There has been a renewed interest in Ultra-Short Race Pace Training in light of the success of a very successful age group swimmer, Michael Andrew. (If you have not heard of him, here are his times from a recent article. He has multiple 11-12 National Age Group Records. Michael trains exclusively with Ultra-Short Race Pace training.
Andrew swam a 1:50.54 in the 200 IM at the Jenks Sectional Championship meet last weekend to hit his first Winter Senior Nationals qualifying time....
...In other races, Andrew this weekend nearly matched his best time in the 50 free with a 20.96, and also swam best times in the 100 free (46.06), 100 back (51.05), 100 *** (57.03), and 100 fly (49.72), all of which rank him very high on the National Age Group All-Time lists.
If you’d like to interact with other coaches and swimmers exploring USRP, or have any general questions, I’m setting up a discussion group. I've corresponded with Dr. Rushall extensively, and have been personally utilizing forms of USRP for almost a year now. Send an email to info (at) swimmingscience.net with “Cam USRP Group” in the subject line, and I’ll be in touch.
I know this is an old thread, but I'd like to address a few of the concerns expressed previously.
I came quite late in this discussion, not sure this particular point's been correctly addressed later, but work duration must be short, as one of the key principle in this form of training, well, I'd say are:
- Avoiding glycogen depletion
- Avoiding severe acidosis
- Therefore relying on ATP-CP (Creatine Phosphate, sorry I wrote it in french)
So any interpretation to the effect that one could swim bouts of 75 or 100y is undoubtedly a misinterpretation, as it would violate all these principles.
The first two premises are on point as reasons why the work and rest durations have been kept short. However, 75y/100y are very well suited to training for the 500/1000/1500. It's not "isolating/relying on ATP-CP" (alactacid energy system) that matters so much as stimulating whatever energy systems are relevant to the race.
It's interesting how swim training seems as subject to fashion trends as, well, fashion.
Not too long ago, the disciples of Alexander Popov were following an approach that, it seemed to me, boiled down to this: Swim with perfect form but in relatively slow motion. No need to exert yourself!
Now, courtesy of Mr. or Dr. Rushall, a new view has emerged: swim super fast, but only for short bursts. No need to build up muscle-pain-inducing compounds (I know lactic acid is off the hook now, but not sure what the new villain is that causes swimming pain. I know something does!).
To be sure, I doubt whether Popov or Rushall intended their respective approaches to be ways to avoid, well, hurting during practice! But I think there are more than a few swimmers anxious to find something that 100 percent kiboshes the old chestnut: No pain no gain.
Popovian super easy or Rushallian super short, I can see the seduction of both. I just don't think any extreme approaches are likely to pan out as the panaceas their devotees are hoping for. Both probably have some benefits, and I am not one to advocate suffering for suffering's sake.
But some degree of significant suffering from training is likely to be inescapable for those hoping to achieve their own peak performance. To think otherwise, in this layman's opinion, is wishful thinking.
To be precise, Rushall's "Super fast" advocacy is to match what you'd be expected to deliver during a race. In fact, if you aren't able to operate at your race pace (say, 1.5 m/s for your 50) for the duration of a USRP set, swimming at 2.0 m/s for reps of 7.5 m wouldn't be useful. Swum properly, a USRP set is very much "full of pain"... but at least that pain was induced by patterns that the brain will actually use during competition.
And likewise, I don't think Rushall is recommending the abandon of what will forever constitute the majority of any swimmer's menu, ie the relatively low level work.
Even if an elite did spend 4-5 hours booking ultra short intervals, you're still left with at last double this time doing something else.
The USRP sets are divided by super-easy recovery sets of at least equal duration, as explained in the paper... this is pretty much the only "low level work". To reap the full benefits of USRP, the other stuff (hypoxic, aerobic "threshold pace" sets, "lactate threshhold sets") will have to be cut. It was hard for me to cut this stuff out, but it has been worthwhile.
There are a lot more comments I'd like to address, but I'm not sure how many of them have been resolved by you guys already, so I'll just put a few more things out there
USRP does not apply to drills or "kicking sets" unless you have drill-races or "kicking races" at local meets. Technique does not "stack"
For people who have gotten used to it, USRP can be performed more than once per day (eg Michael).
Tabata is a totally different animal that involves training at 170% of your VO2 max when hooked up to special lab equipment. Not "HIIT" or "USRP" at all.
No not at all. Not a matter of not believe he'd recommend such a radical approach, but rather that if he had done it, it would be explicit obviously. Bare in mind that this paper was NOT published to be read and interpreted by swimmers themselves, as it wouldn't be fair to assume that they know what Phosphocreatine is.
www.roble.net/.../rushall7.html
It would be fair to say that coach's may not know the terminology either, and the ATP-CP system is (briefly) covered in high school freshman biology. The concepts are definitely accessible to swimmers without official coaching organization certification (I was one of them).
After you've read a paper like this, how could one see any other form of training as valuable? If you buy that specificity matters, and you care about racing, why would one choose not to swim at race pace? As for "ultra short", the structure allows you to maximize racepace volume by letting the alactacid system recovery in between every round, optimizing the amount of useful work you are able to do...
It's pretty clear we're interpreting this substantially differently. Maybe you have some other data to suggest Rushall feels UST should be seen as just a part of an overall plan. OTOH, I'm taking what he's written in the article at face value. I believe he's advocating UST as the best form of training to use--not just some subset of the overall training plan. To me it's clear he's suggesting that UST covers all the physiological needs of training and doing anything else is in some way sub-optimal compared to UST--even including dry land conditioning and weights.
Right on point.
He has a point, effort matters more than distance, but distance is the most commonly tracked and discussed.
