coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../ultra40a.pdf
There is a method, which is referred to as the Rushall method which Michael Andrew uses.
Was wondering if you had any critique about this. If this sort of training is a good idea and what are the problems.
Would this also be good for longer events? Like the 400 IM?
Thanks!
In USRPT there are only two amounts of rest, :15 rest when doing 25s and :20 rest when doing 50s, 75s or 100s. Remember, you do these as "skip if missed" and when you have two failures in a row (including extra rest) or four failures in the set, you are done with the set. So although the sets of 50s is written as 30 x 50, you should never ever be able to do all 30, ever. Same with the 75s. I think the actual set is 20 x 75, whatever, you are not supposed to make all of them. If you do, the set is too easy. You are supposed to fail before you get to the end of the set.
I assumed that people had access to this table (or others like it that exist) but given all the questions about what constitutes an USTRP set, maybe not. I extracted the attached table from the following article.
coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../ultra40b.pdf
Naturally you should read more about USTRP and not just do the sets; in other words, read the entire article (or get your understanding of the technique in a similar way).
8492
(I do always smile at the -- entirely appropriate IMO! -- pairing of "pre-pubertal" and masters swimmers in the column for 50s race-pace training. I think I'll start referring to drop-dead masters sprinters are pre-pubertal from now on.)
Anyway, the two suggested sets in the table that give me the most pause are the following:
- 20 x 50 at 100 race-pace, presumably with 20 sec rest (this seems to be Rushall's sweet spot for most things)
- 20 x 75 at 200 race-pace with 20 sec rest
I understand that these sets are designed for failure, but there is just-out-of-reach impossible and then there is the impossibility of doing many repeats of 50s at 100 pace with only 20 sec rest. That's pretty close to a full-out sprint and the set (IMO) makes little sense in a program that is designed to avoid lactate build-up. The other set is almost as bad.
I did a variation of the 30 x 25 set yesterday. I did it fly on the 0:30 and my variation was that I took #10 (and #20 and #30) as an easy swim whether or not I was hitting my target time of 13s. Rushall seems to have two reasons for his "skip at failure" scheme: one is to stress his target energy systems to a high degree (I don't have all the terminology down pat but I guess that's the alactic system and the aerobic system, simultaneously) and also to provide a metric for improvement. I don't think my modification affects the first purpose at all, in fact I could even argue that active recovery is better than more on-the-wall recovery for this purpose. In terms of measuring improvement, I can do that by tracking/improving the average of my 27 fast repeats.
Psychologically, I do better with a set number of repeats in mindset rather than a "go until you fail" system, even if that means I slightly fall off my desired race pace. I just don't buy Rushall's apparent belief that the path to swimming success is extremely narrow. (Put another way: if you think of swimming performance as a multidimensional hypersurface, then Rushall seems to think that the global maximum is a very sharp peak while I think it is reasonably broad.)
Psychologically, I do better with a set number of repeats in mindset rather than a "go until you fail" system, even if that means I slightly fall off my desired race pace. I just don't buy Rushall's apparent belief that the path to swimming success is extremely narrow. (Put another way: if you think of swimming performance as a multidimensional hypersurface, then Rushall seems to think that the global maximum is a very sharp peak while I think it is reasonably broad.)
agree 1 billion percent
if swimming performance was such a narrow peak....then there would not be such a vast amount of swimmers that have broken records with various methods. and i can vividly point to 2 olympic gold medals that were earned in the exact same event in the exact same way under the exact same coach! brian goodell and mike o'brien both under mark schubert. both doing mega lactate long distance.
how many olympic gold medals has rushall coached?
not only that, but in that same training pool as mike we had: tiffany and her 2 golds, mary t and her 3 golds, dara and her gold, rich and his gold and finally amy and her silver. not all the same events (100 - 1500, fly and backstrokes).
that is pretty darn broad.
Does this program ever integrate drills and easy recovery swimming days?
I am curious if there could be a benefit in tailoring ones non-USRPT training by including just one or two USRPT sets a week.
I assumed that people had access to this table (or others like it that exist) but given all the questions about what constitutes an USTRP set, maybe not. I extracted the attached table from the following article.
coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../ultra40b.pdf
Naturally you should read more about USTRP and not just do the sets; in other words, read the entire article (or get your understanding of the technique in a similar way).
8492
(I do always smile at the -- entirely appropriate IMO! -- pairing of "pre-pubertal" and masters swimmers in the column for 50s race-pace training. I think I'll start referring to drop-dead masters sprinters are pre-pubertal from now on.)
Anyway, the two suggested sets in the table that give me the most pause are the following:
- 20 x 50 at 100 race-pace, presumably with 20 sec rest (this seems to be Rushall's sweet spot for most things)
- 20 x 75 at 200 race-pace with 20 sec rest
I understand that these sets are designed for failure, but there is just-out-of-reach impossible and then there is the impossibility of doing many repeats of 50s at 100 pace with only 20 sec rest. That's pretty close to a full-out sprint and the set (IMO) makes little sense in a program that is designed to avoid lactate build-up. The other set is almost as bad.
