Marlin
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I do some all out 25 sprints to prepare for the 50 but I never do anything in between 100 pace and all out speed.
I looked back at the papers. Another reason for the short rest is that the aerobic system continues to operate maximally while the stored oxygen and phosphates replenish during the rest period. Since the next repetition begins while the aerobic system is still operating at maximum “some systems don’t have to be reawakened.” This makes sense to me because a lot of times my first few strokes after a failed rest period feel kind of awkward. With the aerobic system operating at maximum, the body learns how to utilize energy better at a particular velocity.
My problem with breaststroke is that I don’t think I ever reach maximum aerobic capacity in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still tired on the fails and breathing a little bit hard but I’m definitely not at maximum aerobic capacity like I am on free or fly. I fail to reach the 18.5 pace more for anaerobic reasons than aerobic. At the same time, going on more rest is going to be using different systems than the actual race. With 30 seconds rest, more recovery to the aerobic system is going to be paid back and you will be using way more atp longer into the set and systems that just aren’t going to be there after the first lap of the race. I’m worried about the technique adaptation. I think there is some crossover between work done on other strokes. I’m still getting maximum aerobic work done on free and fly so I don’t think I am totally going to kill my aerobic level right now by going on extra rest. I never swim backstroke but I bet if I had done a 100 back time trail each month I would have seen a steady drop in time. Not as good as it could have been if I trained for it because of technique, but there has to been some kind of cross over from the increased cardio ability I gained from the other strokes. I’m just worried about the technique carry over to the second half of a 100 breast while using a little bit different energy system in practice.
Rushall does mention that in rare cases as much as 30 seconds rest should be tried so that the swimmer can get enough reps in for a training effect to take place. He refers to the drop dead sprinters for this extra rest. This seems geared more towards swimmers that get aerobically tired really fast. From a general physical fitness standpoint, I feel like I am in really good shape right now. Out of curiosity I took my resting heart rate about a month ago and it was in the 40’s. I was concerned at how low it was so I bought a blood pressure cuff to make sure my blood pressure wasn’t too low. Usually my resting heart rate is about 43 and I hit 39 a week ago. I read that as long as you aren’t dizzy or tired all of the time you are probably good. I’ve been doing USRPT for a year, only a bunch of 25’s for 100’s and occasional 25 sprints. I thought you had to be a marathon runner or a cyclist doing hours of aerobic work per day to pull off a sub 40 heart rate.
It looks like pace correlates even with the extra rest. I think I am going try doing 25’s on 50 for breast and see how it goes. I need to do something because I have been stuck on breast for a couple of months while I have made progress on free and fly. Right now I am on 18.5 25 meter pace or about 17.5 without the tempo trainer delay. That’s a 110scm or 103 in yards. I have done my breast on 15 seconds rest for a few weeks but I got tired so fast with only 15 seconds. For most of the time I have done a 1:1 ratio, so 18-19 rest. For the past couple of months I have been doing them on 23.15 rest and usually I can’t get more than 8 reps before the first fail. The best I’ve done is 13 before the first fail but some days I start failing on the first 6. The thing that frustrates me about breaststroke is that a lot of the times that I fail it is because of muscle fatigue rather than oxygen debt. It sort of like doing as many pull ups as you can. Heart rate is up and breathing is elevated but it not like you are totally winded. Even though I try as hard as I can to make as many reps as I can, I’m not even that tired on a fail sometimes. It’s the same with less rest too. I’m sure if I went a straight 20 reps trying to hold the best average, I would be winded like I am in fly or free.
When I did my breaststroke before fly, I felt like I got very little reps on the actual race pace tempo. Coming in fresh, a lot of the reps would be long and easy but as soon as I would have to push it to make it, my kick power fades and I fail very soon after. If I started off the set at my race tempo, I would be way under the interval. I don’t know my exact race tempo or if this math adds up but if my race tempo is 1.15 and I did a USRPT set and my first fail was at 14, reps 1-4 would be a tempo of like 1.4, 5-8 1.3, 9-12 1.2, 13-14 1.15. I would hit 18.5 each lap, but I am only at my race tempo for a couple of laps. If I swam at a 1.15 right off the bat I would be way under the interval. Doing breast after the fly kills my easy speed but I get more reps at actual tempo but at the same time I haven’t progressed with this.
