Miklos Petras
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Thank you, doc for your thoughts!
Now that you mentioned I checked out, downloaded and read Rushall’s new bulletins and he actually is writing about my problem there – and specifies some suitable solutions as well. Makes me see that I haven’t done USRPT correctly and now I change my planning and coaching process according to those findings. Thank you for directing me that way!
I specify things a bit.
Outside-the-box thinking is ALL I must do on an everyday basis. Why? Well, I’m the only coach at the club, I got no help at all. The training possibilities (pool time) are: 6:45-7:00 and 14:30-16:00 every weekday. I got 2 lanes SCM. Aaaaand, 16 kids, the youngest 8 years old, the oldest 16. The needs of a 8 year-old is far from the needs of a 12 year-old before adolescence or from a 12 yo adolescent, not to mention a 15 yo girl who actually is a full-grown woman… Furthermore, at 14:30 there are mostly 3-5 kids present: most of them arrive at the pool around 14:45-14:55. My best swimmers (16 yo male, 14 yo and 15 yo females) can train 45 mins every morning and ~1 hour every afternoon – and that’s all. Their competition train 4-5 hours daily (yes, yes, ineffective, but still…) USRPT actually is my ONLY option if I’d like to keep up. (What I do is I make 2 groups (fast-slow), and begin the training session with the slow group, and as they finish their first USRPT set, the fast group arrive and begin theirs. The slows are getting dryland low-intensity gymnastics at the time the fasts are swimming USRPT and vice versa.)
This situation is far from optimal, but I can squeeze 1 techniqe-set (turns&starts) and 1 USRPT set at the mornings and 2 USRPT sets at the afternoon. They sometimes complain of boredom because they got used to the same settings: ‘Is it morning? OK, then we’re gonna make some turns, followed by 25s or 50s. Is it afternoon? Then we’re gonna swim 50s then 25s (sometimes 25s then 50s)’ That’s what I (they) mean ‘bored’. Bored of the setting not the exact set they need to swim! When they swim, they do all they can, they’re focused and we can’t speak of boredom and race pace at the same time of course. Oh, I AM guilty of making boring plans I agree. Most of it comes from my opportunities but still… I’ll try to change that.
What they did last week? Swam some 25s @ 95%-100% speed. What they do this week? Swim some 25s @ 95%-100% speed (but this week 95%-100% speed is faster) – it’s nothing really new. Just what they did in the last x weeks. Okay, last week they did it tuesday this week at friday, but for them it’s still the same thing. That’s what my swimmers mean by saying ‘boring’. The traditional ‘oldschool’ method was far more varied. (not better, but more varied) They needed to swim slow, faster, fast and max speed, they swam kicks, drills, swam with paddles, fins, etc, they did varied dryland training as well – way much more variation possibilities. I love USRPT because I can see the pure logic and I experience the method’s truth on an everyday basis. (Hell, my better swimmers with our far-from-optimal conditions actually CAN keep up with the 1st tierce of the country’s best and LOVE swimming – and it’s Hungary we’re talking about, home of some real talented and fast swimmers) So my kids love USRPT as well, but sometimes they complain though. They say boredom I say no new stimulus. I’d like to find a way around this problem. Or, realise it’s not a problem at all… 🙂
You (and Rushall) say that the new stimulus is the adjustment in speed. In my experience ‘new stimulus’ is ‘something very different than before’. We’re saying the same thing, I only fear speed adjustments in a USRPT set may be to small to be ‘very different than before’. I believe you it isn’t. So far I mostly changed TTs only when a swimmer swam a new PB at a competition. Now I see it’s too rare, I gotta change TTs more often. So I made a new sheet for the kids and taught them how to track their progress. I see now that this is a necessity, thank you for directing me that way!
I still have some reservations about some of Rushall’s words though (especially about how small amount of work volumen may be beneficial) but we’ll see. I’ll try to steer my group to the higher speed insted of the higher volumen and see what happens.
Thank you again for your thoughts and advice!
long story short: there ARE some parts of swimming technique that CAN be practiced (taught) with slower speed. But most of the really important ones can’t…. That’s (another) one good reason to use race-pace training IMO.
My observations are similar. I’m working with 8-16 year-olds, the smaller kids are in the learning phase, the older ones are experienced swimmers, most of them has very good, effective techniqe – during USRPT sets and mainly, during races. But when it comes to oldschool, they begin to fall back and fail. It seems they aren’t able to swim ‘so much’ with ‘so good’ technique (especially regarding breakouts and UW work – those are crap during OS sessions). I also take underwater footage of their USRPT swims regularly, and we analyse those together, they learn a lot from those videos – but most of the mistakes still remain as they seems to be directly ‘connected’ to the actual person (habitual?) When we finally get rid of those though, they immediately chop off 3-6 seconds of a 100 LCM PB…
Short ‘bursts’ of OS isn’t that bad though: last year after 8 weeks of pure USRPT, I experimentally called an ‘OS-type’ 10×100 @ 1:30 (I asked them to swim with good technique, no need to rush but do everything the best they could technically) and the 1:00-1:05 PB kids came in around 1:10-1:14, with fairly the same technique as they use in USRPT sets.
