Rick
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Greg, we did pretty much the same thing. They had Friday and Saturday off, so we did regular 3 sets on Mon. and cut it back by one like you did. Results were solid. All but 2 pb swims at districts. Interested in what others have experienced too.
I thought you could only train for the 100 with 25’s. We definitely had some carryover in our 100 times training for the 200 and 500 but we never had them repeating their 100 race pace goal for the 50’s.
That’s my hunch, too. Huge difference, imo. The burnout is just too high without the self-regulating/recovery aspect that usrpt provides.
It’s great to see some current studies being done as it applies to swimming at “race pace.” It seems to me this was more like “swim every lap as fast as you can and do them all.” Maybe I missed something when I was reading it. I was lucky enough to work with a man at my school who was intimateley involved with some early race pace training work, and he was the one that helped me to put a program together for my then 12 year-old. We got great results, but it became highly frustrating for him to complete every rep at his max, regardles of whether or not he was swimming fast/goal times.
The key to me is the self-regulating aspect of true usrpt. It puts much more responsibility on the swimmer, and I think that is great. Now, when a swimmer misses a time, I have the chance for that quick conversation on how they can fix the problem. Plus, they don’t find themselves getting slower and slower as their rest time keeps decreasing because they aren’t completing their swims as fast as they were. Kind of a death spiral!
Do we know whether this study was true usrpt or just repeating sprint sets? To me, it is critical distinction. Having tried both types of swimming, I see usrpt as a much more sustainable approach. Either way, with only 75 minutes/5 days a week, I know our HS team can’t go back to the old way.
We were doing 3 sets a practice (2x 12×50 1x 16×25 for 1600 yds.) 3 times/week. Seemed to work well given the results. I am wondering what it will be like if we up it to 5 days/week. this is what I am experimenting with over the summer.
Hi, Kevin. I understand what you are experiencing. I can tell you that for our high school team, we repeated 12 x 50’s and 16 x 25’s. We did 2 sets of 50’s and one set of 25’s, and we only did this three days a week. Even with these lower numbers, we still had the biggest overall improvement in swimmers than we have ever had. We only had 75 minutes for practice, so there wasn’t much rest in between sets.
In our off season, I am experimenting with my own son. We are repeating 40 x 25 at 200rp. I want to see how the 25’s with more reps translates to his actual race time. We are doing this for free and breast. We are also doing 24 x 25’s at 100rp for all strokes. Obviously, the big difference is we are training lots of 25’s compared to our high school training. Our first meet is in May, and even though it is a lcm race and we are training scy, I’m hoping to get some anecdotal evidence that I can use for the next season. If I can get the same results with 25’s that I got with 50’s, it will give me some better training options.
I think that makes a lot of sense, Kevin. The most difficult part I find is that swimmer’s still think they are successful only if they complete the entire set. I have one athlete in particular who would leave early, fudge her time, and refuse to accept new time standards because she didn’t want to “fail” on any set. The first thing I will do differently next year is eliminate the word “fail” for a missed time. The psychology attached to this brings way too much shame with it. I am going to ask them to give me the “maxed out” number. I am going to explain to them that this is the number of succesful reps they were able to do maxing out at the desired race pace. If they fail on #12 then there maxed out # is 11. I know this might sound silly, but I believe it will make a difference.
I know next year that I am really going to have to take some extra time during the first 2 weeks to really hammer home the new definition of a successful practice.
Ok, thanks. So there are 2 different parameters (3rd failure or 2 failures in a row), and either one would lead to abandoning the set and recovery. I just never saw either one of them mentioned together in any of the bulletins. Not that I might not have missed it, though 😉
We do almost no dryland during the season, but I am meeting resistance from parents over this. Personally, I agree with what Rushall has written. As a compromise, we are doing some core work to keep people happy, but I am still waiting for that definitive study that shows how dryland equates to faster swimming overall. We have eliminated all pull buoys, paddles, snorkels, etc… We only use kickboards during the recovery sessions.
The only anecdotal evidence I have gathered is that serious dryland training has a negative impact on times. I observed this again this year in a small group of swimmers who worked out diligently with weights, stretch cords, etc… under the supervision of a “swimming” conditioning specialist.This small group made the least gains in the pool. In the case of 2 of them, they did not achieve one personal best the whole season.
Just curious, have you noticed the same results in both boys and girls using usrpt? I’m mainly interested in the results of girls using usrpt.
Here is my confusion. It seems like 2 conflicting suggestions.
UNDERSTANDING A USRPT SET
Brent S. Rushall, PhD
September 1, 2013“In the USRPT format, when a repetition is slower than the desired race-pace, the
swimmer misses the next repetition and enjoys more recovery than is possible in the
usual 20-second rest period. When sufficient fatigue has occurred to thwart the desired
level of performance, that level of performance disruption is known as a “training effect”
(Rushall & Pyke, 1991). In the practical implementation of USRPT, a swimmer is
allowed to fail two more times after extra recovery is allowed before the set is abandoned.”SWIMMING SCIENCE BULLETIN
Number 47©
Produced, edited, and copyrighted by
Professor Emeritus Brent S. Rushall, San Diego State University“Two failures in a row. Set abandoned.”
That’s impressive. I think I might be emphasizing the 50’s too much in training for the 200’s. I’d like to try that 40 x 25 set.
Thanks for those links and advice, folks. I think from the reading that 18-23 seconds seems to be an acceptable range for the 50’s. That should work well with my team. We have to work on those 5 second intervals to keep the lanes orderly so this range seems the best way to organize my lanes. A little concerned that 18 seconds won’t be enough, but I’ll give it a try.
Regarding your 2 challenges/questions, I have had some decent results with the following:
1. When a swimmer can’t make a realistic race time goal, I take a look at their technique in practice versus how they actually race. When there is a discrepancy between the two (practice technique looks completely different than racing technique), I find it takes a lot of conversations between those missed sets talking with the swimmer about how they need to change their training habits/strokes if they want to make their practice goals.. A lot of times it comes down to how they execute their turn. After thousands of yards with sloppy turns, it takes a lot of work to try and be as perfect as possible in order to make your time. This is what I love about this training method.
2. Haven’t experienced this problems with boys yet because this is the first season we have done this. One thing I did do after our “big” high school meet was adjust target goals for the next 2 weeks leading into USA “big” meet. This did yield positive results. Interested in what others have tried, though.
As an experiment, I tried training for the 200 IM by doing 12 x 50’s of the front end and back end of the 200 IM (25fly/25 back and_25 breast/25free) with my own son. the idea was that doing 50’s was good training for the 200 distance. Did this for only 2 weeks and got very nice results (1% drop in time).
I am also interested in hearing other methods for training the IM. I really like the idea of working on the turns while doing these sets, and that’s why I did it this way.
Yep, Greg. Sounds very familiar. I like the ability to work with a swimmer individually if they miss a time, too. Competitive swimmers are goal-oriented in my experience, so why not use that attribute as a positive, motivating tool?
By the way, my final words before any swimmer’s big race is “trust your training.” I like that idea.