If I was to have a side by side video of the third lap of my 100 free/fly/breast with a USRPT set of each stroke, most of the reps on free and fly except for the first 2-4 would look identical to the race footage. The breaststroke would only synch up with a couple of the repetitions closer to failure. Most of the USRPT breast reps would have slower tempo and longer distance per stroke even though the time would be the same. I am afraid with extra rest it is going to force me into a slower than race tempo. I am having trouble figuring out how I get over this and the failure due to muscle fatigue.
Bill,
I know that you use more rest than the strict USRPT protocol. I always swim fly and breast on the same day. I used to always do breast first and then fly. Over the past couple of months I have switched to doing fly first because I want to put more emphasis on fly and I want to be totally fresh for it. For whatever reason doing fly after breast wasn’t a big deal but doing breast second, I just can hold pace for very long. I remember that you posted some of the training sets in your sectional results thread from last year. I looked back at that to see how much rest you gave the breaststrokers and it looks like they were doing the 25’s on 50. With that much rest, how closely did the practice pace translate to the race?
Also, the reason I’m posting this here is that you mentioned the flyer that went 1:02.4 at sectionals last year. I noticed in the sectionals thread that you said she was going 1:06-1:07’s for most of the year. If she is already going 1:01 this early, that is very promising for the end of the year. I’m curious if you are doing anything different with her this year compared to last year. What were her splits in the 101 swim? What kind of sets is she doing right now and what are her paces, reps made, and rest intervals right now?
USRPT promotes the conversion of type 2b muscle fibers to type 2a muscle fibers. Type 2 muscle fibers are the fast twitch fibers with b being anaerobic and a being oxidative. When glycogen is used by the type 2a fibers, it breaks down to water and carbon dioxide, not lactate like in the type 2b fibers. Rushall explains that lactate build up does not reach maximum levels as it does in some other sports and USRPT is sufficient to deal with the amount of lactate produced in a race.
From page 22 of bulitin 39 – “Maximal lactate capacities are not taxed in swimming races and so need not be trained with many “lactate sets” for maximal lactate tolerance capacities. [When maximal lactate tolerance is reached in an individual has not been explained and so such training is purely guess work.] The stimulation of the lactacid energy system with more appropriate and beneficial race-pace training is likely to be more than enough and would not demand specialized overload training.”
He also says that abnormally high levels of lactate can be explained by improper pacing. Going out too hard can start producing lactate early and build up too high before the finish causing you to die at the end of a race. As long as the swimmer swims at the proper pace that he trained at, he should be fine as long as he paces/splits the race properly.
Another reason that USRPT doesn’t advocate lactate tolerance sets is that it interferes with neuromuscular patterning. In a lactate tolerance set you are going to be swimming below race pace for part of the set. These sets will also produce some accumulated fatigue that will take longer to recover from. This means that you won’t be able to get in as many actual race pace repetitions latter in that practice and in the following days. You can’t form neuromuscular patterning from swimming at varying speeds or if you are too exhausted to get in an adequate amount of actual race pace repetitions.
