Rick
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Thanks for that insight, oldschool. I, too, had read his suggestions, and it didn’t seem to make sense to me. If you are able to train at race pace, do you really need 2 weeks taper/unloading to swim a race and race pace? One of the tenets of our program is if you are focused mentally and emotionally and still can’t perform close to the expected goals at practice, you are probably physically tired and need rest. One day of low/no swimming seems to work for my swimmers.
I have followed the 3 day reduction you stated so far. It is pretty simple to implement. One thing I like about it is that our swimmers seem to rebound much better for the second big meet, even if it’s only a couple of weeks away.
I’m glad somebody tried it out here, just sorry it didn’t yield results. Oh well, another little bit of information to stash away.
Imagine that! That’s nice to hear. We have a group of boys going into their junior year who have expressed an interest in swimming in college. My son is one of them. He is a very strong student, so he is looking for that right combination of academics and athletics. He also really wants to continue with usrpt training. Other than the local USA meets in the Harrisburg area, we’d like to get out to the Xmas invite in Pittsburgh. All depends on the high school schedule.
If any of these places are near you, it would be nice to meet you. My name is Rick Averill, and I’m the assistant coach at Central Dauphin H.S. My email is rpaverill@cdschools.org. Please feel free to shoot me an email. Your secret will be safe with me!
Thanks for the input, folks. It seems to be a bit more common in the western part of the country, doesn’t it? Living in Pennsylvania, I think it’s going to be tough to find a fit. Maybe over the next couple of years it will become a little more common.
The “stigma” comment made me smile. I understand, though. Can’t believe how many coaches have a visceral, angry response to the science. I don’t get it. Shouldn’t the goal always be to do what’s best for the athletes? Being a teacher, I learned very early that my ego is not what’s important. So much ego, so little reasoning. As a parent and adult, it’s a little disheartening.
My suspicion on the breast intervals seemed to be supported by the results this past week. Even though my swimmer was unable to “train” at his desired race pace, he still dropped time. We had a 2:14 time (converted) in the 200 breast. We were training at under :35.5 in practice and only able to complete 6 or 7 before first miss.
Again, only one swimmer, and it was a lcm race when we train scy exclusively, so I’m not going to read too much into it. Just thought it was worth sharing.
Now, I am busy gearing up for the high school season. We will be going usrpt exclusively for the first time. Swimmers will be given rest on an individual/as needed basis, and I hope to have much more meaningful data to share. I just need to find a good, efficient way to track it analyze it.
Just a couple of notes, oldschool. Mind you, small number of male, high school swimmers, so can’t read too much into it. Also, training scy but swimming lcm.
400/500: 75’s seem to match overall race times much more accurately than 50’s. I am going to try setting a goal time for first half of race with 50’s and second half of race with 75’s. It won’t be a huge difference in goal times, but I thought I would experiment a little in August and September. My swimmers feel the same way about training 50’s and 75’s for this event. They seem to be able to make their 50’s all day long, but it isn’t matching up with race times.
100/200 breast: Cannot get my boys to repeat their goal times, but we are continuing to drop time in races. Maybe because of the use of larger muscles, but I can only get 2-3 repeats at actual goal times before failure. Sometimes, nobody makes a goal time. For the 200, we have been training 50’s at a time about 4-6 seconds slower than actual goal. For the 100, about 1-2 seconds slower. I don’t see this happening with any other stroke, but it’s pretty universal with all my swimmers. For example, swimmers training <:36 for 50’s in 200 breast goes 2:16 in race. Now training <35.5 and will see if it translates.
Again, not much, and certainly not a large enough group to be conclusive, but I’ll take anything little bits of info/insight I can get.
Hi,Andrew. I don’t think you’re alone here. As usrpt becomes more accepted and mainstream, this will become an even bigger issue.
I had several swimmers who were doing our high school(usrpt) and club practice (traditional). fortunately, the high school practice was first so they were fairly fresh. the problem I encountered was that there were many sessions where the swimmers doing double practices were too fatigued to actually swim at race pace. This limited their improvement.