I did a variation of the 30 x 25 set yesterday. I did it fly on the 0:30 and my variation was that I took #10 (and #20 and #30) as an easy swim whether or not I was hitting my target time of 13s. Rushall seems to have two reasons for his "skip at failure" scheme: one is to stress his target energy systems to a high degree (I don't have all the terminology down pat but I guess that's the alactic system and the aerobic system, simultaneously) and also to provide a metric for improvement. I don't think my modification affects the first purpose at all, in fact I could even argue that active recovery is better than more on-the-wall recovery for this purpose. In terms of measuring improvement, I can do that by tracking/improving the average of my 27 fast repeats.
Psychologically, I do better with a set number of repeats in mindset rather than a "go until you fail" system, even if that means I slightly fall off my desired race pace. I just don't buy Rushall's apparent belief that the path to swimming success is extremely narrow. (Put another way: if you think of swimming performance as a multidimensional hypersurface, then Rushall seems to think that the global maximum is a very sharp peak while I think it is reasonably broad.)
YES. I really psychologically have problems with the "train til you fail" idea.If training is to be like racing is that somehow training failure.I understand physiologically it makes sense,but psychologically you don't want your unconscious to think it is OK to "fail".
Does this program ever integrate drills and easy recovery swimming days?
I am curious if there could be a benefit in tailoring ones non-USRPT training by including just one or two USRPT sets a week.
I am really just now diving into some of Rushall's literature, so those more familiar than I should chime in. But based on what I've read:
- certainly you should recover *between* USRPT sets in a given practice.
- I seem to recall a statement by Rushall that overtraining is possible even with USRPT, despite the failsafe of ending a set if you fall off your pace. If you are getting slower -- which should be easily measurable with USRPT sets -- then you should take a recovery day. But you shouldn't need too many, a central property of the method is that it doesn't tear you down too much.
- Rushall's answer to your 2nd question would probably be "no," that you should do 100% USRPT training (with appropriate recovery between sets). From what I can tell, he doesn't think you should work on drills at all, that you should work on technique as part of your USRPT sets, since only technique at race pace is important anyway. Using paddles or buoys or kick boards are a waste of time ("irrelevant" to use possibly his favorite word), though he doesn't mind using kicking or other irrelevant swimming as recovery between successive USRPT sets.
if swimming performance was such a narrow peak....then there would not be such a vast amount of swimmers that have broken records with various methods
Playing devil's advocate: if all the methods used by previous champions and record-holders are seriously sub-optimal (as Rushall believes) then the fact that there are many of them that have been successful relative to practitioners of similarly sub-optimal methods doesn't prove much.
I'll freely admit that my feeling that the path to success is broader than Rushall thinks is my opinion ("belief-based" in Rushall's universe) based on decades of swimming and not the result of a controlled experiment. But I also think that the notion that USRPT is settled science is laughable; he seems to have first presented it fully in 2011. I think many of the principles upon which it is based have been tested experimentally and have been around for awhile but that is not quite the same thing as proving that USRPT is the best way to realize/implement those principles, even if you accept those principles as correct.
Here is an interesting pair of articles:
www.usaswimming.org/ViewNewsArticle.aspx
and
coachsci.sdsu.edu/.../48Reply.pdf
Psychologically, I do better with a set number of repeats in mindset rather than a "go until you fail" system, even if that means I slightly fall off my desired 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.
Does this program ever integrate drills and easy recovery swimming days?
I am curious if there could be a benefit in tailoring ones non-USRPT training by including just one or two USRPT sets a week.
To my knowledge, no.
Drills - These are never done at race pace so are not included in training. I personally agree with this for many reasons other than that Rushall says so. I reason is that I have never done a "zipper" drill or catch up drill during a race. The other is that if you want me to do something different in my stroke e.g. early vertical forearm, just tell me what to do and I will try it. Maybe I need to slow down a bit for a few strokes to get the movement, but I don't need a drill to do that and I believe most swimmers who have been swimming for a while could do the same.
Recovery days - USRPT is self limiting. Once you have failed the two in a row or four for the set you stop, period. You don't get to the point of exhaustion, so don't need recovery days. If I feel too tired on a particular day for some reason, I do one set of USRPT rather than 2.
1 or 2 USRPT sets a week - I believe you might get some benefit, but a 100% commitment is better.
YES. I really psychologically have problems with the "train til you fail" idea.If training is to be like racing is that somehow training failure.I understand physiologically it makes sense,but psychologically you don't want your unconscious to think it is OK to "fail".
Allen,
If you don't like the idea of "failure" think of those as missed. When you do a set of x number of 100s on a very tight interval, do you ever not make any? Of course you do! But you do a tough set because you push yourself.
It's not about being OK to fail. It's about your successes being race pace winners. There is nothing more exhilarating for me than to swim a USRPT set and go 14 before my first miss and then on the next training day at this same distance to then go 15! That shows improvement, not failure!
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.
