[wrmscoach]

I should have talked with Prof. Rushall about this when he was here in March –

The research that backs USRPT talks about building “race pace motor units” – the fitness required to swim events at the training pace, etc. The area that appears to be missing from the research (Cameron or Doc. help me out if I have missed something) is – you are fit enough to swim the event at goal pace – you have the neuroplastic adaptations – but the athlete may not understand what to do with all of the existing potential…. so you can “pray for a result” or you can design learning opportunities for your swimmers.

We have found that Dive 75s are often a great way for swimmers to learn to swim 100s – a one-off dive 75 going for the goal split at 75 (SC or LC) nail the split (which is fast enough to put the swimmer at goal time pace for the 100) – then convince the athlete that all that matters is hitting the 75 split in a meet …. which will require that the swimmer takes what often looks like a major racing risk…. if they have done the required USRPT work – they will be out fast enough and they will be able to finish… If they haven’t done the required work – they will probably die on the last 25M – the message back isn’t that they went out too fast – they still have some work to clean-up the end of the race.. All of this assumes goal splits that make sense for the athlete…

[wrmscoach]

The Nepean Swim Club just outside Ottawa Ontario used to run a spring meet called Eagle-Beaver – which was attended by a number of US clubs still training SCY as the LC outdoor pools were not yet open. Canadian teams has indoor LC pool – therefore had been training LC for some time….the US swimmers blew us out of the water at the meet – no LC training – just a lot of – fast at the time – swimming – the US swimmers put SC stroke rates into LC swimming it appeared to work quite well.

Mark Temple a Canadian Coach who has been working in the US for many years used to talk about how LC RACING provided the bulk of his LC training.

Suggest that if you are trying to build “motor units” for racing – you had better be training at Race Pace – if it’s not working LC – what are you helping your swimmers to build? Could be tough-slow swimming …they are not handing out medals for tough – slow – 2 hour workout swimming…

Q: What do you expect to get out of LC Training? Q: How do you help your swimmers LEARN to race LC?
Q: What skills/understandings does a swimmer need to have to be able to hold stroke length and stroke rate for a LC 50? Q: Same question for doing the same thing for the next x 50s of the race – Is that trained or learned?

Think about USRPT in a SC pool – and one off learning swims done LC –

[Author]

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