USRPT workout query

I think for 100s and 50s you do 25s at pace. 200s and 400/500 should probably be 50s. 800/1000/1500/1650 should be 100s.

...how does your body determine the difference between swimming at 100, 200, 400? When you dive in the water for a race, you know in your mind that if it is a 50 race you go all out from beginning to the end. If it is a 100 race if you do the same thing as you did in the 50 you will be toast at the end. So in a 100 you need to dial it back just a bit. A 200 needs to be paced as well and you need to start with "easy speed". 400 the same, go out "easy" and hold the pace. Practicing the different race paces 100's of times gets you used to the feel of a 50 holding :30 and a 50 holding :32 and a 50 holding :34 etc. Pretty soon you will be able to predict your time before you even look at the clock after each repeat 50. To answer your question, no, you will not be detraining. Part of the reason is you will be doing more 50 repeats at 400 pace for your 400 practices and many fewer 50s for your 200 pace sets. Unfortunately much of the USRPT literature suggests "X" number of 50s for 200 training or "Y" number of repeats for 400 training. The best thing you can do is determine your target race pace and hold that time for as long as you can until failure. Forget about any suggested numbers of repeats. Dr. Rushall and I have discussed this on several occasions. The other very important thing you should do once you determine your target race and target pace is to add 3 or 4 seconds to that target time so that you can get used to doing a USRPT set. If you start doing these sets with the actual target time you set, you will find that it is too hard to do. It is easy to get discouraged in the beginning. It took me more than 4 months of doing USRPT sets 5 times a week before I understood that it was "working". Oh, and start with only one set a day. You will probably feel like you are not doing enough but remember, in Traditional Training on any given day there may be a grand total of 100 yards or meters at race pace whereas in USRPT if you complete 13 x 50 in a set at race pace with three fails, you have done 500 yards or meters at race pace...five times the race pace yardage as in Traditional Training.

Thanks for that Glenn, Nothing wrong with repetitive. One thing struck me, if you are doing your set and manage to come in consistently under your target time, can you predict your next PB by how you perform in training? eg, if i'm doing 50's at my current 400m race pace and come in 1 sec under per 50, logic would indicate my next race will give me an 8 sec PB. Have you found this? Ignoring USRPT for a second, I have found this doesn't normally work (and can lead to playing bad mind games with yourself). There isn't necessarily going to be the 1:1 correlation between how you pace in practice and how you swim in the event in a meet. Anecdotally, readers of my USMS blog would probably swear I should have killed it at YMCA Masters Nationals last week. Instead, the meet was a dud. Nowhere near what I might have expected to go given how I was training. Just because you are kicking ass in practice won't necessarily mean you are going to do the same in a meet. However, before you get concerned, also know that swimming terribly in practice and missing pace/goal times is also not an indication that you will swim poorly. Especially during taper, I liken pace/goal and broken swims to NFL preseason: If your team sucked, it doesn't mean they will be terrible in the regular season (or playoffs). If your team does fantastic, it isn't a guarantee they will be amazing in the regular season (or playoffs). Obviously most important thing you can do, regardless of how you do it, is to trust your training. If he doesn't mind me saying, I think part of Glenn's success is due not just to doing USRPT, but believing in his training as well.

Thanks for that Glenn, Nothing wrong with repetitive. One thing struck me, if you are doing your set and manage to come in consistently under your target time, can you predict your next PB by how you perform in training? eg, if i'm doing 50's at my current 400m race pace and come in 1 sec under per 50, logic would indicate my next race will give me an 8 sec PB. Have you found this?

One thing struck me, if you are doing your set and manage to come in consistently under your target time, can you predict your next PB by how you perform in training? eg, if i'm doing 50's at my current 400m race pace and come in 1 sec under per 50, logic would indicate my next race will give me an 8 sec PB. Have you found this? Here is what happened with me... I trained for six months five days a week before I broke the 400 record. The first three months I did not swim a 400 in a meet. From the fourth month to the sixth month I dropped 8 seconds in the 400 and swam it four times. Each time I swam it my time got faster.

