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).
Our group has about 90 swimmers out of which 6 compete regularly. It's about the same as your group from the looks of it.
I think the USRPT idea can be adapted to open water. For example you can do 100's or 200's at your goal open water pace, trying to entrench the pace that you require to do your goal time. It will be different because you don't have walls, but you can account for that. If you keep making the set, you're not trying hard enough ;-).
One interesting thing I noticed was that I was sore after doing these sets, more like a weight workout. Though I was doing a lot fewer yards, I was working until failure and then trying to push past that.
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).
Our group has about 90 swimmers out of which 6 compete regularly. It's about the same as your group from the looks of it.
I think the USRPT idea can be adapted to open water. For example you can do 100's or 200's at your goal open water pace, trying to entrench the pace that you require to do your goal time. It will be different because you don't have walls, but you can account for that. If you keep making the set, you're not trying hard enough ;-).
One interesting thing I noticed was that I was sore after doing these sets, more like a weight workout. Though I was doing a lot fewer yards, I was working until failure and then trying to push past that.