Recently I have been watching a lot of video trying to figure what tempo I should be at in my races. I was worried that I had too high of a tempo but I actually found out that some of my tempos were too slow. 100 fly in particular. I figured out my breakout times and stroke counts and calculated my tempo. I watched a ton of video from the elite swimmers to figure out what their tempos were. I was surprised about what I found. For example, everyone knows Michael Phelps as having a long stroke with great dps but if you calculate the tempo it’s actually pretty fast. At nationals in his 100 fly he took 18 strokes on the second 50 at a time of 26.2. He broke out at 6.2. If you time it from when he initiates his first stroke to when his hands hit the water on his last stroke it’s about 19.9. 19.9/18 = 1.105. A tempo of 1.10 faster than you think once you get in the pool and swim at that rate yourself. Phelps certainly doesn’t have the fastest tempo but 1.1 is still not very long. It’s a quick turnover. I wish I wrote this stuff down but I think I remember most of it pretty well. Sjostrom was around 1.05 for most of her 100 in Kazan and even a little bit faster in short course. Worrell was close to 1.00 on her scy record. The mens ncaa is super high tempo and a lot of people are actually under 1.00. Michael Andrew was 1.1 on his 46.95 yards swim and about 1.15 in LC.
For my 100 fly I decided that I wanted to hit a tempo of 1.15, give or take a few hundredths. At an interval at 16.5 I usually break out a little under 4 seconds, 16.5-3.85= 12.65. Tempo’s by stroke count are 10-1.265, 11-1.15, 12-1.05. After the first few I settle in to 10 and try to hold 10 strokes as long as I can. After I can’t make it in 10, I have to increase tempo to 1.15. Holding this tempo is almost self-regulating because I can only make it in 12 strokes every once in a while, the tempo is too fast for me. If I’m holding 1.15 and in the middle of the lap I feel that I am slowing down, increasing stroke rate won’t work because there is no time to hit 12 strokes. I have my tempo trainer set to 8.25 and usually my hands hit the water after my 4th stroke right after the beep at 8.25. So, if I decide to increase my tempo to try to hit 12 strokes I have to increase my tempo to 1.03 to make it to the wall in time in 12 strokes. If I increase to something like 1.08, there is no time to get the 12th stroke in on time and 11 strokes will only get me to 23 meters or something like that. Therefore, I am forced to try to get as much DPS at 1.15 to make the interval. I have to think really hard about technique and how to get the most out of my stroke at 1.15. Recently, I found that my hand entry kick tends to weaken as I get tired. Once I figured out that I was doing that, I focused really hard on maintaining my power on that kick and I was able to eek out some more reps while exhaustion was setting in. Similarly, in breaststroke my hand recovery tends slow without me realizing it. Since I have to focus really hard on maximizing dps at a particular tempo, I am able to figure out portions of my stroke that I can improve. I kind of have a new outlook on a failed rep. I look at it more as distance covered rather than time. On the fails I still like to be on tempo at least, I don’t like getting caught by the beep before my hands hit the water on the 11th stroke. I like to look at it as failing because of decrease in DPS rather than not getting to the wall in time.
Going back to Phelps 100 fly tempo. A lot of people think that the reason Phelps is so good is that he is a physical freak, which he is, but what really puts him over the top is that he is a technical master. Especially in the 100 fly. Honestly, I don’t think his is the most physically equipped to be the best 100 flyer in the world, but his amazing technical skills allows him to surpass everyone. Every elite swimmer and probably every college swimmer can take 18 strokes at a tempo 1.1. They may finish 18 strokes at 95 meters, but that pace and tempo is something that a lot of people can do. Phelps is the only person on the planet with enough DPS at 1.1 to make it to the wall in the last 19.9 seconds. Let’s say someone wanted to take less strokes and be even more “efficient” than Phelps. If someone wanted to swim at 1.2 so that they could make it to the wall in less strokes and they broke out at the same point and at the same time as Phelps did, on 17 strokes they would make it to the wall in 20.4. No matter how smooth their stroke looks, no matter how pretty or effortless the stoke looks, it is mathematically impossible to beat Phelps with that tempo on 17 strokes. It would take 16 strokes to beat him at that tempo which might be impossible. I think a lot of people make the mistake about worrying too much about the eye test rather than what is actual happening in the stroke. A couple days ago when I was at practice, I was watching an age group team swimming fly. Their strokes did look smooth and pretty good overall but I don’t think one person was swimming below 1.3. That’s too slow even for the 200 fly. Katie Mcglouthlin swims a 1.15 for most of her 200 fly.
