ryanupper
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Kevin,
I re-read the older thread and saw you had the same questions. I looked at what I wrote some 3! years ago and thought about what I’ve been doing recently.
Periodization: I’ve attempted to list some observations in the other forum topic about this. My recent one indirectly addresses an early season situation. Essentially, your more experienced swimmers suffer from peripheral anaerobic fatigue early in the season. There’s really no way around this. They probably aren’t breathing hard on many sets cuz the peripheral muscle can’t regenerate efficiently. As a traditional coach, if we don’t see them breathing hard we think they aren’t working hard.
The problem with experienced athletes is they know/remember how to go fast. Technique takes years to degrade. But the half-life of mitochondria in 14 days. So, your swimmers are feeling a fast 100 pace on the first 25 but by rep 6 the energy delivery architecture is exposed as being “out of shape”. I think training in the 100% VO2max range may be the best fix for this issue.
As for 2-week periodization, I think it just comes down to changing one of the variables. When the athlete plateaus tweak something. I’ve found pace (intensity) to be the most demanding. Increasing target volume and decreasing rest are less demanding. Changing a technique item helps to refresh the mental focus. I would be careful looking at MA’s plan cuz he is 1 athlete. We don’t know where he falls in a large population.
Peaking:
I’ve used a plan where I lock everything in 2 weeks before a meet; no specific techinque item focus, no change in pace or interval. But keep the volume up. The week before I cut volume so that I end up doing 6-8 reps 48-72 hours before. Add more starts and turns but longer breaks between sets. No sprints 2-3 days out. And I take the day off before the event. For individuals, ask them if they feel they locked in their race-pace in the short sets. If they feel they have then move them along. If they say they didn’t give them a few more reps. They should be thinking about this during the meet warmup as well.From MA’s Pan Pacs video it looks like he runs through his event sets in the same order and in the same day scheme as the meet. He said he starts this 1 month out. So for a 3 day meet you would train each event you would be swimming each day and rotate the training on a 3-day microcycle.
Paul,
Good analysis. He’s past the neurological adaptations. He’s probably inducing some technical adaptations along with natural growth. I’m assuming you’re using the macrocycle technique guide. For stressed growth, he’ll probably need more training time.
To expand on the warmup comment above and in USRPT literature:
Heart stroke rate will rise within 20 seconds of moderate-to-heavy work.
VO2 kinetics begin to peak at about 40-50 seconds for trained athletes.
Heart stroke volume will increase after about 2 minutes of m-to-h work.
Blood viscosity will decrease and core temp will increase after 2-3 minutes of m-to-h work.
VO2 optimization occurs after about 6 minutes of either continuous work or interval work where rest is less than 22 seconds.
Muscle activation and technical coordination, at intended velocity, requires at least 4 repetitions (in this case swim reps, i.e. 15’s, 25’s, 50’s etc.).
Blood viscosity and core temperature will slowly return to baseline for 20-30 minutes after warmup or race. This is generally where the “less than 20 min before the race” rule is from.
Heart stroke volume will be optimized for up to an hour after warmup.
Muscle activation (motor unit “memory”) for the intended velocity will be optimized for 2-4 hours after warmup.At a minimum, an athlete needs 6 minutes of m-to-h work. This can simply be a 200 swim followed by 4 x [interval training distance @ target time] reps. For sprints keep the distance below 15y/m to decrease the chance of glycogen usage. For a 200 use 4 x 50. This is a minimum; if the 4th rep feels sloppy or respiration is in a moderate range do a couple more reps.
Of course, they should do some dives before the meet or during if available.
I think one of the most important parts of the meet warmup is timing the first stroke of the breakout. I always need to adjust to different pool depths. Both for the underwater kick depth and the visual relationship between the pool bottom and when I’m about to “breach” the surface.
Ryan
Wow, 3.5 hours a week? Most other coaches won’t see an improvement with 10 hours a week. It’s always frustrating to compare metrics when limited data is available:
“My athlete improved 2%!” [he swam 15 hours a week, 8k a session]
“Darn, mine only improved 1.5%” [swam 4 hours a week, 1.5k a session]Well, USRPT doesn’t use traditional “drills”. One of the techinque elements is always used during a set. Every stroke cycle should work toward perfecting a part of the whole stroke technique at a certain speed.
Now, If you are training new swimmers and young children then there is some benefit to using a variety of drills to help them generally learn and keep them engaged. Here are some guides:
https://coachsci.sdsu.edu/swim/bullets/greece23.htm
https://coachsci.sdsu.edu/swim/bullets/47GUIDE.pdfThe better the swimmer gets the more focused they should be on correcting stroke mechanics at the pace they want to race at.
I would say as soon as they can complete a full lap without stopping. I had a newish adult swimmer who could do 2 laps, 28 seconds each, before getting tired. I started with element 1, body positioning, and she was at 4 laps with breaks in 24 seconds each by the end of the practice.
Looks good!
