Ultra Short Training At Race Pace

But the failure element is how you track how much you're improving in Rushall's system. Without it how are you able to gauge your progress? In other training regimes the answer might be "I know I'm improving because I can hold a faster pace longer into a set" or "I know I'm improving because I'm swimming faster on all-out swims." Under Rushall's strict system of adhering to race pace you can't use either of these measures. As I said: average time. I don't believe you need to be strict about adhering to race pace as long as you are close. And let's examine this "strict" adherence for a moment. If you don't have a coach to time you and you use a digital clock, that's an uncertainty of almost a second. In other words, when I was seeing "13" was that 13.00 or 13.99? If you multiply by four then that's a pretty big swing in race pace. And that's assuming I can see exactly when I touch. If you are "strictly" adhering to Rushall's system then you are supposed to have a race finish, which means you don't look up until after you touch. So what you are seeing is not your actual time. Maybe by the time you focus on the clock, that cancels out the effect of the turn. And of course Rushall also advises a foot touch for free and back (at least that's what I remember seeing). I don't know about others, but when I do a foot touch it takes me longer to see my time on the clock. Bottom line: in the absence of a coach giving me times to the nearest 0.1 sec (which is most times), I'm okay with being "in the right neighborhood" of race pace. In this particular set I'll know I'm improving if I see a good mix of "12"s on the pace clock, especially if some of them are "long 12s" (i.e., the 12 is displayed for a goodly bit). And when I've reached the point of seeing ONLY 12s, I'll be pretty darn happy with the set. I don't anticipate getting there anytime soon. Others will say that it violates the spirit of specificity, and I say hogwash. If you are reasonably close (within a second), you're doing fine in that regard. No, I believe the more serious offense against the "spirit" of USTRP is that there may not be as good a guard against overtraining effects if you don't insist on strict adherence to race pace. If one consistently cannot hit (a reasonable facsimile of) race pace then either you are too tired to continue or you are setting your sights too high. The USTRP method of insisting that you stop after you "fail" a certain number of times is a good failsafe against overtraining. But I've been training a long time and I think I know the signs without that. To Chris and Sunruh and others, People will always be critical of new approaches (not that this concept is so new) and that's OK. This thread has offered a wonderful discussion about this training method. I am only a "group" of one, so it is a very small sample size, but (and I don't mean to toot my own horn) but, I don't know of a 65 year old who has put up decent times as a masters swimmer that are faster at 65 than when they were 60. It took me 6 months of 5 times a week USRPT, but in mid February - in the beginning of the yards season - I posted a faster time in the 200 free by nearly 3 seconds (2:03.35), than I did at Nationals last year (2:05.97) shaved and tapered and at 63 years and 10 months old in Indianapolis, I placed 4th in the 200. Same in the 500 I swam at Irvine two or so weeks ago. I swam it in 5:39.46 (and would have been faster except that I was trying out a race strategy that turned out to be flawed) I swam the 500 at Nationals in Mesa AZ in 2011 to a fourth place in 5:44.40 shaved and tapered. So what I am saying is, FOR ME, USRPT works. And I tried very hard to go strictly by the Rushall book. No modifications, no drills, no kicking, no pulling, no pyramid sets. This may not be for you, but there is no question that it works for me. Let me be clear that there are a lot of things about USRPT that I like and other things that I find intriguing, though I disagree on some points (one of which is that it needs to be "pure"). And I dislike many, many aspects about the way in which Rushall presents it: verbose writing that is needlessly antagonistic to put it mildly (for example). Rushall likes to present himself as the "scientist in the room" but I read a LOT of scientific articles, summaries, reviews, and books, including those written for laypersons. His presentation is NOTHING like those, and borders at times (IMO) on intellectual dishonesty. But I digress. Just because one doesn't like the manner of deliver doesn't mean the message is wrong. However it is not up to people to disprove USRPT, it is up to its adherents to prove it (ideally in controlled experiments). Rushall and others might say this has already been done, but I disagree. I think that many of the principles have been tested but not the whole USRPT package. And Rushall doesn't seem to agree that it isn't a new approach. Sure, "race pace" isn't new but he insists his way is different than what came before, that it is new. Which is fine, but you can't have it both ways. If this is a new mix of training principles and their implementation, then it needs to be tested. There are so many interdependent variables here that you CANNOT JUST ASSUME that when you throw various pieces together you get a sum of the parts. And not only that, but Rushall really does insist on a narrow path, and that isn't clear or obvious either. A sensitivity analysis would be nice. FINALLY, there is another piece here. Rushall doesn't just present USRPT as the optimal method of training, he also presents it as the best method of motivating swimmers. That's a connected but separate issue. Because a more motivated swimmer may do better in a sub-optimal method simply because s/he is more motivated.

