lefthanded swimmer
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As for weight lifting, there’s a lot of research on the body building side. They know what works for building mass without a doubt! I think a common sense approach is to NOT do anything like what the body builders are doing which my understanding is high reps until exhaustion. To build less mass you would not do any lifts to a “failed” state like in USRPT. Low reps fairly close to max. builds strength. Doesn’t it? Spacing out sets for longer recovery builds less mass too. That’s just my two cents. I enjoyed the prior discussion on weights. Thank you coaches. At 6′ 172, I don’t need ANY additional mass so I have a different goal or concern.
I do like the plyometric explosive work training ideas. Has anyone done much work with Roman Ropes? I would be curious about the results. I found these exercises intriguing.
Build Your Swimming Power and Endurance with the Roman Ropes Workout
As for changing the pool distance, that’s an interesting idea. We were on vacation and swam a 25M pool for a week. All it seem to do is mess up the finish (fly/breast especially) for a few days returning to the 25Y pool.
I doubt anyone looks at this. Update. The realization that he either couldn’t do the traditional training or doing repeats long as or longer than your events made little to no sense. He has been doing race pace type practices with one other swimmer and making progress. We average 2K/day. Club team (traditional program) is doing 9-15K with doubles in the summer.
FYI: We do almost exclusive short course training all summer.
Thank you very much for your post and feeling my pain! You made some very good points. I will get him to evaluate the sets they did. On his own, he swam Saturday “experimenting” with some similar sets to the traditional junk. The sets were demoralizing (repeat 200IM). He died in on the 3rd 200 IM, swam slow, and commented that at least he knows why he was so bad in back before switching to race pace. He would just die on back on 200IM repeats doing traditional training and Saturday was no different. I think he will come around to doing race pace. You are correct about being 100% on board. It’s just hard for him to swim basically alone for the summer. It’s so hard to not think the traditional group is not the way to go during the long course season. I hope he will develop his underwaters which are his real “talents” or “opportunities” over the summer instead of mountains of long course yards. Your daughter is fast. I hope she sticks with what got her there. My son actually liked race pace training but felt like the “traditional” group got all the respect which is true. 3.5K would be our high yardage for race pace or similar type training and this would be an IM day. Thanks again!
I have a pure sprinter with same problems. Doc has been very helpful with advice. Size/strength is an issue in my opinion. I’m curious if it might be the same for your sprinter. My guy is 6′, 175, 15 years old and not shaving/no adams apple so he hasn’t developed his overall strength yet. He also relies heavily on underwaters. This greatly impacts oxygen.
Things we do:
1. Make sure recovery between sets is long enough. Whenever they think they are ready, make them take more time. This seems to help.
2. Doc told us not to get to hung up on recovery time.
3. Make sure you aren’t doing fly back to back days. Also do these sets on a Monday after a rest day. My swimmer usually swims 3 or 4 days then a rest day. He can not do 5 days straight and be productive.
4. I’ve found that this set is better for my swimmer than straight 50s. 25 x 3 + 50. RI: 20, 20, 30; 2 min between; 3 x through. We change the RI around some. This set also is a good trainer to get up to doing n x50s. I know this isn’t a real USRPT set but you have to do what works.
4. Mix the number of dolphins. My swimmer often complains of “numb or dead arms” too.
5. Do a lot of vertical kicking!Things that didn’t work:
1. Slowing down. It just didn’t work for us. I can even say start out cruising and he starts fast. There are kids that can crank out sets of 100+ of fly. It isn’t pretty and my son isn’t one of these kids.
2. Sticking to precise RIs.
3. Skipping fails. For us a fail isn’t a a slight drop. It’s falling off a cliff and looking like you are having a stroke. I can just about predict when one is coming. We have tried taking more time before total collapse through the first 2 “fails”. This gives us more quality volume usually. Kind of a prefail reset.It’s frustrating but you aren’t alone! Good luck and please share any results.
