Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [Velocibuddha] [ In reply to ]

Dec 19, 23 10:19

Post #26 of 41 (1244 views)

It all depends on what your goals are for the swim. My reference was for an athlete to achieve "peak performance." So it's a performance goal.

Your goal doesn't sound like you are terribly interested in performance since the "cost" seems to be the main driver.

The whole point of a high intensity approach is to minimize the amount of training stress for the given goal. In general, if you followed a traditional higher volume approach to achieve your goal of 1:08-1:18 pace, you could get to the same place with a higher intensity approach on 40-50% less volume.

I hope this helps,

Tim

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http://www.snappingtortuga.com
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Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [SnappingT] [ In reply to ]

Dec 19, 23 15:23

Post #27 of 41 (1194 views)

I have never seen a yards pool in my life but I would say 108 - 118 is a fairly big range

Which brings me to...

Swim yards - less break down of stroke VERSUS swim long course - fewer breaks in stroke

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [waverider101] [ In reply to ]

Dec 19, 23 15:28

Post #28 of 41 (1190 views)

I have never seen a yards pool in my life but I would say 108 - 118 is a fairly big range //

I believe what he meant was that for sprint/olympic distance race he swims 1;08 pace, and for an ironman he swims 1;18 pace. Seems pretty reasonable for that drop off when you triple the distance...

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [140triguy] [ In reply to ]

Dec 21, 23 14:58

Post #29 of 41 (1064 views)

140triguy wrote:

Volume and VO2 and threshold training

vs

USRPT

Oh. I'm coming at this from the swim-specific side.

USRPT has essentially an N=1, but it's gotten an immense amount of attention and press. It helps that he's a multi-event world champion, but in all honesty, he's a multi-event world champion in the 25m pools in the shortest events. He won an Olympic gold medal, but largely on the strength of the other guys on his relay, which included two WR holders in their events. Famously, Michael Andrew led the 2021 Olympic 200 IM into the last 160m, but died so hard that he finished 5th. USRPT has very little relevance to any swimming events beyond the short races in the 25m pool. And hardly any relevance to the kind of swimming that almost everyone on this forum does: OWS (800m to 3900m or more). Certainly the high-speed interval training is a part of some training, but that stuff should already be in your plan anyway, just not to the exclusion of volume and aerobic and threshold training.

Reminder that training for OWS has much more in common with a runner training for X-C and 10k-21k-42k training than for most pool swims (except maybe the 800 and 1500m long course races).

I had great success training with USPRT for the 400/500, 800/1000, and 1500/1650 as a Masters competitor. That pool speed carried over to the occasional open water race, including triathlon. If I were training for a full IM distance, I probably wouldn't incorporate a lot of it, but for Sprint, Oly, and even HIM competitors, I think there could be quite a bit of value in it.

As for MA, he just can't swim freestyle when he has to breath. The man was simultaneously top-10 in the world in the 100 back, 100 fly, 100 breast, and 50 free. One would think he should have a killer 100 free, too. But his best ever 100M LC freestyle wouldn't have placed him in the top 30 in the US 2020 Olympic trials. There's a fundamental issue with his freestyle technique at anything other than all-out, ain't-breathing 50 speed. I think if he spent a season focused primarily on training for (using USRPT), and competing in, the 400m freestyle, then circled back to the 200IM, he could break that record. He would get roughly 8x the exposure at swimming the pace he wants for closing a 200IM as he would with a "by the book" USRPT approach to the 200IM.

"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Last edited by: gary p: Dec 21, 23 15:01

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [SnappingT] [ In reply to ]

Dec 21, 23 15:11

Post #30 of 41 (1051 views)

SnappingT wrote:

It all depends on what your goals are for the swim. My reference was for an athlete to achieve "peak performance." So it's a performance goal.

Your goal doesn't sound like you are terribly interested in performance since the "cost" seems to be the main driver.

The whole point of a high intensity approach is to minimize the amount of training stress for the given goal. In general, if you followed a traditional higher volume approach to achieve your goal of 1:08-1:18 pace, you could get to the same place with a higher intensity approach on 40-50% less volume.