So yes, technique IS speed-specific but there are some parts of it that are not. Double-leg kicking can’t be done properly without effort, but they can do pretty good BK armwork slowly (just an example)… Generally, fly and BR seems to be more speed-sensitive, crawl and BK are less, but the devil lies in the details there as well. Turns and DL kicking are two parts that can’t be done properly without at least 90% effort, so they mess those up during OS-sessions.
Hi Everybody!
I’m Miklos Petras, from Hungary, Europe (not on your map 🙂 ) Sorry for my grammar mistakes, english isn’t my first language. I heard about USRPT last spring, and got excited about it, because 10+ years ago I myself tried to ‘invent’ something like it but failed (long story short: I grew up with old-shool ‘garbage mileage’ methods, I got sick of it, and tried to focus more on the real demands of the races, like Rushall. I failed because I always overtrained myself with sprint work – too long rest periods caused extreme mental fatigue, and I had to quit.) Last year, when I first read about USRPT I immediately saw the genius in Rushall’s words, and tried it on myself first. (I’m a Senior/Masters/ swimmer as well) I soon realised he’s right, and that he found the solution for the problem I got too. I totally love his critical attitude towards old ‘but we’ve always done that’ methods. I was like that too, but you know: if everybody else is coming towards you at the motorway, then you must be on the wrong side – I didn’t believe myself. But after I saw the wisdom in his words, I tried it, and felt almost immediately that he’s right. I hope we here are on the right side of the motorway… 😉
I’m a coach at Aligator SC for 4 years now. I work with 18 kids who are not really ‘first class’ or ‘talented’ (most of them would be denied by the ‘big and famous’ clubs of my country – the kind of clubs I swam in, the clubs that ‘produced’ Egerszegi, Darnyi, Gyurta, Cseh, Hosszú…), and our training opportunities are far from ideal: 2 lanes SCM, 45 mins 3 days a week at the morning, and 1.5 hours every afternoon/evening Mon-Fri. That’s all, no gym, no track, no dry-land opportunities, nothing, just a pool. I got kids from age 8 to age 16, and I’m the only coach at the club, so 2 times a week we all need to train together, the other 3 times I can train the smaller/beginner group at the afternoon, and the pros come evening.
I started hybrid-USRPT work with my swimmers 4 weeks before the Hungarian Nationals last year (2015). They absolutely loved it, and almost everybody shined at the Nationals, my best swimmer became 5th in 100m BR (14 y.o. male, 1:11,27, previos PB swam cca. 3 months before 1:15,76), and everybody stepped up 10-30 places in the rankings!
I started full USRPT this september (I mean last september 🙂 ) and they continued to swim exceptionally good. The final LCM meet at around december 20 however didn’t happenned to be as good as I wanted it to be. Everybody looked tired (and they were!) and they weren’t able to swim their bests (PBs mostly, yes, but not as good times as I calculated before). Truth be told: 3 weeks before that meet they swam amazingly good SCM, two of my swimmers became 10th or better in the SC national rankings at their best events, and almost everybody swam PBs 5+ seconds in 100m and 7+ seconds in 200s! After this amazing race they let themselves down a bit, and most of them got sick for around a week – just a week before the final meet in 2015.Anyway, some of my thoughts about USRPT:
1. It works. It works wonders, and kids love it.
2. Technique is key to success, they improve it ‘instintively’ if you can guide them well. Most of my swimmers have way better starts and turns than any of their rivals, and it’s mainly because turns are not a rest opportunity for them, but a way to go faster.
3. I feared they won’t have good endurance for 200s but they actually do! Most of them happenned to stuggle a bit with 100s though – too fast first halves, they got tired around 75m, or they started too slow and couldn’t let everything out, that kind of struggle. When they can get the 100 right though, they fly, and they really enjoy their races! 🙂
4. Rest time is important! You actually can and should play with it, but too much is wrong because it results higher fatigue levels. 20 seconds for 25s and 25 for 50s are max as I can tell.
5. I bought an ‘action cam’ (SJCAM SJ4000+) and a cheap tri-pod, and I make amazing footage of their underwater technique. It helps them to see their mistakes and learn from each other. This makes technique teaching way much more effective. (I wish we had those stuff when I was their age… 😉 )And some questions for the experienced USRPT-users:
1. I’m not sure though that prolonged USRPT training doesn’t become boring and/or ineffective. (continued repetition of a stimulus isn’t effective after a while.) I’d like to ask experienced USRPT-users about their findings.
After 8-12 weeks of USRPT training I think they need 1-2 week of something else. Maybe a week of recovery, maybe some ‘old-school’ work, something… else. Then back to work. This Sep-Dec period showed my swimmers just got tired of USRPT sets after prolonged use. They got 2 weeks rest around Xmas, and they swim very good and fast right now, they’re motivated and seem to be fully rested.
2. My swimmers cramp a lot. (Is it the right word for it? They got spasms (gastrochnemius, vastus lateralis and/or medialis, feet, etc.) during exercises sometimes even during warm-ups) Why can that be? I told them to drink more and use calcium/magnesium as well as vitamins, and it helped a lot, but the problem still remains. Got anybody any advice about that?
3. Rest periods between USRPT sets: I think they need to move and don’t let the heart rate drop down too much, but Rushall doesn’t recomend easy swimming. What are you doing in the recovery-time? Stretching is too ‘low-intensity’ for my taste. Have you got a good gymnastic set or something else you can (and would) share?
