On Monday afternoon, Indiana head coach Ray Looze gets together his legendary IU breaststroke group. On this particular Monday, Ray had them working through a blue practice, with the target heart rate being 170-180 for the fast efforts. The active-rest practice was simple but a grind – see below for main set:
6x
4x (100 BLUE/100 Swim Out) @ 3:00
By Round, Blue =
- Kick
- Pull
- Combo (25 Kick-25 Pull-50 Swim)
- Fly
- Pull
- Back End 200 Pace
I know different coaches have different ideas about Urbancek’s pace color sets. But this is about as far from what he termed a Blue Set as I’ve ever seen. He expected certain paces off a T 30 or similar Time Trial (as short as a 400) with Blue 100’s getting 20-30 seconds rest. And he always had the sets as swim only. Kicking, pulling, etc. were done separately.
What’s the general consensus on the pulling on the lane line into the turn? It was a strict NO with us. Some of those guys were grabbing from about the flags.
I also don’t get the point of the flip turns. Yes it’s faster but how does it help?
Ray explains the point of the flip turns in the video – by giving them that extra speed, it keeps their body in line and on top of the water, which is how he wants them to train.
I heard him say that Coleman but I don’t understand why that would matter. You’re not in that position when you go into a turn. It’s training a different skill rather than something they would use in a race.
Does it not also give unrealistic time expectations given how much faster it is? I’m not being critical I just don’t see the benefit.
I hear you. Here’s my best explanation:
Kicking w/ a board and pulling w/ paddles aren’t meant to be training turns in the first place. They’re meant to be isolating a certain part of the stroke between the walls.
when performing both of those exercises, you’re not going to approach the wall or come off the wall the way you would when swimming normal breaststroke anyway (kicking w/ a board you’re approaching with one hand and pushing off on the surface, pulling w/ paddles its funky to do an open turn with two hands and you’re pushing off with extra flotation from the buoy).
So, given that you’re not practicing “correct” turns anyway, Ray sees the benefit of… Read more »
Fair.
I found it interesting and different / unusual.
I appreciate the time taken to reply. 👍
Not part of the explanation given, but it also means they aren’t practicing bad/slow turns. Ray likes to isolate technique when he can, so during a blue set, the focus is on the swimming portion, and he’ll give each swimmer one technique issue to focus on. Setting up and execuing a good open turn on top of that is hard, so you skip it by doing a flip turn.
He was always trying to fix my kick and body line, and trying to do that while also getting the stroke length right for a good turn in the middle of a blue set was just too much to be productive.
More importantly, where did you have breakfast?!!
Runcible Spoon with Cody after AM practice… video coming soon 🙂
sweet!!! can’t wait!
flipping creates good libe off wall, 2nd it also for hypoxic no breathing on grab turns, 3rd.. slow bad breast and fly turns in practice create bad habits on long sets..
why that dude pulling on lane line in breaststroke kick?
If I remember correctly (and I’m stretching my memory back to 2010), Ray said IU swimmers were doing that on kick sets when he got there, and he didn’t want to piss everyone off by making them change, so he let it go, and it’s just how it’s done, now. Since it’s consistent within the program, it doesn’t really matter.
hmm just seems pointless. i would be so pissed if the person next to me was pulling on the lines