I hope this helps,

Tim

I worry an increase in high intensity swimming will rob effective bike and run training. Do you not find this? I was swimming with Tower26 for a while and early season swimming I was able to manage but once we got into mid season, some of those swim sessions were absolutely exhausting in the scope that I still had to fit in higher intensity bike/run throughout the week as well. I got better but I also felt like bike and run were stagnating and found it really hard to juggle

Maybe I should take another look at more swim intensity now that I've gotten better at the self coaching and autoregulating of workload and not digging myself into a hole.

Is USRPT something I should look into?

IG - @ryanppax
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Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [Velocibuddha] [ In reply to ]

Dec 21, 23 15:19

Post #31 of 41 (1044 views)

Velocibuddha wrote:

As a triathlon swimmer, my objective are:
A) To not waste too much training stress (or thought) on swimming.
B) To be able to swim 15 - 52 minutes at 1:08 -1:18 (100yd) pace without getting TOO tired or having my heart rate drift upwards for too long.

If you just want to maintain what pace you have, which is a pace many triathletes would love to have, keep doing what you're doing.

If you wanted to improve that pace, traditional training would suggest you need to increase your volume. More volume = more time PLUS more training stress. USPRT might be a path to getting faster with no more time than you are committing now (maybe even less), with a similar total training stress.

"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [Ryanppax] [ In reply to ]

Dec 21, 23 16:45

Post #32 of 41 (1028 views)

Ryanppax wrote:

I worry an increase in high intensity swimming will rob effective bike and run training. Do you not find this? I was swimming with Tower26 for a while and early season swimming I was able to manage but once we got into mid season, some of those swim sessions were absolutely exhausting in the scope that I still had to fit in higher intensity bike/run throughout the week as well. I got better but I also felt like bike and run were stagnating and found it really hard to juggle

Maybe I should take another look at more swim intensity now that I've gotten better at the self coaching and autoregulating of workload and not digging myself into a hole.

Is USRPT something I should look into?

I think people misunderstand what a USPRT set for a distance swimmer looks like. It's not banging out 25's and 50's at sprint pace. When I was training for the 1000/1650, my typical set was 100's at my 1650 race pace with an interval that would give me ~20 seconds rest between repeats. I started the season at 1:17 pace on a 1:40 interval. My long-slow-easy pace was somewhere mid 1:20's. My all-out 100 pace from a wall-start at the time was ~1:01, so this was nowhere near "sprint" pace.

My goal was to hold that race pace for 30 repeats. If I missed the pace, I'd sit out an interval. 2 consecutive misses, or 3 misses before completion, was the end of the set. The goal was progression. Every practice try to get farther to first failure and set failure. Eventually you should be able complete the set. Then you progress the effort. For me, the first effort progression was going from a 1:40 interval to a 1:35 interval at the same pace. Once I completed that, I dropped the target pace to a 1:16 on a 1:35.

By the end of the season, I was working on 1:12s, and my slow-easy pace was down to about a 1:20/100. I got 5 seconds/100 faster (at both my 1650 race pace AND triathlon opening leg pace) on a 2-3k set plus 600 warmup, and a 200 cool down twice a week. I did do one other short distance workout a week where I did "fun" stuff like sprints or 25's in IM order. And once a month I did either a 2500 straight easy swim or a 1650 race/time trial just to keep acclimated with a continuous effort.

FWIW, I went 11:55 in the 1000y free at Masters Nationals that year, so the end-of-season USRPT set pace was very predictive of my actual race performance.

"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

Last edited by: gary p: Dec 21, 23 16:48

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [gary p] [ In reply to ]

Dec 21, 23 16:56

Post #33 of 41 (1021 views)

gary p wrote:

Ryanppax wrote:

I worry an increase in high intensity swimming will rob effective bike and run training. Do you not find this? I was swimming with Tower26 for a while and early season swimming I was able to manage but once we got into mid season, some of those swim sessions were absolutely exhausting in the scope that I still had to fit in higher intensity bike/run throughout the week as well. I got better but I also felt like bike and run were stagnating and found it really hard to juggle

Maybe I should take another look at more swim intensity now that I've gotten better at the self coaching and autoregulating of workload and not digging myself into a hole.

Is USRPT something I should look into?

I think people misunderstand what a USPRT set for a distance swimmer looks like. It's not banging out 25's and 50's at sprint pace. When I was training for the 1000/1650, my typical set was 100's at my 1650 race pace with an interval that would give me ~20 seconds rest between repeats. I started the season at 1:17 pace on a 1:40 interval. My long-slow-easy pace was somewhere mid 1:20's. My all-out 100 pace from a wall-start at the time was ~1:01, so this was nowhere near "sprint" pace.

