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Check out this reprinted (with permission) post from Facebook this week from the USRPT New Zealand's page from Coach, Kevin Hill.
As most who know me are aware that I am involved with a number of swimmers throughout the world that practice and race 100% USRPT. Their results are quite remarkable. Some have never not done a personal best each time they swim. Others average a pb about 85% of the time. Still an excellent result and generally so close. Even older swimmers still see huge improvements.
One swimmer competed in 112 events at aged 16 and made 98 pb's and swum a pb in every event both short and long course from 50m to 1500m. USRPT works for sprint, middle distance and long distance events.
Recently I have been privileged to spend some quality time with a Swimming Club in New Zealand. I watched as the coach fatigued the swimmers with a number of 200m repeats. He walked up and down the pool shouting times to the swimmers. At no stage did he coach any techniques at all. He knew I was there and was aware who I was and we introduced ourselves and his first speech to me was, "I don't agree with your coaching methods" to which I replied "Have you ever tried it?"
"No" he replied.
My question was, "How can you say it doesn't work if you haven't tried it?" I also asked what the purpose of the repeated sets were and the answer given was to improve stroke rates and fitness.
Sadly, trying to speak to him was like trying to administer medicine to a dead person. It wasn't going to happen.
I then was asked to assist a coach who was new to USRPT coaching but was embracing the format. So his group was receiving good training with better technical advice and it was so clear the improvements they made in a short period of time.
I attended training unannounced for a second time yesterday. I happened to be in the area and took a seat just to watch. I immediately saw improvement in the squad from a couple of weeks previous. I saw the total engagement the coach had with his swimmers and they responded well.
The other squad was under tuition of another person and later in the session the coaches changed coaching groups.
I was asked if I could contribute so we took the whole squad to an area where we had wireless reception and showed them the video of 8yo Alfie doing his start. They were most impressed and tried to do the same entry. What was great is that we timed them to the 15m mark and talked about not only the effect of the dive, but the thought processes and focus that is required before executing the start. The improvements were immense. So much so, that when some overspeed training was done, some swimmers were getting pb's (unofficial of course)
Focused training works. You get this with USRPT. We spent a little time on the importance of segmenting a race and the different thought processes required at different segments of a race.
Training finished and there is still so much to cover......
It generally takes about 3 weeks to see the results of conversion to USRPT training from the traditional training model. There is a meet next week. I am looking forward to seeing even small improvements. And I'm going to make the trip to support the coach and his swimmers.
Kevin has been involved in USRPT training since 2012. Kevin is a regular contributor to International Seminars and is currently involved mentoring a number of coaches and swimmers in the Asian sub continent and Philippines.
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