I now believe that stroke count is totally irrelevant. Another example is Adam Peaty’s 100 breaststroke. He has a super high tempo. I’m sure there are lots of people that could take 46 strokes in 57.92. Everyone except for Peaty would come up short of 100 meters. Like Phelps, Peaty’s DPS at his particular tempo is the best. Even though he has a high stroke rate, he still has great DPS even though most people don’t see it that way.
I don’t think USRPT automatically conditions you to swim a high stroke rate. Michael Andrews breaststroke tempo is on the other end of the extreme as Peaty’s tempo. Katie Ledecky excels in distance free at a fast tempo. Sun Yang dominates with a super slow tempo, almost 1 second. It’s about finding that sweet spot. For me personally, I found that using a fast tempo for breaststroke works for me the best while using a slower tempo for freestyle works better. When I researched 100 freestyle tempo’s I found that it’s like a bell curve with the range of .55-.65. Most swimmers fall around .6 with a few on .55 and .65. Some examples at Adrian-.6, Mcevoy-.59, Zetao-.58, Dressle-.55, Cate Campbel- .65, Magnussen- .65, Josh Davis 45.1 after training USRPT-.6. James Magnussen was a .65 when he went 47.1 but ever since that swim he has had a faster tempo closer to .6 and has not been that close to 47.1 ever since. .65 is definitely his sweet spot while other swimmers like Adrian sweet spot is .6. If he had a slower or faster tempo he would have a slower time. It’s all about finding that sweet spot that works for you. After studying this, I decided that I wanted to have a tempo of .6 or my 100 free. I can get there but can’t maintain it at all. .6 is 20 stokes in 12 seconds, it’s really fast. I settled into about .64 and have been improving nicely ever since. I was stuck for a while because I was only worried about keeping as low a stroke count as possible and my tempo was to slow to reach higher speeds.
Gary, I went back and watched your 400 free that you posted on here. It looks like your tempo in the middle of the race is around .73-.78 which really isn’t that high of a stroke rate. If you cut yourself off at 16 or 17 strokes, that is a drastic change it tempo which may be too slow for you. I did time conversion of your 400 free and I figure you are doing 35.00 for 50’s yards at 500 pace? If thats the case, if you take out the time for underwaters and turns, it’s about 15.00 per lap if you take out the underwaters and turns. That would make your tempo 15/16=.9375 and 15/17=.88. That may not be totally accurate but even if you have really long underwaters 13/16=.81. Either way, that is a radical change from your actual race tempo. I wouldn’t cut yourself short with strokes. I would try to hold a low tempo as long as you can and add strokes until you reach your target tempo. I think you’ll find that you won’t be able to sustain a higher than race tempo for very long. In the middle of your race you are around a 36.5 from first stroke to the last stroke before the turn. If you wanted to go on a slower tempo like .85 and still go 36.5 you would have to do it in 43 strokes. That seems like a lot of ground to make up. A more logical route might be keeping the same tempo but getting one less stroke per lap by improving DPS. If you think about it all you need is about 1 inch more dps per stroke to reduce your stroke count by 1 stroke per lap. 1 less stroke means you get there .75 faster. .75 x 8 laps = 6 seconds. I hope this helps. I can’t speak from experience when it come to the 400/500 but whatever the race is, the combination of tempo and dps is more important than stroke count.
I was disappointed with 3. My turn was a little sloppy which always happens as I start to get tired. I failed on 3 more because of sloppiness rather than fatigue but fatigue would have got me on number 4 for sure. I thought I could get 6 going into the set. I figured doing 25s to the feet for the second and third fail would be better because if I continued with the 50’s would have been make, fail, make, fail. I’m not sure how the 25’s would have been because I stopped the set. 22.5 seconds rest for 100 pace 50’s might be too much to handle even after multiple attempts.