Specificity reigns above all else (even effort). If someone is "giving 100%" but they can't even approach their 50 pace for a 100 or 200, there is a problem with the set.
No not at all. Not a matter of not believe he'd recommend such a radical approach, but rather that if he had done it, it would be explicit obviously. Bare in mind that this paper was NOT published to be read and interpreted by swimmers themselves, as it wouldn't be fair to assume that they know what Phosphocreatine is.
Also, like I explained you earlier, *your* interpretation of this chart, I mean if you were a coach, what you're arguing about, would be the equivalent of putting an elite squad on severe volume diet, only made of HIT or UST, which obviously doesn't make any sense. It would, it if was the case, call for an explicit mention. The minimal session duration for a sprinter varsity level is 4.5k I'd say? So you'd be, if you were a head coach applying Rushall's theory shrinking this down by at least 30%, which calls for an explicit mention. 4.5 * 9 sessions = 40k, not excessive for a world class sprinter.
The other thing, like I also explained you, is that they train 2wice a day on a few days per week, whereas this paper suggests this approach for a daily basis. Again, if it was recommended to perform this 2wice a day, a mention would be explicit. And there he would have to demonstrate that it's good thing to book race pace work at 15 to 6 AM, and there (without having done any research), I think evidence must exist to suggest it wouldn't fit all your swimmers.
Bare in mind that in a squad of 40, you may have 1 or 2 contenders for Olympics selection, no more (well, sometimes more but you know what I mean). If these two aren't geared for hard work in AM, you'd be missing the boat. So these factors are far too important to be kept implicit.
Thanks for bringing this table to my attention.
By the way, Rushall is alive, and quite easy to reach I believe. Feel free to ask this question if you want. He's no evil. He pisses coaches off, but without crossing the line what would make him as a publisher, entirely irrelevant.
Here's anohter example of his works, again there. Not bad, not wrong, but it shakes things up for sure, and pisses coaches (at least those who swear on a Periodized approach) off.
www.roble.net/.../rushall7.html
I think you guys are making a very clear point that Rushall is dismissing most of these activities as being potentially good enough to influence performances at race pace. That said, let us put it this way.
Would you be kind enough to point to volume cut recommendation? Overall that is? I'm being very sincere here. Could you find me a place in the document where he'd recommend say, a volume of 24k per week for distance swimmers, as 2500 of main set + 1.5 kilo of irrelevant stuff (4k * 6 times per week) to beat Sun Yang?
Could you find a place where he'd recommend a volume cut for a mid distance, say.... 1500 + 1500 = 3k * 6 = 18k per week to beat Phelps over the 400m IM?
If this is really what you guys believe, no wonder why you'd be skeptical about his thoughts.
If you do find these mentions, I'd like to know. Cause I'm simply going to put the jerk on my black list and forget about this crap. Good luck to any head coach trying to prepare a distance swimmer for a world class qualification (even the Worlds Aquatics) on 24k per week.
I made clear in my very first post, I hate Rushall, and part of the reason why is that he's making several people wasting considerable time...
That's 1k * 6 times per week = 6kilo of significant work for preparing to beat the best sprinters in the world.... So to me, if it's really what he meant, he has no point at all. 2h per day * 6 = 12h * 52 = 624h of training for the year, that's still under Bompa's recommandation for reaching fair national level, regarless of the sport (since Bompa's work encompass all sports). In fact, this schedule is that of a serious Master Swimmer.
I think that 2.5 kilo of race relevant work per day would be more useful than 10 kilo of non-race relevant work per day, mainly because I'm not seeing a physiological mechanism by which experienced swimmers would benefit from an extra 7.5k of "general fitness" per day. On senior teams, can you predict who would win a race based on test set performance... there are numerous studies showing the difference in "fitness level" (lactate thresh, VO2 max, etc) is not a predictor of who would win a race at the elite level... the discriminator is technique, which is honed through training specifically at race pace.
ON drilling: If you get tired of the swimming reading, here's his foray against baseball drills which also explains why they don't "improve technique" in swimmers either
www.pitching.com/.../
By this you mean that your rest does not allow for the aerobic system to fully recover right? Because anaerobic work pretty much requires the aerobic system to be at 100%.
1. Rushall is a professor, not a swim coach. He doesn't have to deal with boredom... or um... he is the producer of bor... :bolt:
2. He dislikes equipment because it has been show statistically to not improve performance, and thus a waste of time. He is not a coach and he has not studied non-elite swimmers. He doesn't have to keep swimmers engaged (the primary driver to toys) and he hasn't studied swimmers who can't achieve near competition speed at near competition distance.
3. I agree.
4. He is not against rehearsal swims. I would have to dig through his 8 million papers to find the details but he is pro racing and pro frequent shave and taper meets or the equivalent and anti trainForOneMeetAYear.
Since he is not a coach, he does not have to worry about keeping swimming interesting
1. Rushall coached international level swimmers before he retired. He consults with a number of swim clubs, particularly in Australia.
2. He discourages the use of equipment because they violate the most fundamental principle of adaptation to training in sports, the principle of specificity. Not only is it not productive work, it confuses the good motor patterns.
Perhaps there are ways to engage swimmers without the use of toys? Perhaps video feedback work (which few coaches seem to have time for) or mental skills training would be engaging?
3. What is missing from USRP for "speed training?"
4. "If you don't do rehearsal swims, how do you learn to pace for race"... that's the whole point of USRP... you learn to know by FEEL what, say, "1.5 m/s" feels like. USRP will groove that pattern more consistently than something like 6 x 100 free on 3 min (one type of "sprinter set") or 2x "all out free rehearsal swim".
That's it for me for this morning. Feel free to put up more questions.