How tough are the high school practices? If it’s a lot of yardage, you will probably have a tough time making your usrpt goal times at your individual practice. Could you work out a compromise with your coach and present it as an experiment you would like to try? I know every situation is different and part of the fun of swimming is being with your team, but I understand your desire to achieve your full potential, too.
Rick
Off the top of my head, I can give you a few.
50 free: 23.7 – 22.1
100 free: 52.5 – 49:86
200 free: 1:56 – 1:49
500 free: 5:14 – 4:58/ 5:56 – 5:30
200 IM: 2:13 – 2:05
100 breast: 1:05 – 1:02/ 1:10 – 1:03For our team, this was pretty decent compared to past years. We have no pool and have to rent. We averaged between 4-6 hours per week total pool time. That’s why I felt like we needed to look at a different way of training.
No state level swimmers yet, but we are hoping this summer can change this.
We did only usrpt 3 times a week for our high school season. Once we were in season, we averaged a total of 4 practices per week. Each of the 3 usrpt practices we did 2 sets of 12X50 and one set of 16X25. We offered a total of 3000 yards per week. Most swimmers completed about 2500.
The other 1 or 2 days were usually meet days or they recovered/worked on turns, etc…
I know it’s not much yardage, but it still yielded some really nice results.
This summer, I am offering about 10,000 yards and hoping for 6000-7000 completed at rp. This seems more aligned to what some other folks are doing here. So far, the average yards at rp for this season has been between 1300-1600 depending on the stroke and distances being worked.
Hope this helps.
I have same question, Word. If 300% of the distance is enough, then I could definitely fit more sets in, but it seems like a lot of people are are doing 500% and up.
We did 300% for the 200’s (12X50) and 400% for the 100’s (16X25) for our whole season and had good results, but I feel like I might have short changed my swimmers.
I am interested to know if anybody else has stuck to the 3-5 times distance.
For our team, we saw results for the “in shape” swimmers at around 5 weeks. For the out of shape swimmers, it took about 8 weeks. Once they started dropping time, they continued to drop. “Results” for us was bettering their top time shaved and tapered from the end of last year’s season. Did not have records to compare year over year within the season.
For athlete’s who supplemented the high school practice with club practice or weight regimen, we didn’t see the same time drop. They still improved, but not as much as the group doing just our practice.
Some great questions from parents. Amazing how many great swimmers/gymanasts/track athletes can trace their success to committed parents who gave their child an opportunity to achieve their full potential.
Wow, that’s impressive. He is a bit of a double-edged sword for this training concept, though. I asked a person who has been coaching some elite/national level swimmers if he had any opinions on usrpt, and he replied “It works for Michael Andrew because he is 6″4″. Otherwise, it doesn’t work”
It was clear to me he hadn’t even bothered to read the literature. Sigh… so disappointing. Coming from a basketball background, I am absolutely astounded sometimes at the complacency I see from some coaches in this sport. Heck, give me 500 10 and under swimmers, and even I will probably turn out a few good ones. Never mind the dozens left behind with injuries or sheer boredom.
Noticed the same thing during the season with our 100 swimmers, too, Greg. We only had 5 lanes so we had them repeating 50’s more out of necessity, but it still gave us positive results even though they were repeating their 50’s at their 200 rp goal.
We arrange the kids across the lanes before every set so that they are racing each other, too. It really does motivate them.
This sort of training with a team provides a lot of opportunities to “race,” and I think that must also produce some positive psychological benefits when they really are racing in a meet.
Great stuff, folks! You are really helping me out with some ideas and observations. This is what I was hoping to get when I joined this group. I have changed my record keeping, and now I am tracking the first miss along with the total yards at race pace for each set. I have eliminated the max # of reps per set, and I will just stop a swimmer and change their goal time if they reach the max number I have in my head. Seems like it’s a more positive experience. A swimmer goes from 600 yards to 750 yards at race pace on their 50 frees at 200 rp, and they feel like they have really improved. Even though they didn’t get my max goal of 20, it doesn’t matter.
This makes my record keeping a little tidier, too, because I am focusing on just two key data points (first miss/total rp yards) before making a decision on lowering the goal time.
Thanks again.