My goal was to hold that race pace for 30 repeats. If I missed the pace, I'd sit out an interval. 2 consecutive misses, or 3 misses before completion, was the end of the set. The goal was progression. Every practice try to get farther to first failure and set failure. Eventually you should be able complete the set. Then you progress the effort. For me, the first effort progression was going from a 1:40 interval to a 1:35 interval at the same pace. Once I completed that, I dropped the target pace to a 1:16 on a 1:35.

By the end of the season, I was working on 1:12s, and my slow-easy pace was down to about a 1:20/100. I got 5 seconds/100 faster (at both my 1650 race pace AND triathlon opening leg pace) on a 2-3k set plus 600 warmup, and a 200 cool down twice a week. I did do one other short distance workout a week where I did "fun" stuff like sprints or 25's in IM order. And once a month I did either a 2500 straight easy swim or a 1650 race/time trial just to keep acclimated with a continuous effort.

FWIW, I went 11:55 in the 1000y free at Masters Nationals that year, so the end-of-season USRPT set pace was very predictive of my actual race performance.

Great info thank you

Last edited by: MrTri123: Dec 21, 23 16:58

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [samtridad] [ In reply to ]

Dec 22, 23 12:53

Post #34 of 41 (941 views)

samtridad wrote:

The most confusing one for me has been about hand speed and timing during the pull. A previous coach told me to think about "holding on to the water" and letting my hand stay where it gripped the water so I could roll my body past the hand, which leads to fairly slow hands underwater. Current coach tells me to pull harder on the water and move my hands faster underwater to increase my cadence and speed. Previous coach told me to reach out in front and spear my hand through the water reaching forward as far as I can, current coach says I should speed up my recovery arm and let it drop into the water and "get to the catch" quickly. Previous coach had me practice "front-quadrant" swim drills, current coach tells me to "turn my arms over quicker". Previous coach told me to look straight at the bottom of the pool, current coach told me to look slightly forward. Lots of other technical advice that seems to be contradicting what I had previously been told, but I'm sure (as with all of these pieces of advice) the "truth" is somewhere in between the extremes. I think it also depends on the "style" of "freestyle" a particular coach is emphasizing. The funny (okay, not funny, really frustrating) thing for me is that I listen to the coach, make the adjustments, try my best, and my times stay EXACTLY THE SAME. Which leads me to suspect that maybe the details I'm being told to focus on don't actually matter all that much.

Your just doing the same no matter the message. If you could think a skill or feeling ( arm pressure ) we could all read books and studies and be in the Olympics.

I had 5 different swim coaches yell 5 different things at me from 2006-2011. Just what ever their coach yelled at them, that they thought they were doing.

Year one roll over the barrel with the arm.
year two kick more.
Year three, faster hand speed.
Year four more rotation.
year 5 just do what you are doing better. ( as in I don't what the problems are so just do and maybe you get it).

The most annoying thing swim coaches tell a beginner swimmer is you need a HIGH ELBOW. It's like telling a cyclist you need a HIGH Knee ??? yes it should be higher then your ankle and the pedal, but what if it's too high!!!!

Technique will always last longer then energy production. Improve biomechanics, improve performance.
http://Www.anthonytoth.ca, triathletetoth@twitter

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [Triathletetoth] [ In reply to ]

Dec 22, 23 17:49

Post #35 of 41 (889 views)

Swim with a coach to watch your technique VERSUS stop over thinking it

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [MrTri123] [ In reply to ]

Dec 23, 23 11:30

Post #36 of 41 (787 views)

Great topic, most of the common conflicting advice has been posted.

My contributions to this thread:
Most of the swim advice (even most of the conflicting stuff) is based on a grain of truth, but folks' (typically, coaches') abilities to communicate it clearly and with the proper caveats is often terrible.

Swimming fast for most people involves staying away from extremes. For example, body rotation is essential, but over-rotation can be detrimental.

Finally, what l found is that usually there is a lot of agreement on what is good/proper form for distance freestyle. However, what is far more tricky is exactly how to get a relatively inexperienced swimmer to replicate that movement pattern when said swimmer is unable to see his/her body. Being able to effectively teach in that situation, that is a very rare talent among coaches.

