberately taking it as easy as possible while still keeping my stroke turning over.
Congrats on your best times! Would you mind sharing how many training sessions you have per week and how many yards you are achieving per session? What sets did you use to train for the 200?
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
I only do 4 sessions a week with each session around 3000m. We tend to do quite long warm ups but the USRPT sets we do are as suggested in the Rushall bulletins except they are a little shorter at the moment. So for 100 race pace we’re doing 16×25 and for 200 race pace we’re only doing 12×50. The intention is to build these up to maybe 20 or 24×25 and 16 or 20×50. In a session the younger ones (age groupers) do 3 sets each on different strokes but I only do 2 sets. Rest intervals are as recommended (15 and 20). Prior to trying USRPT we were doing 2 hour sessions of between 5000m and 7000m consisting of the usual aerobic, theshold, lactate production and tolerance etc.
Fwiw, we are only doing 16 x 25 and 12 x 50 with our swimmers. This is partly due to very limited pool time for our kids. I will tell you, though, that 16 x 25 and 12 x 50 successfully completed with no misses has equated very well with actual swim times. I had mentioned this in another thread in regards to implementing some parametric training later in the season. I would like to increase the number of reps per set during our high school season, but I am concerned that some of our better swimmers would just not get the time to train all of their events.
Rick, how are the 25s correlating to 100 pace? I just read something from Rushall saying that Michael Andrew expects to be 1 second slower than the pace he is hitting on 25s. So if he is going 10.0 on 25s he expects to swim a 41.0. I don’t understand why that would be fore the 100s. If anything it should be less because there are less turns in a 100. But Rushall also said that the time you hit for pace 200s should translate pretty much right to your 200 time. Others here have said it translates more closely to the last 3 50s instead.
Sections is today so there isn’t anything I can do about it now but I have some swimmers who will be very disappointed if this is true. 1 second is a huge number in a 100.
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
Now that I think about it the turns for the 100 and the 200 would be the same. I don’t know what I was thinking. I still don’t know why 25s wouldn’t translate to 100 pace as well as 50s to 200 pace.
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
Rick,
Your amount done is very much in line with our work. We rarely get beyond 20 x 25 or 16 x 50; usually we’ll have a shift in speed long before we get to Dr. Rushall’s guess in numbers that need to be done. What we’ve seen is after 20 x 25 for 100 swimmers and in the neighborhood of 16 x 50 for 200 swimmers doing more kinda becomes a point of diminishing returns and maybe better spent working on technical skills.What do you mean by “implementing Parametric Training”?
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
Billratio,
There’s a problem with the Rushall/Andrews’ correlation in that 10.00 would be 40 seconds plus 1 second would mean a 41 second 100 and his best time is 43.90? There are a number of questions I have with how they are going about projecting race performance. If you use Bill Sweetenham’s 1.00 turn speed for freestyle and backstroke then you would have to add in 3.0 seconds which would be 43.00, and in 2014 MA best time was 43.90? What happened?
Just an FYI, the fastest men in the world turn in the neighborhood of .88, which would be adding in 2.64 seconds for 100s.Please, Please post data from your section meet i.e. first 50 split, 2nd 50 split of 100s and 50s splits for 200s. Good, bad or otherwise. This is the ONLY way to see what is happening with training vs. race performance.
Best to you and your swimmers at sections
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
For the 100, don’t forget that a block start is worth about 2 seconds compared to a wall push off. So you lose 3 seconds on 3 turns, but gain 2 seconds back on the first 25 because of the block; net adjustment is plus one second.
I think the 200 isn’t adjusted because it’s normal to go 3 seconds faster than training pace on the opening 50, ~2 seconds of that being the start off the block and one second just the fact that the first 50 is comparatively easy and you tend to go a little fast even if you’re trying to pace yourself. Even in training, I usually come in a second or two under the pace time on the opening few 50’s of a 30×50 set, even though I’m consciously trying to hold back. It usually takes me 3 or 4 to 50’s to lock onto the target pace.
As for the example cited, it’s presented as a hypothetical. I don’t think it’s meant to imply that MA is actually doing 10.00s in training.
Billratio: Here’s what I’ve got on the 25’s compared to the 100 race. As stated before, I only work with a few kids now, and only one has been at it for more than 8 weeks, so I am just using his results. Once high school season starts, I will have much more data.
By the way, I have adopted the strategy of up and prepare 2 seconds before take off, and they can leave as soon as they are within one second of take off time. So, if we are swimming 50 free on 50 second interval, they go up into their push off position on the “8,” and they can leave on the “9”
16 year-old boy:
100 free: Last successfully completed freestyle set of 16 x 25 was 12.0. Splits for 100 free were 24.84 and 26.08. Accounting for a 1 second turn, he should have gone 26.0 on the second half. I’ll take that.
100 breast: Last successfully completed breast set of 16 x 25 was 14.75. Splits for 100 breast were 29.82 and 32.96. Even accounting for the additional turn time, not sure what to make of this. One major difficulty I experience with this stroke is getting swimmers to train it the way they race it. For example, pullout on the breast is a good 3 feet further at practice than in the race. Swimmer says they are too out of breath on the second half of the 100 to stay submerged that long. Need to figure this one out. It was, however, a pb over his shaved/tapered district time last march.
100 Fly: We have been training the fly with 100 IM training only. We swim 12 x 50 of fly/back by 25. However, we raced it this past weekend to see if it is translating to his 100 fly. Went a :56 and was a :59 this time last year. Not able to really relate to specific training intervals, though, because I do not get the split at the end of the 25 fly in that set.
Not a lot of info, I know, but gotta start somewhere!
Oldschool, my definition of parametric is a combination of your earlier posts and what I have been able to find for free off of the Internet. Man, it’s amazing how people want to be paid for their hard research! What I would like to do is systematically change some of the variables that go into our sets. For me, this would involve changing the number of reps per set/interval per set/and, possibly, goal times within the set. I mainly want to do this to introduce new adaptations that their body needs to make to go faster. I also want to see if I can find a way to train front half speed and back half speed of their races. You asked me earlier where the front half time of one of my swimmers came from, and I still can’t answer because I can’t find any training numbers that make sense to explain the time.
I probably should not have used the word parametric because it seems there’s a lot more to it, but I associated it with changing the controllable variables during a workout. Would love to learn more, but I just can’t find it.
Rick,
Funny how those Russian are!You are on the right track with your adjustments with regards to training.
Do you time each repeat or do you have them get their own times?
You have the answer for the front half pace 🙂 take your 12.0 x 2, that’s a 24, figure in Stdev of .31 (from my data) and he’d be out in 24.62, so close. It also gives you the 100 breast 1st 50.
Suggestion: if you would have him go a set of 4 x 50 on 1:30/2:00 either free or breast and record each one, figure the average and standard deviation. Please if you would then post his avg and Stdev
I’ll help you with the Parametric System. Just not on this forum. Email recondoc@ionet.net
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
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