Ultra Short Race Pace Training

I have swam competitively since I was 7 years old. In fact, it was one of the first things I did when I first moved to the states in 2005. My mother signed me up for the local swim.

After some months of swimming, I showed lots of improvement and quickly became one of the fastest swimmers on the team in the age group. This trend continued for another 2 years, and I first qualified for my first regional swim meet. This introduced me to hard training - regional qualifiers were often on faster time intervals and trained for longer durations.

Every year thereafter, I would qualify for the regional meets, and every year I would train hard. The type of training consisted of long grueling hours in the pool. The sessions often looked like a total of ~1000 yards in warm ups, then a 2-3000 yard main set, a ~1000 yard secondary set (either a pull drill or a kick set), and then a 300-500 yard cool down. This was the standard day in and day out for every swimmer on the regional team until high school.

When I entered high school, it was a new experience but also the same experience. The training was the same, but instead of 1 practice a day, we had an hour long morning session at 6am and then a 2 hour long session after school. The training was a bit different since the coach was different, but the general concept was the same - warm up, main set, secondary set, cool down. This is how my swimming career continued for the first 2 years.

The monotony of training had gotten to me by my sophomore year, and my effort reflected that. I didn't train as hard as I should have and didn't care about the results. The toll on my mental health was already great, and I had contemplated quitting my junior year. Not only was I tired of training, but I was also tired of the coach. While he was a good guy, he was a terrible coach. He often used after school sessions to grade homework and would write the workouts on the board and walk away. If the coach didn't care, why should I?

Enter my junior year. There was a rumor that a new coach was coming in, and the old coach was retiring. This is exactly what I needed. I attended the general information meeting like any other student and was met with a younger guy who was ready to apply his D1 college experience in to effect. I had no idea that this man would be one of the most influential figures in my life.

The first couple weeks of practice were the same as the previous years but with a higher intensity. I'm not sure what changed, or what prompted him to research other training methods, but one day he came in and sat the athletes down. USRPT. Ultra. Short. Race. Pace. Training. He said, "we are done with garbage yardage. From now on, everything is at race pace. Take your best times, and find your splits. We are targetting that every set."

This cut down the amount of yards in a day by more than half. Instead of a 3000+ yard main set, we were doing 30x25 yard sprints on the 30 second mark. Each rep was a sprint. Each rep was me telling my body that this is what top speed feels like, and that this is what I should be doing in my races. The strange this was, I was more tired after these sessions, than I was doing previous "garbage yardage" sessions. Ultimately, it helped all of us get faster and proved to be an extremely effective training method.

The reason I share this story is because I think it best describes my approach to life. Some of my closest friends have said that I'm intense at times and that I'm very focused and passionate about the things that I do. Well, it partly stems from this high school experience (mostly it stems from my early childhood with my father, but that's for another day). I can't get myself to do anything "for fun." If I'm going to do something, I want to be the best that I can be at whatever it is that I am doing. I've applied this to my studies in college, powerlifting, jiu-jitsu, and climbing, and in all of these areas, it's helped me grow quickly.

Some may argue that this isn't healthy, or that this isn't meant for them, and I agree. It works for me. I think everyone should find some method that gets them motivated to improve. For me, this is it - attack everything at race pace.