ryanupper

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Viewing 15 posts - 61 through 75 (of 94 total)
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  • in reply to: Thoughts on a new feedback device for USRPT #3290
    ryanupper
    Participant

    The feedback and you would need to create a profile for all 4 strokes since they all have different shapes and timing. Plus, if the swimmer has an inefficient stroke cycle (S-shape, wide pull, wide recovery, straight arm pull, etc.) the reading might be different than an efficient cycle (vertical forearm straight backward) If you need velocity metrics just stick to a spot on the body with the least variability.

    in reply to: Thoughts on a new feedback device for USRPT #3288
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Rachel,

    Here is triton wear https://www.tritonwear.com/
    Don’t know your device specs but anything on the wrist seems inappropriate. Triton wear is attached to the goggle strap. I talked to them over a year ago but they didn’t have a “velocity profile” (their words) to be able to use the device for distances under 25y/m. Not sure how the device would know to “mark” a fairly arbitrary point in the pool. Wall-to-wall you come to a complete stop but after 15-20y/m the swimmer might glide which could really mess up the numbers.

    Ryan

    in reply to: Front crawl kick is non-propulsive #3286
    ryanupper
    Participant

    You’re probably right. I doubt anyone will research “bad” kicking at this point in time. It’s also possible, for backward kickers, that the knee is leading the kick and the thigh is pushing water forward with very little backward propulsion from the lower leg. In this case, the lower leg is just following the knee rather than performing its own powerful movement. This would be hip flexion without any effort towards leg extension.

    As for propulsive kicking, one debate point I’ve used is that when a coach requires a swimmer to get to the other side of the pool by only kicking then the swimmer must figure out a way to get there (or face the wrath of the coach). This in no way indicates that flutter kicking is propulsive in full freestyle. It is easy to see how much velocity is generated by kicking alone: have a swimmer start off the wall and begin kicking. Acceleration is minimal and they will probably purposely kick down and back harder to get their body moving. This is very much different than pushing off the wall and using the kick to maintain a velocity to the other side. And very much different than balancing pitch and roll of the body during arm swimming.

    In terms of power and drag, the thigh may create drag but if the thigh moves into the drag position relatively slowly the energy loss will be minimal. If the lower leg and ankle/foot generate a powerful downbeat kick then forward propulsion will occur. This would be hip flexion coordinated with powerful leg extension and ankle dorsiflexion. I’m not sure how much the bottom of the foot will contribute to this on the upbeat during hip extension and ankle plantarflexion. The anatomical angles don’t seem right.

    Ryan

    in reply to: additional thoughts on weight training for swimming #3284
    ryanupper
    Participant

    You won’t upset me. Totally agree with the audience comment. My players don’t see any of this stuff.

    Do you take into account that the open turn on the touchpad creates a split earlier in the turn than the flip turn does?

    Ryan

    in reply to: additional thoughts on weight training for swimming #3280
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Doc,
    Got it. Here are standard deviations for the top 27 women at ACCs last year. I can put in a time and it will predict splits. Then input the actual splits and see the deviation. Got the R-square and coefficients on other sheets. Currently in the yellow box: Swimmer is 1.4 SD faster than mean in the free leg and .78 slower in back. She was at trials in the 800 free. The ACC champion, row 2, has a tight SD in all strokes.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_LHLoCnxtuXYnZfV1BWQlM4ZE0/view?usp=sharing

    Percentages are great but linear. I like SD because it can guide the level of emphasis. For example, row 15, 1.72 back, -1.76 breast. Probably a breaststroker but man does she need to work on backstroke. She’s in the bottom 10% of the group for that stroke.

    Ryan

    in reply to: Freestyle technique issue #3278
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Ya, shoulder rotation is pretty good but the hands immediately pull away from the body. Lots of little issues you’ve identified but the vertical forearm and the optimal pulling distance is what’s going to increase velocity the most. Of course, that is the most muscular demanding movement.