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Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [Ryanppax] [ In reply to ]

Dec 23, 23 14:11

Post #37 of 41 (764 views)

Ryanppax wrote:

SnappingT wrote:

It all depends on what your goals are for the swim. My reference was for an athlete to achieve "peak performance." So it's a performance goal.

Your goal doesn't sound like you are terribly interested in performance since the "cost" seems to be the main driver.

The whole point of a high intensity approach is to minimize the amount of training stress for the given goal. In general, if you followed a traditional higher volume approach to achieve your goal of 1:08-1:18 pace, you could get to the same place with a higher intensity approach on 40-50% less volume.

I hope this helps,

Tim

I worry an increase in high intensity swimming will rob effective bike and run training. Do you not find this? I was swimming with Tower26 for a while and early season swimming I was able to manage but once we got into mid season, some of those swim sessions were absolutely exhausting in the scope that I still had to fit in higher intensity bike/run throughout the week as well. I got better but I also felt like bike and run were stagnating and found it really hard to juggle

Maybe I should take another look at more swim intensity now that I've gotten better at the self coaching and autoregulating of workload and not digging myself into a hole.

Is USRPT something I should look into?

I did an OWS season 2022/2023 swimming 35km a week and planned to try and ride and run even if it was once a week, but nah. Nothing! I ran to cross the road and that was it, too cooked from swimming! I did find that after 4 months of no bike/run, I hadn't lost that much fitness.

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [zedzded] [ In reply to ]

Dec 23, 23 15:03

Post #38 of 41 (754 views)

How did your swimming improve?

How many months did you do only swimming?

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [zedzded] [ In reply to ]

Dec 23, 23 18:36

Post #39 of 41 (703 views)

zedzded wrote:

Ryanppax wrote:

SnappingT wrote:

It all depends on what your goals are for the swim. My reference was for an athlete to achieve "peak performance." So it's a performance goal.

Your goal doesn't sound like you are terribly interested in performance since the "cost" seems to be the main driver.

The whole point of a high intensity approach is to minimize the amount of training stress for the given goal. In general, if you followed a traditional higher volume approach to achieve your goal of 1:08-1:18 pace, you could get to the same place with a higher intensity approach on 40-50% less volume.

I hope this helps,

Tim

I worry an increase in high intensity swimming will rob effective bike and run training. Do you not find this? I was swimming with Tower26 for a while and early season swimming I was able to manage but once we got into mid season, some of those swim sessions were absolutely exhausting in the scope that I still had to fit in higher intensity bike/run throughout the week as well. I got better but I also felt like bike and run were stagnating and found it really hard to juggle

Maybe I should take another look at more swim intensity now that I've gotten better at the self coaching and autoregulating of workload and not digging myself into a hole.

Is USRPT something I should look into?

I did an OWS season 2022/2023 swimming 35km a week and planned to try and ride and run even if it was once a week, but nah. Nothing! I ran to cross the road and that was it, too cooked from swimming! I did find that after 4 months of no bike/run, I hadn't lost that much fitness.

Ya, this has been my experience also. In fact, just today I had this very thing happen. I've swum around 33,000 yd (30,000 m) this week and my ability to run has just gone way, way downhill across the week. I struggled through 3.5 mi today but it was very slow and very painful. I think once you get to a certain amount of swimming, then it just takes all your energy and that is all you've got. After today, I'm happy to read of another person's similar experience. :)

"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [MrTri123] [ In reply to ]

Dec 24, 23 5:22

Post #40 of 41 (640 views)

MrTri123 wrote:

How did your swimming improve?

How many months did you do only swimming?

I did 20km from september to dec, then dec - feb was 30+. I got down to 1.18 pace for 100m, compared to say 1.22 with 15km a week (50m pool). But I found biggest difference was being able to hold an OK pace for much longer e.g 1.38min/100m for 10km (2.40). 4 x 2.5k laps with no real drop in pace. Top guys would be holding 1.10min/100m pace for 10km, which is just insane.

Last edited by: zedzded: Dec 24, 23 13:40

Re: List of conflicting Swim advice you have heard or seen :) [zedzded] [ In reply to ]

Dec 24, 23 5:46

Post #41 of 41 (635 views)

Great!

Thank you

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