Every time I have done the 100 free my last turn and sometimes second turn have been absolutely horrendous. I did one in practice a few weeks ago and it’s still bad. The turns are always slow and sloppy. On my last breakout, my first breath is what seems like a three second inhale as if I just did a breath holding contest. This kills all momentum. But what’s weird is I’m able to regain my pace after a couple strokes and finish strong. It’s not like the piano drops at 75 meters. I just can’t perform a decent turn as I start getting a little bit tired. Nothing about the 25’s simulates the breakout coming off the third turn. Even approaching the third fail, with at least 15 rest before each lap, breath control on the breakout is always comfortable. Every time I do a 100 free, coming off of the third wall is like a shock to my body. I definitely need to do something about it. I think if I was doing 50’s at 200 free pace on a regular basis, my turns would be really good and would also translate to the 100 turns but I don’t plan on training for any 200’s.
My pool has the 15m mark clearly marked on the lane lines. I was thinking about trying some 35’s or 40’s at 100 pace just so I can get some more reps with turns in. It may be a little tricky to judge a make or a fail. Since I use a tempo trainer, I don’t have to turn my head to look at a clock. I can just swim until the beep, look at the lane line really fast, and then swim easy to the wall. It may not be 100 percent accurate but I think I can get close enough.
I tried this yesterday and it did not go well. I decided to try to do back half 50’s and went with a 29 because my last 100 yard free I was a 26.64 which converts to 29.57 in meters. I was planing on doing 50’s until the first fail and then go straight into 25’s to the feet for the remainder of the set. It looked like a good idea on paper. I failed at 3. I should have made number 3. The second 25 felt similar to the 4th 25 of a 100 free. I was getting tired and could feel myself slowing down. I tried to speed up and I thought I would make it but I failed by a little bit. If I did the set again today I think I would have made 3. There was no way I was going to make number 4 though. I didn’t try to continue the set. It was a total flop. 22.5 rest is not enough. Going on more rest would be moving into the heavy lactate territory so I’m just going to stick with the 25’s for now.
I suggest moving the interval to 36 and complete 20×50 before the third fail. If she is only completing 2 or 3 before falling off pace, chances are she can’t hit 2:20 in a meet.
For my 100’s I used to move the pace down after I made 20×25 before the third fail because I was in such a hurry to swim at a faster pace. For my 100 fly, at the beginning of the summer getting back into shape, I was on a pace of 17 or really 16 without the tempo trainer delay. I completed 20 before the third fail and then moved the interval to 15.5. I started failing at 7-8 on for the first fail and I figured I could slowly and steadily improve my reps but I didn’t. In the past I had been failing at low reps after moving the pace down but I was always able to steadily improve. But for some reason I was stuck at 7-10 reps before the first fail for like 2 months. I tried hard to improve but I couldn’t dig myself out of that hole. After 2 months of low reps my cardio level had decreased. Doing low reps like that won’t produce a training effect. The best I ever did at that pace was failing at 10,13,16. I decided to move the pace back to 16 and go to 30 reps like you are supposed to before moving back 15.5. It took about 3 weeks to complete 30. On Wednesday I did 30×25 on a 16 pace and failed once at 26. Yesterday, I moved the pace back to 15.5 and failed at 15,19,22. That’s a big improvement over 10,13,16 and if I stayed at that pace I would still probably be stuck at those same reps. At this point, I expect to steadily improve and hit 30 in 3 weeks at this pace because hitting the mid to upper teens is already enough to produce a training effect.
If you just started at 35 seconds, she may just need to tweak her technique a little and settle into the new speed. Failing early initially because of not being used to the speed is no a terrible thing but if she doesn’t start improving her reps each time, she is slowly going to fall out of shape. I don’t know how soon the competition is but you should probably move the pace back and complete 20 reps of 50meters before the third fail before dropping the pace.
This is great! Congratulations on the success and weight loss. It’s good to see more people hitting their USRPT pace times very closely in a meet.
