U.S. Question, is interval for 50yd repeat length for 500 free too long?
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4-6 times race distance? For many that is a GUARANTEED best time, as opposed to being predictive.
Isn’t that the idea with working at certain paces?
And making a prediction should be based on what you actually believe you will achieve – otherwise it’s just jotting down dream-times and hoping for the best.The basis for a good prediction is what you can repeatedly achieve on short intervals at 4-6x race distance.
Let’s say you recently achieved doing 20+ 25’s on your 100 target pace with 15s rest before your first fail on repeated occasions. It is time to up your game with a new goal time and on that set your first fail is after 7 25’s, and you abandon after 15 25’s. It is unreasonable to believe that you will make the time on 100 for the new goal time, because you haven’t been conditioned for that distance with that speed yet.
You would probably make the 100 time for the old target though.
Goal times are not typically part of USRPT but best times are. I think you are a little off the reservation.
Amsepamse,
Actually, “it’s not unreasonable to believe that you will make the time on 100…” you might have a rough time at 7 x 25 made. But at 15 x 25 made, it would be reasonable to expect an improvement in performance. It’s over one shift in energy systems.The number made to create an adaptation is actually quite small (just has to be consistence) and where the 4 to 6 x race distance came from is “purely” a guess. Unless, you want to spend a large amount of time trying to drive the speed down to aerobic capacity I’d rethink the approach.
6102,
The use of goal times is appropriate. What you will see is that the numbers achieved/made progress at a much slower rate especially early in the cycle. I’ve done this on at least four cycles with 20+ swimmers and had excellent results. It is a little rough on the kids as they are use to making larger numbers early, but doable.Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
The number made to create an adaptation is actually quite small (just has to be consistence) and where the 4 to 6 x race distance came from is “purely” a guess.
You might be right (although 4-6x is from the bulletins), and I’ve seen from your posts you’ve done this for a while.
At what numbers made (as in times race distance) have you seen the best improvement in race times before you change a parameter for 100, 200 and 400 respectively? (in general, there are always individual differences of course).
Do you also have anything for 800/1500?I’ll give the good Dr. kudos for getting coaches to think about what it is they’re doing in workout. But much of his information is based on some studies and his best educated guess. There has been NO data presented to support much of what he has stated and remember for the most part the “n” is still one, MA. Years ago the old adage was “2 x the race distance” which actually fits closer to what I’ve seen.
What we have seen is they need to complete in the neighborhood of 37% or higher of numbers offered for consistent improvement in performance. Example had girl drop 8 seconds in 200ba this weekend. She had a total number of “50s on 1” to this point in the season of 444 she has made 174 or 37.19%, her 200 pace for practice was 34.12 and she had an average of 50s 2 , 3, & 4 of 34.79, for the race. If you figure her standard deviation into the performance of .47 she is 34.32. This holds true for the majority of the group. So pretty close for an old guy with a stopwatch.
800/1500 question. This is not going to sit well with the purist of USRPT. But we use 100s with :15ri, 200s with :15ri and have also gone up to 400s with 15ri for the distance events. Using the same principles of USRPT training “of once they can no longer hold pace let them stop” This keeps the fatigue factor to a minimum with regards to energy expenditure and accumulation of fatigue over the training cycle. Any group doing this 3 time per week will need recovery days as this is very fatiguing!
200s work well for the 800/1000 using pace for the middle pace of 800/1000 and 400s fit well for 1500/1650 using a middle 400 pace for 1500/1650.
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
Oldschool, how do you figure out standard deviation?
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
Well if you are good with a hand held calculator it will take about six steps. I use to do it by calculator and man what a pain! Then I found out how to do it in EXCEL and now it takes about 10 seconds.
Go into EXCEL help or there has to be a youtube video on it and it will show you how. it’s really simple. I’m no computer wiz and I figured it out.
Remember it’s the “average distance to the mean”. I use it to show reliability of the mean. Or how good is that time. Higher stdev. the lower relability and the lower the stdev.the higher relability.
It comes in handy when doing race projections as using just averages can be very misleading.Swimmer A has avg time of 32.23 on 50s on ??? and a stdev of 1.22, so they now have a race range of 32.23 to 33.45, big difference if you just used the avg to figure projected race time.
Swimmer B has avg time of 32.23 on 50s but a stdev of .34, they have a race range of 32.23 to 32.57. same avg but much better reliability.
May be one explaination of how two swimmers with the same average can go different times.
Hope this helps 🙂
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
Yes, that is very helpful. I am able to do it now. I have a couple other questions.
What data do you include when calculating this? Every single repeat or do you just put a certain number for each set you did throughout the season? Does that make sense? I’m assuming it’s a certain number for each day or that would be 1000s of numbers.
Do you include only recent data? What if they have improved on their sets significantly through the year? Doesn’t that mean you should only include the latest month of data for your predictions?
Do you ever see swimmers going faster than their mean by the standard deviation? I have a girl who’s average 25 for 100 back pace has been 16.36 throughout the year. Standard deviation of .38 would put that as slow as 1:06.9. Would it also work the other way and the race could end up as fast as 1:03.9? (This is based on pretty limited numbers. Still trying to get to the point where I can record everything for every swimmer).