    If they are primarily 100 swimmers have them swim more 50’s at the 200 pace with the intent of getting more correct repetitions in at a slightly slower velocity. It’s very likely that the bicep and forearm are weak (brachioradialis, Brachialis) due to years of pulling using a path of less resistance (low elbow). Maybe attempting to improve this component is too tough at the 100 pace. Maybe completely cut out sprinting for a while. I’m sure you showed them the video so film again in a month and compare and let the girls see if they are improving. This puts a little more responsibility on them to focus on the more demanding motion. I see this all the time with water polo players because the common coaching error is to tell players to take short fast strokes which ends up deteriorating the stroke distance over time.

    in reply to: additional thoughts on weight training for swimming #3276
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Doc,

    I like the results. The IM events are just ripe for massive improvements. Find the weakest stroke, improve, reassess, repeat. When I see collegiate swimmers fail to improve in the IM after a full season of training my head explodes.

    in reply to: additional thoughts on weight training for swimming #3275
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Alright,

    I’m for “weight lifting”. However, Rushall loves specificity, I’ve learned to obsess about specificity, the “Essentials of Strength and Conditioning” promotes specificity that CSCSs immediately forget when they begin creating a training plan for sports other than football. If we could adjust the density of water in practices we wouldn’t need weight training at all.

    With all that said, very specific exercises will improve “isolated biomechanical power specificity” (a single joint movement) with the goal of improving “complex biomechanical power specificity” (the full stroke).

    The most important weighted exercise swimmers and water polo can do is the hip hinge swing: https://youtu.be/Mj5Hn9EwSxE This is because it’s hard to improve this motion during practice in the water. Starts and turns.

    Research that attempts to link weight training to swim performance succumbs to one fatal error: researchers allow swim coaches to create the swim programs and these coaches have been programming training incorrectly.

    Here is a beautiful example: http://www.emsbodypower.dk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Girold2012JStrCondRes.pdf
    The results indicate strength training improves swim performance. However, if we look at the control group we should be asking “How can a coach have athletes swim 250K yards and show no improvement?” Since a 50m sprint relies completely on stored energy (including oxygen already in the bloodstream) we can look at the result a couple ways. 1) general weight training increased the availability of stored peripheral energy in specific muscles, some of which were used to swim the 50m and 2) the 250K of swim training did NOT increase the availability of stored peripheral energy in the specific muscles used to swim freestyle.

    Note, the weight program was probably too short to induce myofibrillar hypertrophy so the weight group probably induced mostly sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. But, you could easily say that the swim program, which was longer, did NOT promote myofibrillar hypertrophy. A case could be made for improved neuromuscular activation but, again, how do you induce swim-specific neuromuscular activation performing weighted, isolated-joint motions in the gym?

    I’m off to coach!

    in reply to: Freestyle technique issue #3274
    ryanupper
    Participant
    in reply to: Freestyle technique issue #3273
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Swimmer A: I don’t think her forearm ever gets to vertical. I’ve attached a ledecky breakdown.
    Swimmer B: Even more elbow drop than A.

    Both girls look very aggressive in their underwaters which is great. Swimmer B can push off lower from the wall (18 inches is good) and glide for a “one thousand one” count. She pushes at the waterline and immediately kicks and you can see her legs breaking the surface causing a disturbance and leg drag (legs outside the body drag shadow).

    Ryan

    in reply to: Progressive Overload, Conceptual Design #3231
    ryanupper
    Participant

    LH Swimmer,

    Ya, bodybuilding is overly concerned with sarcoplasmic hypertrophy (the pump) to create “volume”.

    Training should focus on shifting the power curve of specific muscle towards the optimum point needed for your sport/event. Every exercise can be explosive, aka powerful. When a workout blog refers to “strength” they mean maximum force, everything below that falls somewhere on the power curve. The swimming power curve depends on your needed velocity (sprint 50 to 1650/open water) and the fact that the resistance (water) never changes. If you want to swim a faster 50 (or 1650) you need to shift the power curve towards the specified event by:
    1. Increasing mechanical stroke distance and maintain/reduce drag (technical)
    2. Increasing stroke rate without decreasing mechanical stroke distance (coordination)
    3. Increase energy utilization at the specified velocity (matching sarcoplasmic and myofibrillar hypertrophy to the resistive forces)

    Building “mass” is important but generalized. You can build mass in a few swim-specific muscles to improve performance. Heavy leg day builds generalized mass in a way that’s not important to swimming.