But the failure element is how you track how much you're improving in Rushall's system. Without it how are you able to gauge your progress? In other training regimes the answer might be "I know I'm improving because I can hold a faster pace longer into a set" or "I know I'm improving because I'm swimming faster on all-out swims." Under Rushall's strict system of adhering to race pace you can't use either of these measures. As I said: average time. I don't believe you need to be strict about adhering to race pace as long as you are close. And let's examine this "strict" adherence for a moment. If you don't have a coach to time you and you use a digital clock, that's an uncertainty of almost a second. In other words, when I was seeing "13" was that 13.00 or 13.99? If you multiply by four then that's a pretty big swing in race pace. And that's assuming I can see exactly when I touch. If you are "strictly" adhering to Rushall's system then you are supposed to have a race finish, which means you don't look up until after you touch. So what you are seeing is not your actual time. Maybe by the time you focus on the clock, that cancels out the effect of the turn. And of course Rushall also advises a foot touch for free and back (at least that's what I remember seeing). I don't know about others, but when I do a foot touch it takes me longer to see my time on the clock. Bottom line: in the absence of a coach giving me times to the nearest 0.1 sec (which is most times), I'm okay with being "in the right neighborhood" of race pace. In this particular set I'll know I'm improving if I see a good mix of "12"s on the pace clock, especially if some of them are "long 12s" (i.e., the 12 is displayed for a goodly bit). And when I've reached the point of seeing ONLY 12s, I'll be pretty darn happy with the set. I don't anticipate getting there anytime soon. Others will say that it violates the spirit of specificity, and I say hogwash. If you are reasonably close (within a second), you're doing fine in that regard. No, I believe the more serious offense against the "spirit" of USTRP is that there may not be as good a guard against overtraining effects if you don't insist on strict adherence to race pace. If one consistently cannot hit (a reasonable facsimile of) race pace then either you are too tired to continue or you are setting your sights too high. The USTRP method of insisting that you stop after you "fail" a certain number of times is a good failsafe against overtraining. But I've been training a long time and I think I know the signs without that. To Chris and Sunruh and others, People will always be critical of new approaches (not that this concept is so new) and that's OK. This thread has offered a wonderful discussion about this training method. I am only a "group" of one, so it is a very small sample size, but (and I don't mean to toot my own horn) but, I don't know of a 65 year old who has put up decent times as a masters swimmer that are faster at 65 than when they were 60. It took me 6 months of 5 times a week USRPT, but in mid February - in the beginning of the yards season - I posted a faster time in the 200 free by nearly 3 seconds (2:03.35), than I did at Nationals last year (2:05.97) shaved and tapered and at 63 years and 10 months old in Indianapolis, I placed 4th in the 200. Same in the 500 I swam at Irvine two or so weeks ago. I swam it in 5:39.46 (and would have been faster except that I was trying out a race strategy that turned out to be flawed) I swam the 500 at Nationals in Mesa AZ in 2011 to a fourth place in 5:44.40 shaved and tapered. So what I am saying is, FOR ME, USRPT works. And I tried very hard to go strictly by the Rushall book. No modifications, no drills, no kicking, no pulling, no pyramid sets. This may not be for you, but there is no question that it works for me. Let me be clear that there are a lot of things about USRPT that I like and other things that I find intriguing, though I disagree on some points (one of which is that it needs to be "pure"). And I dislike many, many aspects about the way in which Rushall presents it: verbose writing that is needlessly antagonistic to put it mildly (for example). Rushall likes to present himself as the "scientist in the room" but I read a LOT of scientific articles, summaries, reviews, and books, including those written for laypersons. His presentation is NOTHING like those, and borders at times (IMO) on intellectual dishonesty. But I digress. Just because one doesn't like the manner of deliver doesn't mean the message is wrong. However it is not up to people to disprove USRPT, it is up to its adherents to prove it (ideally in controlled experiments). Rushall and others might say this has already been done, but I disagree. I think that many of the principles have been tested but not the whole USRPT package. And Rushall doesn't seem to agree that it isn't a new approach. Sure, "race pace" isn't new but he insists his way is different than what came before, that it is new. Which is fine, but you can't have it both ways. If this is a new mix of training principles and their implementation, then it needs to be tested. There are so many interdependent variables here that you CANNOT JUST ASSUME that when you throw various pieces together you get a sum of the parts. And not only that, but Rushall really does insist on a narrow path, and that isn't clear or obvious either. A sensitivity analysis would be nice. FINALLY, there is another piece here. Rushall doesn't just present USRPT as the optimal method of training, he also presents it as the best method of motivating swimmers. That's a connected but separate issue. Because a more motivated swimmer may do better in a sub-optimal method simply because s/he is more motivated.