What can the The Montgolfier Brothers teach us about swim science?

The Montgolfier Brothers were pioneers in the lighter than air balloon field.  These brothers showed the world that by lighting a fire, and then holding a balloon over that fire that one could ‘float’ or ‘lift’ objects off of the ground.  Their first public display rose to over 1000 meters and traveled over a mile before falling to the earth.  It was then that local peasants destroyed it, believing that it was the moon fallen from the sky.  Soon thereafter they had displays witnessed by the King of France and Benjamin Franklin himself.  These men were geniuses and were hailed by the scientific community as such.  They proclaimed that they had discovered ‘Montgolfiere gas’, which was produced by burning wood and straw and was present in the smoke.

So how does this story apply to modern swimming?  Well, you see, the Montgolfier Brothers had successfully flown a balloon.  They had the market cornered on lighter than air science, and were poised to lead the world into a new age of travel by air.  What fell apart was the science behind the ‘lift’.  That’s where the comparison to modern swimming comes in.  We have programs and coaches around the world that parade out their ‘successes’ as proof of their programs validity.  They point to gold medals and championships, just like the Montgolfiers pointed to their smoke. 

What we have is nothing more than success with very little reason ‘why’.  Swim practices and training programs use hit and miss approaches at training athletes.   What’s worse, these practices are handed down to youth programs in an effort to prepare young swimmers for the tough training world ahead.  These practices are implemented by well meaning, but even less educated adults.  The result?  Injured kids.  Kids who leave the sport because it’s boring.  Kids who leave because they don’t see results.

You see the problem the Montgolfiers had was that their ‘science’ was wrong and it would lead to no further advances.  Thankfully the world of science has generally embraced the idea of testing theories instead of just accepting them.  The trouble the swim world has is that when big name athletes or coaches have success, challenging the ‘why’ behind it can get you ostracized.  Forget the elite level, try questioning a youth swim coach about why a practice is shaped the way it is.  Many (NOT ALL) will give generous amounts of ‘evidence’ that aerobic base building and repeated, long, slow swims help a swimmer become faster.  They can even point to USA Swimming who suggests that young swimmers begin long sets in order to build that ‘capacity’ for later in the sport.  With so much swimming success in the United States, they must be right.  We dominate the world swimming scene and therefore we must be doing something right.  I mean, right?

In 2008 and 2012 the USA won 31 medals at the Olympics.  The Japanese and Australian teams only won 21 and 20 combined.   (Japan won no medals in 2008)

In 2008 the USA had 304 million people.  The population of Japan was 128 and Australia had 22 million.  Combine those and they have roughly 150 million citizens.

So why does this matter?  For a country that points to it’s victories as ‘proof’ of program success, I point out that two countries that comprised less than half of our population brought home 2/3’s of the medals.  That doesn’t sound like we have the magic wand of swimming. 

Are we running our swim programs the right way, or just the other guy’s way?

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

― Bertrand Russell

 “I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”

― Michael Crichton

“Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.”

― Leo Tolstoy

Most swim sets use mythological practices, not methodological ones....

We hear this time and time again, 'be creative with your sets'.  This comes from coaches who are striving to create practices where swimmers aren't bored, try their hardest, and hopefully achieve.  So these coaches grab the dry erase markers and throw up workouts that resemble a rocket scientist's work, but we have to ask one question.   Where's the science?

The sets contain arbitrary distances and rest periods that are not tailored to any one athlete.  If the coach is lucky, one third of his swimmers will fall into a workout that produces some beneficial adaptation.  Many teams have 3, 4, 5, and often 6 lanes of swimmers at different levels of ability, yet the workouts are all the same.  One cannot reasonably expect this to be a formula for success for all swimmers. 

Let's take a look at a workout we found posted on the world wide web.

 A general breakdown shows that after this workout all of the swimmers will have swum 4,200 yards.  
1,800 of those yards are at race pace, and that's trendy.  (If correctly applied it's also successful.)  

1,800 yards satisfy our need to just 'work the kids out'.  We have to build their aerobic base, right?  Google why the aerobic base is a myth, after you've read the rest of this article.

600 of those yards are written as 'EZ', so no harm, no foul.  That's a pretty good workout, right?

 If you consider slow swimming good, then yes.  If you consider random speeds that don't give anyone an idea if they're progressing, then right on two counts.  Let's breakdown the workout to see what we've actually got here.

 600 yards of 'EZ' swimming.  This swimming is not race specific, and will not contribute to the swimmer's race.  This could be considered a recovery swim, but let's see if it's actually recovering from anything beneficial.

