... not sure it will work for a swimmer training alone. :D
Given that very few groups use USRPT, at this point I think most people using it are, in fact, training alone.
In addition to Swimosaur's link, you might also enjoy this recent interview with Glenn Gruber on the Morning Swim Show:
tv.swimmingworldmagazine.com/.../27651
It works if you can stick with it, which is really hard to do - personally, I couldn't push myself enough without someone else at least watching. But there are a few people here who have great success with it.
My swim team is now doing USRPT twice per week as part of the "Gruber Effect" via Toronto.
I do have to say Glenn's video brought the whole concept together for me. Thanks Glenn.
I think it's fun to use it as a part of your workout, partly to break up the boredom, if nothing else. When the mood strikes me, I will do this kind of training & it's very exhausting & fun - but at the same time not really stressful, because everything is such a short distance.
My swim team is now doing USRPT twice per week as part of the "Gruber Effect" via Toronto.
I do have to say Glenn's video brought the whole concept together for me. Thanks Glenn.
You're welcome Bill. Glad to get more people turned onto USRPT.
It works great alone and works with groups. Cokie Lepinski is coaching a group in the Bay Area using USRPT. It may not work for everyone (although I think it can), but it's the concept that is important, i.e., that you are swimming 98% of your practice at race pace.
You're welcome Bill. Glad to get more people turned onto USRPT.
It works great alone and works with groups. Cokie Lepinski is coaching a group in the Bay Area using USRPT. It may not work for everyone (although I think it can), but it's the concept that is important, i.e., that you are swimming 98% of your practice at race pace.
We have a small contingent of swimmers who compete ("we" meaning the Upper Valley stingRays, or UV-Rays), but our coach has been incorporating USRPT into our workouts. One difficult thing from a coaching standpoint was the workouts were individualized in terms of time, some people were much faster than others because we had a broad range of ages (33-74). We used tempo trainers extensively and overall I think we saw a lot of success with USRPT ideas. All of us that went to the worlds in Montreal had a lot of success, in that we improved over our previous LCM times.
At least that was true for the most part, my 50 and 100 back were slower than they were a couple of years ago, but those times were for a one day meet in an indoor facility. It was easier to swim faster for one day than it was for six. My 50s went well, though.
As far as USRPT workouts go, I found that I really needed to increase the rest/work ratio. My recovery time is not great, but if I followed the "advice for drop-dead sprinters" and accounted for age, I was able to make progress and spend more time at full speed. The workouts were not often more than 2000 yards total, but if I managed to do 1000 at full speed I got a lot of benefit from it.
We have a small contingent of swimmers who compete...
I have yet to see a USMS team with more than a few swimmers who compete on a regular basis.
If I had to guess, I'd say there are 5 swimmers from my current team who compete regularly (at least 1 SCY, LCM, and SCM meet per year), out of over 100 swimmers.
Sure there are many more who support just team meets or something like that. Several years ago, the question was posed, "what % of masters swimmers do at least 1 meet per year?" I believe the answer was in the range of 60-70%.
My coach has also incorporated some aspects of USRPT into our workouts, typically on Tuesdays, which are speed days.
While I'm sure they are helpful, I struggle to see how swimming fast 25s at 100 race pace will help a longer open water swim (which is what more of my team actually does).
Can you describe how you use tempo trainers for USRPT? Thanks.
The way I use the tempo trainer was to set my goal time for a 25 divided by two, then to "beat the beep", or rather the second beep, to the wall. If I'm doing a set of 20x50, I have four beeps to finish the 50 (one at halfway to the 1st 25, one at the wall, one halfway back, one at the finish), for a set of 20x25, I need to finish before the second beep.
I do it this way to get feedback on my breakout. I can see how far I am past halfway when the first beep hits, then I can assess if I'm pushing off the turn hard enough, too many dolphins, etc. Constant feedback helps and you can also see what goes first when you start to crap out. And I do crap out on these sets, I have never done an entire set of USRPT 25's where I have made all of them. I've made some progress, but I've never been able to complete all of them without a single failure.
For example, a typical SCM backstroke set for me is to do 20x25 on 0:45, trying to hold better than 0:15 on each one. I have the TT set at 7.5 seconds. For faster freestyle sets where the time doesn't mesh perfectly with the clock, I'll rest four "beeps" before doing the next one so that my work/rest ratio stays at about 2:1.
We use some cut-up foam noodles to keep track of what we've done, kind of like an abacus. It's cute, but it also works: green/blue means you made it, orange is a miss, red is a rest.
Though only a few of us compete, we've had everyone do these sets because they are not the typical workout and they seem to stimulate a different physiology than what a normal triathlete uses. In other words, it shakes things up which is a good thing across the board.