    I see the roman ropes all over the place now and it’s a bit much. This goes back to CSCSs having the word “conditioning” in their title. If a swim coach thinks thousands of yards in the pool every day isn’t “conditioning” their swimmers and they need CSCSs to program sled pulls and battle ropes something is wrong with the community. CSCSs don’t know what they are doing and are making things up to fill a time block.

    in reply to: Progressive Overload, Conceptual Design #3230
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Doc,
    I just started swimming in a 25m pool for the summer so was thinking about it. Everything is based on what anyone has available.

    As for equating WT terms to swim terms, I would say TOTAL SET POWER is REPS times VELOCITY but it’s really hard to record VELOCITY while lifting without a device. POWER would be LOAD times VELOCITY. Just to be clear, LOAD=VELOCITY means the term LOAD, while lifting, refers to a similar variable, VELOCITY, in the pool. Not that they are equal in magnitude.

    In either a WT or USRPT macrocycle, it seems that increasing LOAD/VELOCITY is always more strenuous than increasing REPS. This is pretty evident in WT, as you said, increasing WT REPS by 50% (from 10 to 15) before increasing the LOAD is an effective progression. Adding weight always results in a significant decrease in work, maybe because there aren’t a bunch of 1lb plates in gyms. In USRPT, increasing the reps to failure is used to adapt to the current VELOCITY. I’m looking at an additional variable, within the macrocycle concept, that can help an athlete adapt.

    The hardest part about LCM is, assuming 6 meters underwater, 50 meters of LCM “swimming” distance is about 16% longer than 50 meters of SCM. And 50 meters of LCM is 31% longer than 50 yards SCY. 25 meters SCM is 13% longer than SCY (again, this is the distance stroke swimming assuming 6 meters underwater from the wall).

    Anyway, just spitballing some ways to create less strenuous increments of overload. When you change variables by over 5% things can get messy.

    in reply to: Thoughts on wt. trng #3225
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Marlin,

    I look at a lot of track stuff also. An important concept in running is eccentric muscle damage/adaptation. This isn’t really a thing in swimming. I wonder if the 100, 200, 400 events differ enough (low eccentric damage, bolt almost glides over the track) from the 800+ that this is a major muscular inflection point. The longer the distance the more you are just pounding away at the muscles.

    If there was no such stroke called “butterfly” I think more swim sprinters would do the 200. The 100 fly is a higher power stroke and kinda fits into the sprinter mentality. The 3-day champ meet format also has the 100 fly the same day as 200 free…

    Phelps set the American 100 record in the leadoff of that epic 2008 4×100 free relay. So he held the 200 WR and 100 AR at one point. Lezak’s anchor was a bigger story though.

    in reply to: Thoughts on wt. trng #3224
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Tell your GAs, with respect to weight lifting for swimming, that you are certified above a CSCS. If they push back have them:
    1. count the number of sentences referring to swimming in “Essentials” = 0
    2. Name, from memory, the most important propulsion muscles in swimming. Not groups, specific muscles. Rushall lists these. Throw in the breaststroke kick to really nail them: gluteus medius and minimus, vastus medialis, tibialis anterior.
    3. perform a swim stroke cycle. When they swing their straight arms like they are doing little kid calisthenics feel free to correct them.

    You will find out who wants to learn and who thinks they know everything based on a baseline certification.

    I coach water polo and this is doubly frustrating. “Do legs for eggbeater!” Eggbeater being as complex as a freestyle stroke and unable to provide propulsion on land.

    in reply to: What gets wrong with this guy's technique? #3220
    ryanupper
    Participant

    Ya, he’s pushing a lot of water to the sides of his body instead of backward.

    Also, he’s almost completely through the power phase of his kick before his head is down. Have him finish the pull, with a lower head (comment above), enter the streamline as his thighs move forward. Kick while streamlined. It will take a bit to relearn the timing.

    Ryan

Viewing 15 posts - 61 through 75 (of 94 total)