He is lifting with his head and his eyes are looking straight ahead at the peak of his body lift. His head should be aligned with his body. Have him swim with a tennis ball between his chin and chest to give him the feel of lifting with his body and not his head. Something is also going on with his scull. An expert breast stroker might want to comment. He is cocking his hands oddly during the outsweep and it appears to be slowing down his arm cycle with little benefit. I hope this helps!
Thank you for confirming what I thinking. I had a distraught swimmer after that practice. It was his club team that did this 200 IM mess, rather than myself. We never do 200 IMs when just with me. For IM pretty much what you provided on 50s, and some sets of 75s to get the turns in (a weakness). Thoroughbred to donkey was exactly what I was thinking! I couldn’t imagine juggling multiple swimmers like all of you guys do. I tip my hat. We have all the data on his repeats too! Thanks Doc for replying and sharing your data.
I had a similar issue. I found working on these explosive “skills” that David Marsh breaks it down into at the end of practice for several weeks really helps.
Thanks so much for the replies. I suspect the turn speed is a problem that is eating into the outcomes in a race based on your comments. We will work on feet to the rear and rotate faster! Poor turns are also probably the reason his 25 repeats at 100 pace also don’t match up too well with 50 repeats back end tempo with 1 min rest. He can usually only do only 4-6 50s at 29 high to low 30 with 1 minute rest. Other favorite fly sets we do is from Salo: 100 Pace 3 x 25 + 50; RI 20,20,30 sec. 3 x through; 2 min. between. We are probably 40% USRPT now.
100 fly race splits are pretty much 27/30. As stated above, he has no problem holding 13.3 for 15 or more with 17-20 sec RI.
Doc..if you see this. was that 12-16 50s with 1 minute rest or on the 2 min? Thanks for clarifying.
Nice underwaters btw. Breast recovery (legs) looks slow. This is your drag time as I am sure you know. Work on your timing and faster heels on the recovery. On fly, for the first angle it appears you stop your hands at the front for a split second longer than most do on 100 Fly. If you freeze it on the first stroke where you breath, you lift your head a bit early instead of with the stroke. The next stroke you don’t breath so this doesn’t show up except on first pull of the video. If I had to guess you would swim slower breathing an entire 100 fly because of this. Correct? Good videos!
Doc has been very helpful to me! He has given information based on his implementations and answered numerous questions. Read what he is saying when your race data doesn’t line up with USRPT because it’s going to happen and you better have a plan! What do you do? USRPT doesn’t have an answer. USRPT states an expected volume based on 3 to 5 x the race distance and expected rest to work ratios. Do you just keep rest intervals at 2:1 on 50 repeat fly and stop at 4 or 5 “made” repeats and call it a set? That’s not even close to 600 yards. I think the bottom line is how do you get the most race pace relevant training in a practice and that takes adjustments that often aren’t “pure” USRPT. I also have a problem with the 3 fails. I can often tell my swimmer is about to fail. I often tell him, give me 2 more awesome repeats and lets call it a set. I think this is better than 1 fail, 1 good and another fail. Fail number 2 or 3, especially with fly, is quite ugly and negatively impacts the next set. I have data to back this up.
Technique and USRPT: You tell me how much a kid hears in 10-15 seconds at the wall on 25Y repeats after the 15th repeat. They are dying and they don’t hear you. Guess when their technique is most likely to falter? It’s when they are exhausted. It seems to me that USRPT sets work best with a more refined swimmer. I couldn’t imagine trying it with someone who has a noticeable technical flaw that you are trying to correct.
USRPTIA: I don’t think the new site is great. There’s no case study info. Coaches forum. It’s just not user friendly and that was disappointing.
Thanks Doc. I looked up the actual files you uploaded. The growth chart stuff helps…he is in his growth spurt finally at 15. It’s been so very hard for my son to not do that well for several years. He understands it but it didn’t it easier. He is excited to finally be taller and thinner (dropped from 32 suit to 30). I told him he could be strong right now and a lot better but done growing or he could keep working patiently and continue to grow (no adams apple, short seated height, size 14 shoe, so more growing to come hopefully).