What does you typical training week look like? How many sets do you do for 100’s, 200’s, and 400/500’s? Have you thought about adding any strokes to your program?
I’ve only read bits and pieces here and there across the internet about her training. I’ve read that she trains long hours between the gym and pool like 6+ hours a day and does stuff like jump rope with an altitude mask for warm up. Lifting, swimming for that many hours, and other dry land exercises are not part of USRPT. She did swim at USC for Salo who is notorious for using a lot of race pace in practice. Not USRPT, but other forms of race pace training. Hosszu is probably on a Salo style program and is absolutely doing race pace work in practice. I don’t think she is doing actual USRPT though.
The last I heard, they took it down to be peer reviewed before releasing it. I think that they want this to fade away and for people to forget about it.
I’d be interested in seeing MA’s seasonal plan as well and what he did for the 100 breast in particular. Rushall says that eventually you have to improve technique to get faster and that looks like what happened. His distance per stroke improved tremendously. In his 1:01.67 in January he took like 4 or 5 less strokes than he did the previous summer on the first 50 and still took it out around the same speed but it allowed him to come home so much faster. He took even fewer strokes last weekend -15/19 which is crazy low. I wonder how he improved his dps within the USRPT set. Did he have a stroke limit in the set, for example if he didn’t make the interval in 7 strokes then it’s a fail? If that were the case, and in reality he could have made the interval in 8 strokes, is that really going to exhaustion or neural fatigue? Whatever he did worked because his breaststroke is looking fantastic right now.
Btw, a lot of people hate on his technique but I tried it the other day and I think it’s a good stroke for when exhaustion is setting in. I did it at the end of 100 breast USRPT set the other day. Sometimes I know I am going to fail based on the rep before. Whenever I’m reaching failure and the next rep is a slim chance whether I make it or not and really have to dig deep to make it and I make it, I always fail on the next rep. This happened to me approaching the third fail and I knew it was my last lap so I tried my best to imitate MA’s breast just to see what it felt like and I almost made the interval. It was closer than usual when in that circumstance.
I’ve been inconsistent with training over the past month and a half. I took a little time off after the swim meet in April. I swim in the evening so I have been unable to train due to thunder a few times. With no meet on the horizon anytime soon it’s been a little hard to get motivated on some days. But I have jumped back into it and I’m going 100% now and I had a good week of training this past week.
I swam a 100 free for time on Thursday and went a 57 high. This was from a push using the pace clock leaving on the 00 but starting to react at 59. I’m not sure about my splits. 2 out of the 3 turns were awful but that’s understandable because I haven’t worked on turns in 2 months. I came in too close to the wall before the flip on the 2 bad ones. I had to bring my knees to my chest which really slowed me down and I didn’t get a great push off from being so jammed up close to the wall. This was decent considering the inconsistent training. I finished strong and didn’t fall apart at the end which I was happy about.
I’m still using a 3:4 swim/rest ratio. Right now I’m at 14.49 which is 4.83 on the tempo trainer. I use 10 beeps on the fails instead of the full time for the failed rep. The 100 free USRPT set prior to this 100 free I failed on 9,12,15. I think that I’ll be able to go a 56 once I make it to 20 before the third fail. I know that this doesn’t followed the USRPT rules because it is 19.32 rest but I’m doing this because I think that I will eventually make it to a 13.5 pace which would give me exactly 18 seconds rest on a 3:4 ratio. The fact that I didn’t die at the end is promising.
I read it a few days ago. It was just the first page giving an overview of the study. It didn’t mention what training methods the study would go into but it implied that it was going to look into a variety of training methods. Since this study was funded specifically to discredit USRPT, I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the study found that USRPT doesn’t work in children because they can’t make technical changes without drills at slow speed or something like that.
Hopefully this study gets released. I hope it lists the team that was used for the USRPT part of it so we can figure out if it was actual USRPT. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was totally made up and no USRPT team was actually studied.
