Reply To: Location and USRPT Status
My name is Russell Peterson and I coach the boys swim team at Arroyo Grande high school. We are on the Central Coast of California, and we compete in the Pac-7 league in the CIF southern section division 2. I am a young coach in my second year of being the head coach at AG.
I have been implementing 2-3 USRP workouts a week for most of our season, and I have seen positive results. I tend to avoid doing high yardage workouts anyway and I like to keep the intensity up, even in my more traditional workouts. I really like the idea of repeating race pace efforts over and over. I used to do a lot of race pace work, but I would break it up more. The USRP format definitely makes more sense though than trying to break things up.
I have also noticed my swimmers have been able to drop time in their events more often, even though we are working very hard. The swimmers like the sets to- they stay more focused than they do when we do more traditional training, and they really push themselves to, as they see it as a challenge to avoid failing.
So in short, I have not fully converted to USRP but I am implementing it and I really have liked what I’ve seen so far- for sprinter and distance swimmers alike. In fact, I would say it has helped my 500 freestylers more than the sprinters so far.
One thing that I fear about implementing it full on is that it will get boring. Also, I have club swimmers who’s coaches don’t really agree with USRP.
