Courtesy of Chuck Destro, CEO/co-founder of Destro Swim Tower
In 2015, after not touching water for nearly 18 months, I was struggling with my own identity, constantly bothered by questions like, did I reach my full potential? Was 19.69 the fastest I would ever go? Am I old and doomed to a 9-5 job for the rest of my life? Is my time as an athlete over? Honestly, these thoughts made me miserable. My anguish was only amplified with a very grim cancer diagnosis that my father was battling. It was in one of my lowest moments that I decided I needed to get back in the pool.
My goal was to qualify for the 2016 Olympic Trials in the 50m freestyle.
I restricted myself to only 30 minutes of pool time a day. Many friends and old coaches were skeptical; one even said that it downright wasn’t possible. However, I argued that I already had an aerobic base built from years of swimming and I had seen this type of training work very well in other sports. My theory was that the excessive fatigue and training I did in college was actually hindering my sprinting performances. I theorized that by restricting my level of fatigue, I could focus my training on more high quality workouts.
As you can guess, the majority of practices focused specifically on developing speed and power. I used 5 types of practices for developing speed and power. Note that due to the limited time I had in the water, I often only warmed up with just 200 yards, and occasionally not at all.
Power Training – These days focused on short sprints with lots of resistance. I wanted to avoid burning out my nervous system with too much sprinting, so on peak power days, the reps were adjustable. I would stop when I felt my power beginning to drop off.
Examples:
5-15 x 6 arm cycles, MAX, Max Swim Tower Weight on 2:00
5-15 x 6 arm cycles, Fins & Paddles, MAX, Max Swim Tower Weight on 2:00
Fiber Recruitment – These days, I tried to prime my nervous system and muscle fibers for maximal amounts of speed. I did this by using drag sox & anti-paddles while swimming at ‘easy speed’ with very good technique. The distances were usually kept short, and the rest was kept high. Immediately after removal of equipment, I would swim something short and fast, then immediately get out of the water for the day in an attempt to program my body to always swim like that.
Examples:
20x25s, Easy Speed, Anti-paddles, Drag Sox, Snorkel on :40
10x25s, Easy Speed, Anti-paddles, Drag Sox, ¼ Bucket Swim Tower, on 1:30
Lactate Tolerance Training – These days focused on dive sets. A constant mixture of 50s 75s & 100s. Rest was adjusted from 3 minutes all the way to 15 minutes between efforts. These could be with resistance, with fins, with paddles, or with nothing.
Examples:
6X 50s on 5:00, ½ Bucket Swim Tower, MAX
5X 75s on 7:00, Fins & Paddles, Max
Lactic Production Training – These days focused on the ability to produce large amounts of acid. Broken swims to were used to achieve this. I tried to generate the maximal amount of acid that I could with repeated fast, short rest sprints between 25y and 50y. These again could be done with different equipment, resistances, and rest. The reps vary because my day to day ability to handle acid would change. The goals was to stop one rep after reaching an acid overload condition. I defined an acid overload as the point where either the kick, the stroke, or the bodyline becomes heavily compromised due to fatigue. Luckily, my body composition makes this point extremely easy to identify because speed instantly drops off a cliff.
Examples:
4-16 x 25s max on the :15 – :30
4-8 x 50s Max on :60
Rest Days – Due to all of the sprinting in this program, rest days were taken frequently and they were critical. These served to rest not only the body, but the mind. I would try to do fun things like underwater hockey, hypoxic games, bubble rings, etc. Excessive amounts of freestyle on recovery days was restricted, because I personally felt that a lot of slow freestyle actual negatively affected my technique and neural system.
After a 2 week taper, race day arrived. I selected my home pool at Purdue and invited family, including my dad, to see what I had been doing during my lunch breaks at work. Not only did I achieve the qualifying time, but also hit a new PR. Yes, we acknowledge that this is only the 50m free, but we hope the results help coaches to have another perspective when writing their swim programs.
The Tower Features
Performance
Smooth Resistance: Our design fixed the ‘jerkiness’ issue seen in the past.
Consistent Resistance: This tower provides consistent resistance over many hours of use
Engineered Frame: As professional engineers, we used only the latest technology and materials
No More Rope Kicking: By changing the rope height, your feet are free to kick water- not rope
No Rust: We used only ultra corrosion resistant hardware and aircraft aluminum to build our tower
Resistance: 0 – 20 Lbs of resistance, adjustable via water level in the bucket
Portability
Dimensions: Collapsed (29 L x 24 W x 45 H) Inches Extended (29 L x 24 W x 69 H) Inches
Weight: Just 35 Lbs
Storage: The tower is super easy to transport in your SUV or truck
Value
Our shipping can be as low as $50 a tower. With further discounts for multiple orders! We can ship internationally for reasonable rates. Just contact us directly on our website The Destro Swim Tower provides teams with an affordable option; gone are the days where you need over $3000 to get your athletes the resistance training that they need.