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
We do a no-no in USRPT and we test. About three weeks out of our championship performance we’ll do 4 x 25, 6 x 50, 5 x 100 done stroke and free (3 x 200 and 3 x 400 free, if I have distance kids). The goal is to be faster than the swimmer’s current average. I’ll record every time for each repeat and figure Stdev. They will have at least two to three opportunities in the last three weeks to lower average/Stdev. This is really the 2nd strategy of the Parametric System. “The distance is now constant, speed is increasing” This is what Dr. Beliaev was discussing in his SW review about USRPT and what it leaves out with regards to integration of the systems. I have had a number of coaches’ reply off-forum about “my kids can swim forever at that speed. But just can’t seem to get up and GO! And I really think that is a problem with USRPT.
Nice! Picking up on “swimmers going faster than their mean …” Yes! You can use it to develop a range that the swimmer will possibly swim in which is 1. Average minus deviation 2. They hold their average and 3. Average plus deviation. If we use my example from the last post she would have had a range of 33.85 to 34.79. What it does is give the coach an idea based on data and not on some time the swimmer went back in December to try and come up with a performance projection. There are about five ways a swimmer will put races together using the average, average plus or minus.
Please don’t get me wrong I’m not against USRPT. I believe Dr. Rushall gives coaches a structure to work in when none really existed. Most of what coaches get is bits and pieces and most of it anecdotal information from some clinic that coaches paid good money for and really didn’t get much of anything. I have probably been to over 30 clinics and I can tell you only three gave me any objective information that I could actually take back and use and we’re not talking about some set so and so did in June of 1992.
Sorry for the soapbox
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
I apologize to the original posters for highjacking this topic but…
Oldschool, could you give more details on the tests? What kind of rest are they getting? Are the 50s at 100 or 200 pace? I have zero swimmers who could swim 6×50 at 100 pace with 20 seconds rest. Perhaps that is just a problem with my coaching/training though. 100s at 500 pace seems realistic to me but are you doing the 100s at 200 pace? 5 of them?
When calculating predictions from the test sets do you combine the results of all the tests or just use the most recent one?
You talked about recovery days for distance swimmers. Do you ever do recovery days for other swimmers or is it typically not needed for those who are only doing 25s and 50s?
I’m reading Periodization Training for Sports right now (I think it’s the easier to understand version of the Bompa book you recommended). Supertraining came in the mail yesterday but I haven’t started it yet.
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
I got to thinking about that myself that we kinda sent this thread off into a different direction. I should have started a new thread on “Theory and Methodology” Oh well.
4 x 25s are on 1:00, they are for the first 50 of 100
4 x 50s on 2:00, are for second 50 of 100 (forgot to include in first post)
6 x 50 are on 1:00, they are for 50s 2, 3, & 4 of 200. If you look at your race splits you should see that the first 50 is very close to the “50s on 2:00” average or the second 50 of 100.
100s, this gets interesting as they can be back half of 200 (which is what we normally see) or if you look at your 500 splits could be 100s 2 thru 5.Calculating predictions: I will usually use an average of the test sets.
Recovery days: During the 1st phase where we are trying to accumulate as much potential as we can and allowing them to STOP when they can no longer hold pace recovery days are few and fall between. We’ll normally do three sets per work out. The distance kids because of the distance of the swims puts them into a very “gray” area of energy usage which is very fatiguing and you need to pay attention as a coach to this which is why I allow them days where they have no timed sets and easy swimming.
On the books: On Bompa that’s ok. At least you have an understanding of training and its methodology. And all that goes into human performance. Wait until you start reading “Supertraining”
I have attached some of the information I gave at the Fargo Clinic.
Best to you and your swimmers and hope this helps.
Oldschool
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
Thanks. Those intervals make it look much more realistic. What interval are the 100s on? Do you ever do a larger test of 100s and specifically have it aimed at 500 pace(100s 2-5)?
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
100s are on 1:30 and we test 5 x 100 for both 500/200 swimmers
"Only in America. Dream in red, white and blue"
Sorry, got caught up in the day to day. Yes, we can do more 500 pace, but it some times comes down to space/time and event concentration. Monitoring the group myself, I had a couple of athlete who do not swim mid distance that were doing 100 free pace instead. It is difficult to watch them all, give technical feedback and check for even splitting with 75s. I will certainly be doing more 75s this spring when I get all my senior level swimmers back from break (currently getting them all back on track with USRPT after spending 14 weeks with their HS teams).
We don’t really have the time for 30-40 50s @ :20 rest without sacrificing other events. We have 90 minutes once a day, sometimes 6 days a week, when we aren’t in the lcm pool in the summer. We do 20 x 50s because it fits nicely, but I will be trying to extend the sets further this spring. I have one athlete who’s pace needs to be significantly faster as with some others, hopefully that will help this spring and the :15 should be fine. I know it isn’t protocol, but some of them really liked the challenge of the 50y @ :40 for even 10 repeats. Again, not protocl but something maybe to consider as you cycle down towards the end of a week or month?
? All The Way, HLA!All The Way, HLA!
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