Your next progression may be: 20×50 on :40 with :20 rest. The distance and pace are proportional to your 25s but your rest period is less per 25. Then 30×50, then maybe 20x50s with only :15 seconds of rest. Soon you’ll be lowering the target time: 20×50 on :38 with :22 rest. Do you see how this works?
When you get the manual work on the technique elements in order. You’ll be working on body position, breathing, and body roll which will help you use less energy by decreasing drag. Then you can start working up to 75s, 100s, and 200s at your 1.5k pace.
Ryan
This is a very interesting topic that is only loosely addressed in USRPT literature.
First of all, have you purchased the “technique macrocycle” manual? It contains almost everything from the short supplementals and handy printable guides for use while you are coaching on the deck. http://brentrushall.com/macro/index.htm
This is a very odd concept.
A couple things we know about longer races and training for those races:
1) The velocity change between the 800m and 1500m LCM events, for high-level athletes, is about 2%. I will assume a 2-3% change to the 3k for this. For ref, the velocity change from 100LCM to 50 LCM is 12% for men and 9% for women.
2) Technique is tied to speed. However, a 2-3% velocity difference for a long event might not be mechanically noticeable for most rec athletes.
3) marathon runners need to condition their bodies for ground impact as well as the energy cost of running forward. Swimmers don’t have impact issues so you only need to train for energy costs of moving through water. We don’t need a ton of general volume.
4) this research https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/1798302 found that swimming performance is correlated to ABSOLUTE VO2max (total VO2max) instead of RELATIVE (based on body weight).
5) Continuous work for 4-5 minutes, to failure, gives a decent representation of your VO2max. https://hal-insep.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01697475/documentWhen training for longer races, where the velocity change is minimal as to not affect technique and VO2max requirements are below 100%, it is possible that smaller volumes can still create large improvements.
For instance, when training for a 3k I would take my pace and divide by something. I’ll say 200s at my 3k pace is 3:00. If I do 15 x 200 on a 3:15 I’m at 3K but I already knew that I could do that. I was also operating BELOW my 3k VO2 level because I had short 15 sec breaks. Do I try for 30 x 200? I need to stress my ABSOLUTE VO2 level and I know that my 1500 pace is only 3% different from my 3000 pace. Let’s try for 15 x 200 with a 2:55 target pace at a 3:10 interval. My technique shouldn’t feel much different but I’m better stressing my VO2 level used for the 3k. If I only can do 10 that’s 2000y/m; it seems counterintuitive but that should improve my 3k time because races over 4 minutes are more heavily influenced by ABSOLUTE VO2max.
Prior to a race, I would then move back to my 3k pace to prepare. But, what I did during the training period was greatly improve my ability to deliver oxygen to the working muscle during the race. I still need to work on improving technique elements throughout the cycle.
I would think you could train for a 10k in as few as 3-4000 y/m a session using USRPT methods.
Ryan
“Aerobic” anything is a balance of intensity and total volume. Rushall appears to have mainstreamed the “law” that rest should always be less than 22 seconds for well-trained individuals (rest period based on blood reoxygenation timelines); how long you want them to work now depends on intensity and work period.
In VO2max testing, a peak is reached at about 4 minutes of continuous exercise until failure. Essentially, lower intensity lasting longer than 4 minutes is stressing the aerobic central system (respiratory and cardiac muscles) while higher intensity exercise above VO2max (less than 4 minutes) will primarily stress the peripheral system (skeletal muscle).
So you have 2 options: continuous exercise over 4 minutes that the athlete takes to near failure (less efficient and slower mean velocity) or interval training sets using a known pace for over 4 minutes. You may call this race pace if the athlete is a 500/1650 swimmer. For 100 swimmers it is technically their race pace for a 500/1650 but they would never actually race the event in a meet. 20 x 50s on a :60 at their 500 pace (whatever that may be) is about 16 minutes of “continuous” respiratory work at 90-95% of VO2max once respiration ramps up. A 500 for time will also achieve 90-95% of VO2max but for only 2-3 minutes.
Typically, you’re looking at 8-12 sessions to significantly improve the peripheral system shortcomings due to the layoff. Early improvements are due to increased capillarization and mitochondrial genesis in the working muscle. After that, respiratory and energy delivery systems will quickly improve throughout the early season.
The beauty of USRPT is the natural transition points embedded into the system. Instead of focusing on weeks use the transition points. Begin the training cycle by programming in sets 1 distance above the swimmer’s event distance to start every session. Take your 100 swimmers and have them do sets of 50’s at 200 pace as their “aerobic” sets and as their reps-to-failure increase, you can transition them to 100 pace and sprints. Take 500 swimmers and have them swim 100’s at their 800 pace then transition them to 500 and 200 paces.
A little long but I just wanted to make sure I supported the concept with known physiological adaptation timelines.
Ryan
Gary,
I haven’t worked anything longer than 200s. I “stroke count” by knowing if I’m pulling into a turn with a different hand or finishing with a different hand so I guess that’s also the unconscious understanding for me.
I was mostly referring to an age grouper or inexperienced RP swimmer like his son not being able to concentrate on 2 things. However, if you “train” to move stroke count awareness to the subconscious while you work on a technical element I think that would work just like any other mental awareness training. I’ll back off that mutually exclusive statement.