“I graduated from Purdue University in 2014 as a mechanical engineer and swimmer. I was lucky enough compete against and practice with some of the best athletes in the world at the 2012 & 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials, and NCAA Div I Championships. Afterwards, I spent several years as a machine designer in automotive and manufacturing facilities. What I learned is that making an athlete is a lot like making a machine. When we build a machine, we use exact measurements, designs, plans, schedules, and conduct trials. After each revision, we quantify performance and make the appropriate changes until we have the perfect performance. This is how swimmers should be training, but we don’t yet have the technology available to train this effectively. I founded Destro Machines so that I could develop the tools our sport needs to escape the dark ages of training. It is my promise to develop the best training technology that the swimming world has ever seen. Machines aren’t just what we make, Machines are who we make.”
― Chuck Destro, Co-Founder
About Destro Machines
Destro Machines is a family and swimmer owned company. We were founded in 2015 when we realized that swimmers and coaches were lacking the effective and affordable training technology required for them to reach their goals. Our team of engineers, has spent months working with Division I College and top tier highschool programs to develop a tower that’s not only less expensive, but also more effective than any other resistance training system available.
Swim training courtesy of Destro Machines, a SwimSwam partner.
No doubt, lots of coaches hate hearing about success with short workouts. Sport culture is often oppressively stubborn, hostile to new ideas that challenge long established beliefs and values. In swimming, we tend to focus on the short term instead of shifting our gaze to the horizon of our future and consider the entire arc of life, of living and fulfillment. Why? Maybe because coaches unconsciously shape the agenda because their window to produce results is typically very short. Is it a coincidence that swimmers fall off a cliff after graduation when they’re no longer valuable to a program or a coach’s resume’?
Short, focused workouts work and our ability to perform at the highest level extends farther into advancing… Read more »
Yes, most of our top college coaches are stubborn but well meaning fools unwilling to try new things. That’s ridiculous – most of the best coaches are experienced pragmatists that do what works for their swimmers- including varying training methods – these discussions are almost meaningless in the abstract – have SwimSwam convene discussion/debate the best coaches, young and old and let’s here their journeys about about testing out what works for them and why
A little defensive, aren’t we? Thanks for making my point.
Only defensive over something worth defending. Tell Indiana, who has somewhere around 5-7 groups, that they don’t experiment. I think we are seeing a gradual shift in training approaches, it’s just that many of these coaches can’t afford to risk everything, including the school’s reputation and even their own personal ones, in order to go against something that has, by and large, produced results. I personally see the future being that of concise, more focused training. However, it’s wrong to look down on these coaches who need to look at the commitment they’ve made to their current swimmers, most of whom signed on while the coach was using more “traditional” training methods. A sudden shift can be quite jarring for… Read more »
2 questions: Did you lift/do other dry land as well? What kind of shape were you in when you started? I know you said it had been 18 months since you swam but did you work out in those 18 months. Because I feel like this training is good if you’re in good overall shape but if not you’d have to cross train/maybe do some more yards to get in general shape before doing this type of work
Ironically if he trained 30 minutes sprint USRPT a day without any equipment he’d likely be even quicker (but then wouldn’t have a product to flog)
See Sabir Muhammad’s results in the rubber suit era and early 2010s for what’s possible on very little but very specific training after an (even longer) hiatus
He has a 23.12 listed from 2012 Olympic Trials as his best time, along with a 23.24 and 23.28 from the BA Early Bird meet from May of 2016.
Short course time of 19.69 converts to 22.65 long course.
Oh how some scy 19’s would love to be 22.65 but alas there is no turn
Oh wow I didn’t know that the 50m didn’t have a turn, thanks for filling me in. I was simply stating the converted time.
The amazing feat that this gentleman accomplished would not have been possible without many years and thousands of miles of swimming with perfect stroke technique. By having that enormous background of perfect swimming, good technique was printed on his nervous system. That made it possible for him to swim a half hour a day tethered, and do his best time.
Entirely erroneous statement.
No, I don’t believe that you could put a new swimmer without much of a training background on a resistance machine and get that person to qualify for Olympic trials.
We don’t know that thousands of hours helped him achieve Trials. Perhaps training less over time with better technique and more attention to power would have made him faster? Maybe he was overtrained before his experiment? The years and years of yardage may have ultimately had a deleterious effect on his performance.
He was already an Olympic Trials qualifier before. See: Dara Torres
Exactly. Meaning the method he chose, pulling weights, may have got him to his goals more quickly, but the most important work had already been done.
I think many college swimmers believe your theory “that the excessive fatigue and training I did in college was actually hindering my sprinting performances.” Wish more coaches would!
It’s no longer a theory. Non-functional overreach was proven decades ago and is explained in entry-level physiology textbooks. Swimmers hate it and coaches “think” they are doing something positive.
Totally agreed. However I believe different training style will help different individuals. Swimmers like Manaudou, Fratus, Proud only go 2500-4000 a practice, with a ton of technique work, sprint and drills. We are also seeing the usrpt Michael Andrew starting to make a statement. who only does around 2000. But on the other hand we have Caeleb Dressel. He swam under Troyy so apparently he does a ton of yardage.
Just don’t forget that in college you don’t get to just swim the 50 free. If you are actually a stud sprinter and want to help your team you have to swim 13-14 races (with prelims and finals) within a 3.5 day meet at NCAAs. That requires a different level of fitness that just one 22 second race.