Ultra Short Training Rushall

Here is the link to his website.The"How Champions Do It"section is especially good. coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../index.htm Funny as I was coming here to post the same link. Good? Hmmm I donno. "Sun Yang swam the first 1,400 meters of the race with a two-beat kick." I'd rather call this dead wrong. Any time of the day I'd say, since I've never seen Sun relying on a 2bk. If you can't even count up to 4.... "Overtaking strokes are relatively common in male distance freestylers. The inherent errors of motion and undesirable limitations of that stroking format could be argued as being the principal reason why the men's 1,500 m race has improved the least of all swimming races and strokes over the past decade (even despite the introduction of the performance-enhancing super suits)." Yeah except that the second position at this race was won by a swimmer displaying an elevated stroke rate (no overtaking).

I should have said that the videos and still pictures are great and that the commentary is pure Rushell. LOL No but seriously, he really lost all his credibility now, as far as I'm concerned. In case he reads: Brent, Sun has been consistently displaying a 4bk as his most used pattern, ever since he was 18yo I believe. A 4bk is a combination of a 2bk and a 6bk. In fact, Sun displays such a pattern in accordance with the description made by Ernest Maglischo, ie the 3 flutter kicks generally occur whilst *not* breathing, which is different than the pattern use by Hackett, like a lot of other males in the field, tend to flutter kick 3 times whilst breathing. And like most 4b kickers, he sometimes displays a few cycles using 2bk, and a few cycles displaying the 6bk, probably depends on how he *feels*. The 4bk pattern was first seriously documented in Swimming Faster, first edition, published in 1980 (32y ago)!!!!! How can you could claim yourself a *scientist* poluting the web with your works full of flaws, and miss such a crucial aspect of his performance, especially that you have 60 lengths of the pool to notice it!!! And yet, you take a position in regards to drills or swim technique in general? Come on.... Swimming is too complex for you I believe.... First learn, then teach!

Because he misspoke about Sun Yang's kick? This seems a little severe to me. Everyone has its standards. He writes as a scientist, not as a blogger, not as a coach. Science should be about precision. The role of science over the history has been important to human, in the medical field for example. There, what we expect from scientists is their best possible precision in everything they do. They are revised by their peers etc.... He had 60 lengths of the pool to find out that Sun is rarely feeding on 2bk, and yet he claims that Sun did no less than the first 1400m relying on it. Now the question is why? Why? Because as always, Rushall is trying to turn his beliefs into truths. He believes (reading this text) that the 2bk pattern is not good enough to swim on pace for a world record using this. OK. Nice statement. Nice clue. But the only problem is that the subject he uses to make his point is not even using this pattern. He's trying to make a point about a fact that is wrong! Trying to discourage swimmer to feed on a 2b, whilst very little in reality even try to do. He's one step behind, as clearly, he didn't demonstrate that he even know what a 4bk is. In fact, try to find a single occurrence of a successful male, performing a 1500m in a pool on a 2bk, other than David Davies along with a few other probable exceptions. So this is a very severe mistake. Like I said, 4bk pattern is documented since 1980 at least, so a minimally trained eye should detect it. Moreover, the 4bk is used very extensively by most males over the 800-1500 events. Scientists must know these things. We expect more precision from their side, than that a coach would get, as science basically is the ultimate means through which things are being analyzed. He's a scientist, I'm a coach. He keeps questioning our works, our relevance, our ability to apply evidence based practices, he can't even count up to 4. So put yourself in my shoes... I left aside my opinion on his final conclusion, although I made a quick allusion to it: His take is that D.Swimmers overglide, and that because of that they fail at improving the world records as much as other swimmers in other distances. The only main problem with this position, is that an overglider did beat a swinger in London 2012, the proof remains in the pudding in my opinion. I have affiliation with Swim Smooth, not with TI, so normally I should be pleased with his conclusion. Unfortunately his conclusion can't even be used, because it's based on a flawed analysis. Sad. Not sure if Paul Newsome will be tempted to use this analysis or not, but I'd recommend that he doesn't since it's flawed.

My pontifications: Ultra Short Training is based on a hypothesis about energy systems and neuro-muscular training. It may be a breakthrough or not.Try it for yourself. Rushall has many interesting ideas and hypotheses,read him and judge for yourself what is wheat and what is chaff.

My pontifications: Ultra Short Training is based on a hypothesis about energy systems and neuro-muscular training. It may be a breakthrough or not.Try it for yourself. Rushall has many interesting ideas and hypotheses,read him and judge for yourself what is wheat and what is chaff. After having calm down a bit, and more importantly after having fully understood this analysis that got me a bit mad, I have to agree. Ignore my comments, they were disgraceful. I still want to leave them there, as it's usually the impact Rushall's work have on several coaches. Yet, these works have their importance. For what it's worth, his ideas on focusing on neuro-muscular component rather than energy system driven fitness development are perfectly in line with Total Immersion's thoughts. Thanks Allen.

That's very interesting. One thing I think worth considering is whether the bulk of the improvement is due specifically to the ust regime or just to a more sprint-focused training regime (regardless of specific emphasis).

So the last 4 weeks I have been using this training method 1 to 2 times a week. In a 50 meter lane, sprinting 12,5 meters freestyle, then 12,5 meters *** (20 seconds) and so on. I was capable of doing around 30 sprints maximum in a first session to now 2 sets of 40 sprints. So I swim in one training 80 x 12,5 m = 1000 m sprint. Still making the mistake to swim afap, instead of the 100 m race pace. Best time on the 100 meter freestyle dropped from 1.07.45 in august to 1.05.22 last weekend. Best time on the 50 from 30.45 tot 29.35 in the same period. But: also interesting: best time on the 200 m from 2.35 to 2.29 So I am happy with the results and will keep on using this way of training as I personally feel that: - Both anaerobic as aerobic capacity improve - I get used to the race pace and skills involved. More confident in the race. PS: I swim in the 50+ category.

Yes, possibly, though with a sample point of one it's just speculation. Given my experience with "typical" masters swim workouts, they seem to be much less focused on the sort of high quality sprint-specific traing exemplified by UST or Leslie's HIT workouts. Rich Abrahams also focused heavily on race pace work when he was going after the 50 free record in 2010.

That's very interesting. One thing I think worth considering is whether the bulk of the improvement is due specifically to the ust regime or just to a more sprint-focused training regime (regardless of specific emphasis). That is an interesting question. What you saying is that the improvement could also occur if I had done another method in sprinttraining?

The benefit of USt in my opinion is that you can sprint more meters in one training then if you would do for instance 6 x 50 all out with plenty of rest. USS trains the nerv muscular system and I feel that this is helping me getting through a race. For me, I have to concentrate on so many things, like rotation, hand entry, butt high, flutter kick, pushing below hips, and so on. I am capable of doing this in normal pace on 70 % or so, but still not good enough in race pace. This is getting rapidly better now.