This is a great representation of stroke inefficiency when rate is increased:
Ryan
Here’s an example for fly. Notice on the second post I realized I wasn’t focused on technique because I was counting strokes:
http://forum.usrpt.com/forums/topic/shorter-rep-distances-to-increase-volume-early-in-season/
It’s a cascading breakdown that USRPT indirectly has identified and has controlled for.
The target time is the control for complete stroke breakdown. For many experienced swimmers, you won’t see a change of more than 2 strokes (SCY) or 3-4 strokes (SCM) within the set if they are holding the time. If a swimmer adds 4-5 strokes they either missed the time or will definitely miss the next one. The energy requirement of additional arm cycles outweighs any speed gain. That’s the energy deficit cascade.
Your long-term tracking should be looking at efficiency. For instance, 50’s at 200 pace every Monday: count his strokes on the 6th and 12th 50 (somewhere near the beginning and end of the set) and note the repetition time. Do this every Monday. You’re looking for improvements early and late in the set that tie into the target time. This is probably more valuable than having him attempt to count strokes over multiple repetitions.
I’m assuming you’re using the “technique Macrocycle” manual. If not, grab it. If he is focusing on a technical element NEVER have him stroke count. From personal experience, it’s almost impossible to focus on a piece of the puzzle and stroke count at the same time.
Ryan
Everything above is great.
Improving velocity through pulling power is the most taxing change on the periphery. Improving velocity through drag reduction is the least taxing. Manipulating rest falls in between and alternatively fatigues the central and peripheral systems.
Manipulating rest periods allow for longer, and more incremental, periodization. Before you increase target velocity drop the rest a couple times. Then increase the rest period when you decrease the target time.
For 100 swimmers, 50’s at 200 pace does three things: 1) highlights technical deficiencies at a speed approximately 8-10% slower than the 100 pace 2) allows for about double the quality technical repetitions at “near” preferred race pace 3) early in a training cycle stresses the central system more than the peripheral systems.
Program 50’s @ 200 pace after a training break and I would include these at the beginning of the week as the cycle progresses.
It sounds like you’re doing pretty well so far. I don’t think anyone has a good handle on the ideal timeline or expected results when transitioning from traditional to USRPT.
Ryan
Marlin,
Lot’s of physiological concepts in play with your approach. The first time you finished with the 100s you put maximum stress on your system in the shortest amount of time. I call this stressing the entire architecture. This has value when applied correctly. Once you burn your glycogen storage you are done for the day so doing it last is the only sane approach.
USRPT is good at building the recovery architecture so that you can initiate this type of training. USRPT is also more efficient at high-volume quality repetitions (as you know). So the catch is, do I need to develop my technique or do I need to stress the entire architecture. In reality, you can’t do both at the same time.
I started taking this approach in the gym (not Bulgarian volume training BVT) but I won’t explain that here. I’ve been squeamish to try it in the pool though.
A couple ideas:
1. Training one distance up seems to help stress the respiratory system so that more work at the target distance can be accomplished (VO2max stress begins to develop at about 6 minutes of heavy work). I do 200 pace 50’s every other training session. My 200 pace times haven’t improved but my target times, rep quality, and recovery at the 50 and 100 paces have.2. Take a USRPT set to a first failure. Maybe 25’s at your 100 pace with decent rest so you can get 10-15 in. Rest at least 3 minutes (creatine phosphate regen is 65% at 2 minutes and ~100% at 5 minutes). Then swim at 100 pace until failure. Don’t aim to swim 100 yards; just lock the pace in and go until you fall apart. This is a way to focus on technique, stress one part of the architecture, then stress the whole architecture all in one session.
I probably won’t do number 2, I’m a wuss. It seems like something you would like on those other 2 days.
Note: BVT actually doesn’t “max” that much. They hit their “true” 1RM every 3 weeks. They do one max rep “training RM” twice a week but most of the training is in the 70-90% max range. In swimming, we have a limited variety of intensities (50, 100, 200 etc.) but we list those as distances. In BVT you aren’t performing a max bench press but only moving it half the distance. The distance is always the same, for every intensity and every lift. So they are hitting a failure point but many times they are using a 3-5RM resistance. Really, weightlifting and locomotive training methods should never be directly compared. Plus, BVT plays almost no role in improving VO2max as performances are only 4-6 seconds long.
Ryan
“Im already thinking lowering to 16.8 (maybe even 16.6), So you suggesting do another session on 17 with less rest (15), then start 16.8 with a bit more rest ~25-30 and gradually lower it?”
Correct.
Typically, less rest will stress the central system (respiration, your breathing and the muscles involved in breathing). Swimming faster will stress the peripheral muscles used to pull and kick. So by lowering the rest interval, you’re prepping the central system for when the peripheral muscles demand more energy delivery.
Then, when you attempt a faster target, a longer rest interval will give the peripheral muscles more time to regenerate creatine phosphate and adapt to the new stress.
