I don't think Rushall recommends for instance to commit to 9 or 10 sessions of these per week. I think he goes as far as suggesting one session per day, which assuming a day off per week, translates into 6 sessions per week, which typically leaves at least 3 sessions for basic endurance work
I think you're making a serious assumption here. Rushall never says this.
All warmup cool down work is low level endurance right? At least half of your overall technical work will rely heavily on aerobic metabolism to supply energy. Sorry but you don't sprint sculling. You may sprint the single arm drill, but will you do it every time you do single arm drill? I doubt so.
Yes, he certainly advocates warmups, cool downs, and recovery sets be done at lower intensity. I don't see any indication, though, that he feels drills should be incorporated in swimming workouts.
"After sufficient swimmer adaptation to this training format and substance, it can be performed daily resulting in a vastly greater accumulation of relevant training effects than is possible with traditional programming." Brent Rushall
He never says swimmers should train more than once per day, does he?
"Irrelevant training programsare compounded further by a lack of effective coaching in technique (the pedagogy of movement instruction is largely absent in swimming and its coaching education programs) and mental skills training. " Brent Rushall
Yes, but drills are more or less antithetical to his whole position on training since drills are being done at a sub-optimal speed. I believe Rushall would say a skill done at a slow speed isn't going to carry over to race-pace, thus it is not effective. I will admit I'm making an assumption here, too, since he doesn't directly address drills in the paper.
And, for the record, I'm not advocating Rushall's approach. In fact I can't really fathom doing this ultra-short training exclusively, but I'm biased by 20 years of training completely differently.
It is easy to access all of Rushell's body of work.In some articles(I am not patient enough to look up where) he pretty clearly comes out anti-drill,in fact anti-anything that is not producing proper neuromuscular repetition.He is an iconoclast who seems to like to shake things up.I admire that about him,but take all his pronouncements with copious amounts of salt.He does make a lot more sense to me than the mega-yardage advocates.
The thing I like about Rushall's method is that it's based on empirical data. Most coaching is based overwhelmingly on anecdotal evidence ("Bowman is using this for Phelps so it must be good"). The problem is this is taken to the extreme by Rushall. Rushall could have come to these conclusions about training swimmers without ever having personally watched a swimming race or a training session, and that's a little extreme, IMO. The advantage coaches on the deck have is that they are watching swimmers constantly and can see what makes swimmers swim faster. The downside to this is the previously mentioned tendency to believe anecdotal evidence. There definitely needs to be a balance.
Halleluiah (I missed this site...)
I'm sad to hear that he's *that* disconnected. Being anti-drill makes him rather irrelevant to our sport, other than like Allen mentions, his anti-volume approach which is important to the world of swimming. I don't think swimmers swim too much, but that some do too much of irrelevant stuff.
I think all talented swimmers in a squad should receive private coaching, video assisted. That's an example.
As for drill, my main problem in regards to drilling is that drilling is not often performed at high rate, or high velocity.
But you have to swim to understand how important drilling is. If you swim, don't drill, and feel good anyway? That's perfectly correct for me. But a lot of swimmers report feeling better in their main set, when it's properly prepared with meaningful drilling work, to optimize sensations.
And for those who think world might be better if we did apply Rushall's theories, if they really involved cutting morning session even for Distance swimmers, cutting down volume to around 15k for sprint, 25k for distance, there theories can just not be applied in a good team, as you'd first need to get to the top (Head coach). Then well, it's a heck of a bet. You have kids that could really make it you know. Then you're going to explain them that you are following Rushall therefore they will swim minimal volume, no morning... Hey, it better work, other wise you could get replaced before the end of your contract.
I agree with what both of you guys have to say.
It's just my observation that some swimmers, human nature being what it is, are always looking for an easy alternative route to glory.
If something trendy comes along and appears to offer this, it can be easy to pay special attention to the easy-appearing part (be this Popov's famous slow motion swimming or Rushall's 7.5 yard sprints) and less attention to the rest of their recommended protocols.
Anyone who swims meets and gives all out efforts to a couple events every day for four days in a row knows how utterly exhausting this becomes. I am absolutely in favor of race pace swimmiing, and I am equally in favor of working on technique (though I agree with an earlier poster who said that sprint freestyle is a different stroke from distance freestyle, so it's hard for me to see how slow motion swimming can help ingrain sprint technique all that effectively.)
In any event, I want to be like Popov and I want to be like Rich, and I will do what I can to emulate both of my idols!
Do I understand your assumption correct that this type of training is easy to do and something for a training minimalist? I got pretty exhausted from it.
To better understand what he meant, we can use the nutrition analogy.
There are those who are looking for *tha* magical food, and those who rather keep everything in balance.
Same thing with Training. It's obvious after some time spent on forums that a lot of people are looking for *tha* magical means of training, but in the same time often overlook a few basic aspects like stretching, injury prevention (thera band), picking up the right drills and doing them the right way.
If I understand well why Rushall published this paper, I don't think it is to motivate people to abandon a balanced approach in favor of too much focus on UST.
