[swimmama]

Thanks for all the responses! Great discussion – and at this point as a parent, I would gladly pay to have a cliff notes parenting version of USRPT training provided to me!
I swam as a kid so I understand old school swim code, not USPRT code. That being said, I am not against this training philosophy at all, I just think my daughter is not getting in enough yardage for her 200 and 500 free events.

She has had only one set of 6 x 100s. Most days her main USRPT set consists of 10-12 x 50s on the minute. I am unsure how her race pace is set but she is consistently swimming her goal time of 35 secs from a push. She has never missed an interval. Her best 50 yard free is 29.8.

So if I am correct from the earlier advice/calculations Greg, she is training 600 yards at USRPT pace instead of 1500 yards (20×75 or 30 x50s). No wonder why she died at Far Westerns.

And here I am going to stick my neck out and possibly tick off coaches as a former swimmer and parent. My guess is that 10% of your parents really want to know what is going on as far as their child’s training (referring to the finer details). If you take the attitude that I am the coach and I know all, you are going to lose parents. I have seen that this past 3 years as a club that has gone through multiple age group and head coach changes and the loss of a pool. So when your child goes through 3 major coaching changes, loses a pool, and then has to learn a completely new way of training at the ripe age of 10, and then she drowns in her best 2 events at FW .. well heck yes, I want you as the coach (any coach) to spend the time to explain to me this new plan.

That being said, I don’t want to coach my kids. Birthing and parenting are more than enough for this swim mama, however bottom line I do want her to improve, because she wants to improve. And so as soon as she seems to be performing these sets as they are supposed to be done for her events, I will be more than happy to just relax and chase after my other 3 kids. Until then, I’m going to be THAT mom who asks the questions and spends her Friday nights reading USRPT swimming forums.

[swimmama]

I have a daughter that just started with race pace training at Christmas. She went to Far Westerns as a 10 yr old this past month. She bettered her 50 and 100 free but had a dismal 200 and 500 free (added 30 seconds collectively). She flat out died and looked miserably out of shape. After talking with her coaches, they said they tapered her for almost 3 weeks and that’s what they attributed that to.
I’m still concerned with yardage though. We have spoken with a couple of swimmers folks who are personally using race pace. They are homeschooled and elite swimmers, and the one 10 year old is swimming approx 3500 yards a day (2 practices a day) and pretty much all at race pace. This swimmer also won all but 1 of her races at Far Westerns.
As a mom, I get not wanting to push kids to swim with kids that are too much older than them but when I have a kid who wants to swim the 200,500, and now the 1000 (turned 11 last week), it’s hard for me to watch her drown in the middles distance events.
Thoughts? Also, she and a couple of her teammates are work horses and not afraid to do more yardage, etc. I personally love this coach, but asking him to train 20-40 age groupers at race pace seems nearly impossible. And then when they aren’t swimming more than 1000 yards at race pace, how is she to prepare for her events? Sorry for the book, just a bit confused and frustrated.

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