Reply To: The truth about USRPT (SW article)
First off, I don’t remember any “horror stories”. I’m a “user” so may be biased but…
Sets are CLEARLY defined; my training zone is 5-7 times the race distance at race pace. Not sure how much clearer I can get.
I only change one variable at a time so I don’t understand the hybrid bullet. I can only be exhausted if I don’t make the pace at which point I take a break (I’ve missed a pace target).
I feel like the 300 pages of scientific material I have read through, and lived through in 20 years of swimming, allows USRPT to be at least a little “evidence based” and I have a pretty good comparison of how it’s stacking up to my previous training (great).
I’ve definitely developed power and had sets where I maintained pace and thought I was going to pass out due to breathing so hard. Probably not a VO2 max thing…
And USRPT does control the quality of each movement gradually, you must swim at 15 seconds for 28 reps at a 30 second interval before you can swim 14 seconds for 28 @ 30. Obviously, a coach should correct form during this process.
In summary, he doesn’t talk about a single aspect of parametric training except when he says USRPT is similar. Great sales pitch and swimming world should be looking at a 3:1 marketing ROI. If they negotiated a percentage of the parametric sales based on tracked referrals from the article that would be optimal.
Ryan