Not so sure about that. I'd summarize his position as "too many people are training to be really good trainers, when the goal should be to be the best racer." Rushall's opinion seems to be that anything other than race-paced training is suboptimal. You might not be truly "wasting your time" by doing long aerobic sets, but you could get more bang for the buck by doing a race-paced set instead. Well, let us not mix things up....
Context. Most swimmers targeted by this study (ie, elite) do swim more than once a day. I don't think Rushall recommends for instance to commit to 9 or 10 sessions of these per week. I think he goes as far as suggesting one session per day, which assuming a day off per week, translates into 6 sessions per week, which typically leaves at least 3 sessions for basic endurance work, as normally you'd combine technical work along with UTS. It's a well known fact that too many swimmers tend to perform much better at quality work during the afternoon swim. This leaves the AM session for working out the Threshold etc...
All warmup cool down work is low level endurance right? At least half of your overall technical work will rely heavily on aerobic metabolism to supply energy. Sorry but you don't sprint sculling. You may sprint the single arm drill, but will you do it every time you do single arm drill? I doubt so.
I don't think you can go over 1 full kilo of work (working time, not resting volume) at UTS. Say you go for 12.5m, that means 80 times. Say that you keep the rest distance = it sums up to 2k session, which again there leaves at least 1 kilo for warming up, 500k for technique maybe and 500m for cool down for a total of 4k in total. Note that the hard work only represents a quarter of the overall mileage.
So even Rushall himself couldn't deny the fact that all in all, most volume done by swimmers who do commit to UST will remain done under race pace.
I rather see his statement as an intensive to:
1. Include race pace work if it's not already on your menu
2. Favor UST over AC (Anaerobic Capacity) work
As simple as that.
Not so sure about that. I'd summarize his position as "too many people are training to be really good trainers, when the goal should be to be the best racer." Rushall's opinion seems to be that anything other than race-paced training is suboptimal. You might not be truly "wasting your time" by doing long aerobic sets, but you could get more bang for the buck by doing a race-paced set instead.
edit: I think this quote sums it up
Yes but let us not overlook this here:
While other forms of training are possible, the more those forms deviate from replicating the energy supply and biomechanics demanded of every swimmer's racing intentions, the less beneficial they will be.
And that, Knelson, basically explain why swimmers (read, coaches) that don't buy Rushall's ideas on UST, will still be able to outperform those who buy it.
40x12.5 hard followed by 12.5 easy is Rushall's way. 8x100m fast with 150m of technique in between each would be the Anaerobic Capacity way (in its purest form for the sake of making my point). They both address race pace. And everyone on usms know how the last 25m of a 100m usually feels like....
Rushall believes that it's better to limit this form of work, not because it's not efficient, but because according to his paper, it would be too energy consuming... His point is that UST has an edge as it allows for working at race pace every day. You just can not come back with 8x100m fast once a day. So I guess that a fair compromise could be to increase the volume of UST, and decrease the volume of AC work.
Like I said earlier, Rushall is an activist, but a smart one still...
It may be worth to quickly replace all this in the context of your master enthusiast that trains 3-4 times per week. Recovery between sessions is such that glycogen store is likely be replenished, which already there, makes Rushall's UTS far less relevant.
I think you're making a serious assumption here. Rushall never says this. "After sufficient swimmer adaptation to this training format and substance, it can be performed daily resulting in a vastly greater accumulation of relevant training effects than is possible with traditional programming." Brent Rushall
Yes, he certainly advocates warmups, cool downs, and recovery sets be done at lower intensity. I don't see any indication, though, that he feels drills should be incorporated in swimming workouts. "Irrelevant training programsare compounded further by a lack of effective coaching in technique (the pedagogy of movement instruction is largely absent in swimming and its coaching education programs) and mental skills training. " Brent Rushall
He never says swimmers should train more than once per day, does he? well, I'm a french speaking person apologies for this. I thought daily meant every day ;-)
Seriously, Rushall doesn't publish for Masters. It is very important to understand that to better apply his theories. Swimmers do train every day obviously, like I said, they generally train twice a day for at least 3-4 days in the week, and take a full day off. 6+3 = 9, 6+4 = 10.
Yes, but drills are more or less antithetical to his whole position on training since drills are being done at a sub-optimal speed. I believe Rushall would say a skill done at a slow speed isn't going to carry over to race-pace, thus it is not effective. I will admit I'm making an assumption here, too, since he doesn't directly address drills in the paper.
Like I said guys, Rushall is an activist, but a smart one. The day he will publish a paper in which he advocate abandoning drill work, this guy will loose all his credibility (not that he has a lot btw, since he's an activist. some coaches just don't buy Rushall's theories, and it's normal given the way he generally presents them).
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:
Hey, now: ability to withstand boredom is a trainable adaptation with proven benefits to performance! We're just doing our part to help swimmers get faster.
But nevertheless, I will try the UST out for a couple of months, hopefully twice a week.
Do you think you derive the same performance benefit doing it twice a week as opposed to every day?
Go Sickfish!
