USPRT Workouts?

When I posted this I obviously was not thinking about you being new to this! Well, I wasn't entirely new to USRPT. I had tried it before, and I continued to do sets to train for the 200 breaststroke and 200 fly. I was only doing each of those sets 1-2 times per week, and never on the same day. In addition, I combined those sets with other training rather than doing only USRPT. Taking the leap to the three USRPT sets you suggested was way to big of a leap for me, though. I did fine with the sets; however, the aftermath wasn't worth it.

I usually take 10 minutes or more to rest between sets. I think one should be totally gassed at the end of a set to the point that there is no way you could do another repeat. Ten minutes rest (or more), allows me to do the same in the next set. In terms of the number of races you are training for, I would not do what you do, but that is me. Obviously you have weighed the pros and cons of swimming five races a day and that works for you. What works for you is what you should do. Glenn, how many days per week do you train? Did you find that your body had to adjust to training so frequently at high intensity? I find that my sleep is HORRIBLE following a session of USRPT (especially more than one set in a session). The same goes for any day where I do multiple practice races or a swim meet day. Even when I keep the yardage low (less than 2,500), my body doesn't deal well with the demands of high intensity training or racing. Did you ever have that problem? I have tried USRPT before, and I had the same problem. I tried it again throughout last week, and it wiped me out. To avoid repetitive stress injuries, I never did sets of the same stroke two days in a row; however, it was still tough on my body. My body is telling me to back off, and I'm guessing that other swimmers in the AARP set have the same experience.

I'm brand new to it and on week 4 I believe. Maybe 5, I'll have to check my flog. I do this once per week, aiming to complete 20 x 100 before 3 failures. So far so good till today, but I had circumstances which led to my failures today. Once a week is about all I can do with USRPT so far, although as the OW season comes closer I'm going to add another day of it. So far I like it. I've seen improvement (1 sec is still improvement!) which I like. My other days are spent doing sets for distance tolerance and pace training for my scheduled marathons this summer. We'll see how it goes! Big thanks to Glenn for his help offline.

I'm brand new to it and on week 4 I believe. Maybe 5, I'll have to check my flog. I do this once per week, aiming to complete 20 x 100 before 3 failures. So far so good till today, but I had circumstances which led to my failures today. Once a week is about all I can do with USRPT so far, although as the OW season comes closer I'm going to add another day of it. So far I like it. I've seen improvement (1 sec is still improvement!) which I like. My other days are spent doing sets for distance tolerance and pace training for my scheduled marathons this summer. We'll see how it goes! Big thanks to Glenn for his help offline. Mike: I am very interested in your approach to USRPT with open water. I posted recently on two different threads here on the Forum. I'm working a combination of USRPT and CSS training for open water distance of 1.5K, 5K, 10K, and marathon. I have a 26.4K race coming this August. With your 20 x 100 set, what is the RACE pace you are trying to hold...and what is the race distance for that pace? Hope you don't mind the dialogue...I've talked with Glenn a few times about this stuff, too. He's great!

I'm aiming toward a 1:30 5K (ahahahhahahaha) and for that my USRPT is 1:37 (SCY pool) leaving on 2:00. I mostly aimed at that pace due to the fact that anything more realistic would give me a USRPT that is way too slow. (My best 5K ever I think was 1:42 and mostly in the last few years I've been around 1:52 and 2:00.) I've been hitting the wall o/a 1:35. When I started I think I set it to 1:40 then down to 1:38 and recently down to 1:37. When I am at 1:35 I'll change my take off to 1:55 and see the failures flow in. I also do CSS. When I do distance tolerance I do it at my CSS + a few seconds per hundred. I think last week I did it with the tempo trainer set to 27.25 or smthg like that. I love doing those sets. One of these days I'm gonna write a blog entry about this: perceived efforts vs. actual. Before I had the tt and did CSS I would do long sets to get in what I called "horizontal time" (mostly for my back) and would try to keep the same pace throughout (like 3-5 x 1000). I wasn't a clock watcher, mostly went by perceived effort. Well with the tt beeping in my ear, I know immediately that the pace I would have swum by perceived effort would not have been fast enough. I know this because by the end of the 1000, it really feels like I'm pushing to keep up with the beep. I have no idea if any of this will help me this summer as this (USRPT) is still new. I'm doing the same two short swims I did last year (2 mile and 5K) but: dates changed this year so they're both on the same weekend one week before Boston Light and of course the vagaries of current, weather, etc. I've also got Swim the Suck again this year in October, and that really depends upon the dam outflow that day. I will have some immediate feedback though in a couple weeks when I re-test my CSS. We'll see.

