USRPT training is the most effective way to train a swimmer to achieve their best times in a meet, but another notable aspect of the method is that those who use it find it to be fun.
The system’s founder, Brent Rushall, Ph. D. notes, “The child growth and development people have shown that young children don’t like to do long, drawn-out, slow activities. “Just observe children being let out of class for recess, points out Dr. Rushall. “It’s not like they all go at slow speed and jog off. The games they play are all running games like chasing or tag — all high-intensity stuff. They just don’t do slow activity.”
As far as learning swimming technique at slow speeds, mile after mile, Rushall observes that children who do so “become very bored and very good at swimming slow.”
And let’s face it: Pounding away at 5,000 yards freestyle or 1,000 butterfly is not fun no matter what your age or how slow you go. That’s why you see so many adult swimmers slogging away lap after lap listening to an underwater MP3 player to alleviate the boredom of staring at that black line mile after mile.
But the words of experts mean very little if things don’t translate into the pool. Enter USRPT and it’s inherent nature as a fun game that’s also an awesome training tool.
One of the things that intrigued me most when I first started coming in contact with the Sedona Race Pace Club was that the kids always looked liked they enjoyed what they were doing! That really caught my attention because it was very different than my own experience as a national-level swimmer where workout philosophy was “more pain, more gain.”
One teenage swimmer on our team readily agreed that the USRPT training method is fun, but particularly because the science of it backs it up. “It just doesn’t make sense that a person would swim long yardage at a slow pace to try to swim fast in a race,” he said.
Not to mention the wear and tear on a person’s body, he mentioned. As the former owner of a body that was fully blown out with bursitis and adrenal fatigue by age 17 as the culmination of an 8-year swimming career, I was elated by his insight.
When the young novice swimmers were asked after a USRPT workout what was the most fun, they immediately responded in unison with answers about the butterfly and breaststroke sets. Although these are two of the hardest swimming strokes — butterfly, for example, trains 27 different muscles — the youngsters were bubbling over with enthusiasm about their experiences.
Their spontaneous responses fully confirmed what Dr. Rushall observes: Children have fun playing high-intensity games. The “game” of USRPT lets kids compete against their own best times on a daily basis. The game comes with rules and challenges, wins and fails, and a lot of excitement and bursts of intensity along the way.
The kids also mentioned they liked that it helped them feel more confident in the water as they “learn to swim better.” Insights shared by our swim parents confirm that this inner confidence translates into the world outside the pool as well. We love hearing how the kids are doing better at schoolwork, feeling more socially connected, becoming more focused and adept at extracurricular activities such as playing an instrument, or just spending more time interacting with the physical world rather than video games and online social networks. And in today’s world, when something is more fun than social media, it’s worth taking note!
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