Ignoring USRPT for a second, I have found this doesn't normally work (and can lead to playing bad mind games with yourself). There isn't necessarily going to be the 1:1 correlation between how you pace in practice and how you swim in the event in a meet. Anecdotally, readers of my USMS blog would probably swear I should have killed it at YMCA Masters Nationals last week. Instead, the meet was a dud. Nowhere near what I might have expected to go given how I was training. Just because you are kicking ass in practice won't necessarily mean you are going to do the same in a meet. However, before you get concerned, also know that swimming terribly in practice and missing pace/goal times is also not an indication that you will swim poorly. Especially during taper, I liken pace/goal and broken swims to NFL preseason: If your team sucked, it doesn't mean they will be terrible in the regular season (or playoffs). If your team does fantastic, it isn't a guarantee they will be amazing in the regular season (or playoffs). Obviously most important thing you can do, regardless of how you do it, is to trust your training. If he doesn't mind me saying, I think part of Glenn's success is due not just to doing USRPT, but believing in his training as well. I would agree with you Calvin regarding the lack of a 1 : 1 correlation. Some days you win and some days the pool wins. However, hitting your repeat times and better in practice, going longer before first fail etc gives you the confidence to make a PB. I was laser focused on the 400 record. I remember very clearly when I was standing behind the blocks to swim the 400 at Oregon City Oregon in March of 2014. I said to myself..."just do what you do everyday in practice". I broke the record by half a second. Believing in the training is very important. Thinking about your race strategy is very important. Practicing the race in your head over and over is very important. Occasionally I would visualize the entire race from standing behind the blocks to looking at the scoreboard at the end of the race. I would sometimes start a stop watch, close my eyes and visualize the race and stop the watch when I finished the race in my head. My time on the watch would be very close to what I eventually swam in my races.

If you want to "spice it up" stay with Traditional Training. Yes, USRPT is repetitive, but that is part of why it is effective...you are always comparing apples to apples. Lots of people say it is boring. It has never been boring for me. Despite the fact that workouts are very similar on a daily basis, in any given week I always try to increase the number of repeats before first failure each successive day of the week. I try to get more in before second failure than the day before and more in before third failure than the day before. There is always an incentive. If I am tryhing to hold :32s on 50 repeats, are they :32 high or :32 solid (when I look at the clock does :32 not change right away). When I fail is it a :34 or is it a :33 or is it a :35.

Glenn, Just curious, do you do a recovery day? Or is your recovery that you just skip a day in the water? Or is the nature of USRPT that you do not feel you need a recovery day? Just wondering.

Just curious, do you do a recovery day? Or is your recovery that you just skip a day in the water? Or is the nature of USRPT that you do not feel you need a recovery day? That is a very interesting and timely question for me. I do not do a recovery day since that means slow swimming and I think it would be better to just rest a day then to swim slowly. I don't see the up side to going to the pool and swim easily. I have on occasion taken a day off since "rest is your friend". I said that this is a timely question for me because I have been struggling lately with fatigue. As I approach 70 I am finding that 5 days a week with race pace training leaves me exhausted. That did not happen when I was 65. For the past two weeks I have gone to three times a week doing three sets a day USRPT. That has helped a bit, but I still don't think I have the formula for me yet. Yesterday I wrote out a new formula that I started today...we will see how this goes. I plan on two sets a day Monday, Wednesday and Friday and one set a day on Tuesday and Thursday. This formula gives me one less set per week but also spreads out the work and still gives me rest. There is not much research on older athletes and their response to high intensity training so this is new ground to cover and no one to turn to with "answers". So this remains an experiment for me.

Excellent, thanks for that. As a follow on question, there doesn't seem to be much scope for variation in USRPT for those of us "blessed" with the ability to only do one stroke (freestyle) well. Do the sessions not get fairly repetitive after a while? The only options are swim to failure at 25, 50 or 75? If so, any suggestions to spice it up?