QUOTE=mjtyson;331940]I'm aiming toward a 1:30 5K (ahahahhahahaha) and for that my USRPT is 1:37 (SCY pool) leaving on 2:00. I mostly aimed at that pace due to the fact that anything more realistic would give me a USRPT that is way too slow. (My best 5K ever I think was 1:42 and mostly in the last few years I've been around 1:52 and 2:00.) I've been hitting the wall o/a 1:35. When I started I think I set it to 1:40 then down to 1:38 and recently down to 1:37. When I am at 1:35 I'll change my take off to 1:55 and see the failures flow in. I also do CSS. When I do distance tolerance I do it at my CSS + a few seconds per hundred. I think last week I did it with the tempo trainer set to 27.25 or smthg like that. I love doing those sets. One of these days I'm gonna write a blog entry about this: perceived efforts vs. actual. Before I had the tt and did CSS I would do long sets to get in what I called "horizontal time" (mostly for my back) and would try to keep the same pace throughout (like 3-5 x 1000). I wasn't a clock watcher, mostly went by perceived effort. Well with the tt beeping in my ear, I know immediately that the pace I would have swum by perceived effort would not have been fast enough. I know this because by the end of the 1000, it really feels like I'm pushing to keep up with the beep. I have no idea if any of this will help me this summer as this (USRPT) is still new. I'm doing the same two short swims I did last year (2 mile and 5K) but: dates changed this year so they're both on the same weekend one week before Boston Light and of course the vagaries of current, weather, etc. I've also got Swim the Suck again this year in October, and that really depends upon the dam outflow that day. I will have some immediate feedback though in a couple weeks when I re-test my CSS. We'll see. Well, your speed is similar to me and now what I am doing is to try 40 x 50 m before 3 failures. The pool is 50 m long. I started a few weeks ago and targeted 55", pushing off at 75", aiming to do 2 USRPT sessions per week. I have passed 55" on my 2nd session (passing means reaching 40 without 3 failures) and turned to 54" / 74" afterwards. Initially after the reduction my failure count was 20 23 25, thinking that I may be able to pass it soon, but in the next session I was not feeling well, only reaching 8 11 14, much worse than before, and 11 14 17 in the next session. However I admit that I haven't done any USRPT this week yet as I did a few long swims continuously over the last weekend - 4 km, 2.5 km then 5.6 km on 3 continuous days - and I was still not feeling good on Tuesday even after a complete rest on Monday. And now the pool temperature is so hot that I can no longer reasonably expect achieving my previous numbers. My CSS currently is around 2:00 / 100 m, however it is only a wild guess as I can never recovery well after the 400 T/T, making the 200 T/T much slower than my PB.

I'm now worried that how can I make sure that I feel "good" on my race day. That is what proper training cycles are for, and not throwing everything plus the kitchen sink at the wall to see what sticks. It still seems to me like you are trying to replace solid technique and efficiency with brute yardage.

I've just found that my failure count fluctuates a lot depending on if the day is good or not. My current "standard" set is to attempt 40 x 50 m interval starting on 74", making 54" for each one. My previous best was failing on 20th, 23rd and 25th. Last Friday was a good day for me. I did a squad training session in the morning and already reduced my base pace to 1:58 / 100 m, and still feeling strong at the very end that the coach told me to try 1:56 the next time. In the evening the same day I did USRPT and pushed to 18th, 21st and 26th for the failures. I did open water swimming on Saturday and rested on Sunday, however I was feeling extremely bad on Monday. I attempted the same USRPT set and failed on the 7th, then a consecutive failure on the 9th ended my set. I didn't even make 10 intervals while I was doing up to 18 before failure on the last week! I'm now worried that how can I make sure that I feel "good" on my race day.

...the difference of my all out 100 m time (1:36) and my CSS pace (around 1:58 - 2:00 / 100 m) is too large. I have forgotten what CSS pace is, but if I look at your all-out 100m time (1:36) and your CSS pace time (1:58) that is a difference of 22 seconds. I don't swim the 1500 very often, but the last time I did so (three years ago) I averaged 1:28 per 100 and my all-out 100m time was 1:03. That is a difference of 25 seconds. My 1500 time and my 100 time were both Top Ten that year. So that does not sound like the difference in your times is too large.

Then give up! Every single post you've made on this forum is you over-analyzing everything. As far as I can tell, you did not even start with the basics, just jumped to more advanced concepts and got frustrated because you haven't become "elite." And *then* you went for "few private lessons." You do not appear to want to bother with the process of actually learning to swim correctly, and you cannot swim fast without swimming correctly, no matter what philosophy of swim training you choose to use. Swimming is not running. Humans did not evolve to swim the four competitive swimming strokes like we did to move efficiently on land. The movements do not come naturally for the large, large, large majority. It's like... trying to teach yourself piano for 3 months and being frustrated because you can't play Sonata Pathetique. My n=1: I took swimming lessons all the way back from parent/kid lessons at like age 2. I failed whatever level backstroke was taught 3 times. I started competitive swimming at age 9 (remember, that's *7 years* after I started swim lessons!) and was *slow*. I didn't get halfway decent until I was a senior in high school (that's age 18 - *16 years* after I started swim lessons!). And that's learning as a kid with a malleable nervous system. It isn't easy. It isn't fast. There aren't any shortcuts. You're teaching you body and brain to move in ways they aren't familiar with. But by all means, if your options are either somehow make swimming come naturally, or give up, then give up. this... swim lessons. started swimming a little middle school swimming at 10/11. Sucked SO BADLY that for TWO STRAIGHT YEARS I received the 'most improved award." Kept plugging away, added year round club swimming, lessons, camps and crosstraining and by 17 I was quick enough to go to a small/mid D-1 school on a combo athletic/academic scholarship. I'm now swimming again 14 years later and have been in the water the SAME amount of time (6 months) and my progress is barely perceptible, I am not elite by any stretch and can only hope to do well at meets in 2020. Chill. Out. So. Much.