The genetic stuff is very interesting, you can dump the raw data from 23andme into a site called athletigen and it gives some basic information that may or may not be exact but it seems to match up with what I expected. Oxygen Effeciency; sprint/endurance; power; heat tolerance; Warrior/Worrier; Diet Stuff.
Example: High Core Temperature was on Athletigen/Lack of Heat Tolerance. We avoid any training in warm pools. This should have been a no brainer. We are all pale and hate the heat! Over 83, work load would drop in half. Very little outdoor swimming if at all.
That was my observation about usrptia. Unfortunately, it looks like you agree about the site. It doesn’t even have a forum. It was disappointing. Doc you and others have been great mentors on this site; thank you. What’s been most helpful is for you to encourage me or anyone to collect data and do what works without being locked into a so called poorly doucmented system. What brought us here (USRPT) is my child being frustrated with long distance training and not responding. We spent first 3 months correcting survivor strokes and a little more than 3 months driving up a slow tempo. USRPT is definitely a tool that helps with tempo. I’m an accountant (not a real coach) and track everything. We started modifying practices after 3 months to get more from training because my son would crash every third day. We added more calories with drinks and even eating during practice which helped tremendously. We also do a mix of short race work now not just USRPT sets. If the goal is MORE race training, this has worked. We get more race pace work by not doing just USRPT. I’ve documented this for us. I track yards by race pace and other. We get in 800-1500 race pace yards a practice now. We target almost exclusively 100 events and 200 IM. Now my data is tainted by pubertal growth because my son was 5’8″,170 6 months ago. He is 5’11”,162 now and still growing. We didn’t compete over long course (other than one meet). Other than an invitational early summer for short course, we don’t have meet data. Our first meet is 10/1. Because of not building a cardio base like traditional seems to do once in long course and again for several months in short course, we have done this on a smaller scale during August and September but we always do race pace swimming in every practice and those sets are first rather than last. Would love to hear what works and doesn’t work from the real coaches out there. Can’t say enough about a fairly high caloric juice during practice for him. We also adopted a modified paleo diet. It isn’t a low carb diet as we include tubers but no grains (corn, bread, rice etc.) This was a health decision more than an athletic decision. Another piece of data I have is genetic data from 23andme done more for ancestry purpose for the family. A lot of data from 23andme supports that race training is what we need to be doing.
My son is pubertal 14 and he can’t do more than 3 days in a row. We also have moved away from straight USRPT every single day. On non-USRPT days we do practices like or similar to what Dave Salo does where we can push the legs or arms to get us more practices volume. We train for mostly 100s with 25 or 50 intervals. We get in about 700 on average of race pace yardage. If you are moving up your targets, you won’t get a lot of days with more than this. On days we do Salo type practices with average 500-700 of race pace work. We had trouble with 50 sets. Hopefully a coach with more experience with females and distance swimmers can answer you. I personally don’t think USRPT should work for distance swimmers but I have nothing to substantiate that opinion.
My son is bigger build than average. On days, we fail..we fail badly. Doc is one of the few on here to provide data or info. He says his sprinters and muscular swimmers need more rest (paraphrasing). Usually day 3 is off about 20% of the time. He can do doubles as long as he takes day 3 or 4 off.
Good luck!
Hi Doc. It seems like you are making USRPT work and I appreciate you sharing it. It is unfortunate that the forum seems to be on vacation. We have adapted what we are doing to USRPT 3 to 4 times a week and a “Dave Salo” type set (his stuff is public on other days). More USRPT than that and my swimmer (son) is depleted and can’t perform. I also don’t buy into no land work. If you have a large swimmer, they just can’t manage size without strength training in my opinion. Strength in the pool is relative to body weight.
Recent sets with USRPT has resulted in us pushing down times. It’s taken some time but the times are going down. The hardest thing was accepting that when the muscles are depleted you will have a bad day. We have to rest every 3rd or 4th day and this was determined from data. Matter of fact, my son said doing 5 days straight under a traditional program, he said he only had 1 or 2 good days a week. I wish we would have figured this out earlier.