1,800 yards of 'we're not sure'  @ 4:00 and then 4:30  (1st and 2nd set respectively)

The 1set (@4:00) would call for a 25 yard length to be completed in 20 seconds if the swimmer used all 4 minutes.  The most likely scenario would have the swimmers going out with much faster 25's and slowing due to fatigue at the end of the 300.  

So instead of a well paced (and slow) set of 16-16-17-17-17-17-17-17-18-18-18-18= 206 seconds leaving 36 seconds for rest, your swimmer would have something that looked like this.

13-13-14-14-16-17-18-19-20-20-21-21= 206 seconds, allowing for a 36 second rest.  Both scenarios will have the swimmers finishing at the same time, both feeling well trained and the coach feeling accomplished.

More than half of that set would be slow swimming, engaging Type I muscle fibers and laying down nerve pathways that WILL be engaged during a race.  In other words, the swimmer will slow down because that’s how we trained the muscle.  The common belief would be that the above swimmer needs more cardio and aerobic training so they can hold their tempo.  The reality is much different.  The swimmer quickly exhausted the Type II muscle fibers that were underdeveloped.  Then the body, because it was trained in this fashion, switched over to Type I and slowed down.  No matter what you BELIEVE, a person cannot recruit Type I muscle fibers into ‘racing mode’ just because they are now at a meet.  It’s predictable because they did it in practice.  It’s predictable because the coach wrote the set that way.  The second half of practice calls for this set to be completed in 4:30, even slower.  This portion of the practice should be eliminated.

Take your swimmers ideal splits and compare them to the training splits.  How many yards did they swim at their race pace?  20%?  50%?  The goal should be 100%.  But this workout did include some 500 yard race pace sets.  Lets break that down as well.

1,800 yards of 'race pace' swimming @ 1:30, 2:00, and 2:30

The first set calls for 3x75 at P500.  (To be fair, the coach mentioned that each swimmer has a pace card.  That's a plus.  It sounds like he is attempting to educate his swimmers.)

         This breaks down to three 25’s to be completed in 90 seconds. Let’s say the swimmer’s 500 is just at 5:35. (that's a B cut for a 17 year/old, but the time is just for demonstration)  That’s 335 seconds.  Let’s break that into 25y’s and see where this portion of the workout falls in with this ONE swimmers ideal workout.  

The above swimmer should be repeating the 25’s at right around 16.75 seconds.  You can remove the start (1-2 seconds) and bring the swimmers calculated target pace to 333 seconds, or 16.65.  For the sake of the swimmers sanity, let’s make it 17 seconds per 25y.

The first 75 should look like this:  17 – 17 – 17 = 51 seconds.  That leaves 39 seconds for rest.  Too much for race pace training. The ideal rest periods are 15 to no more than 23 seconds.  The longer the repeat, the longer the rest.  So a rest of 20 seconds would be appropriate.  This rest, or adaptation period, is critical to forming Type II muscle fibers.  The same Type II fiber the swimmer will use on race day.  The coach has them doing this 6 times total during practice.

The second, or middle race pace set is 100 yards.  Take your RP of 17 and you get 68 seconds.  Now the rest is 52 seconds.  Again, we aren’t getting the effects desired as the work interval is now too long as is the rest period.  This swimmer is moving towards the creation of lactate, and that severely restricts the functioning of nerve cells.  The muscles are also being depleted of glycogen.  This excerpt from Dr. Rushall's swim bulletin '46a' sums sit up pretty well.

"Rises in acidity around the nerve axons and synapses interferes with the exquisite conductance of impulses in a pattern that is appropriate for a particular movement. Interference along the neural pathways from the brain to the muscles produces a breakdown in skill level. Glycogen energizes nerve conductance and if it falls below a particular level it will no longer be possible to conduct impulses of a high intensity which, in turn, reduces the forces that can be created. Lowered glycogen stores also thwart learning to a significant degree. For the coach, this means that when a swimmer's technique starts to "fall apart" and the velocity of swimming slows, fatigue has reached a point where no further exercise of that type is of any value."

The last 125 is much of the same.  Your swimmer should complete this in 85 seconds.  The rest period would be 1:05, or 65 seconds.  Again, we're not effectively training. 

Now practice has ended and the coach thinks he has swimmer who completed 18  ‘sets’ at race pace.  The reality is that he and the swimmer have no idea what was just completed.  The swimmer could have been diligent and swam his 17 second repeats and then had the long rest periods.  Or the swimmer could have swam slowly, getting rest periods that look appropriate for race pace swimming but the PACE was wrong.  Typically, it’s a combination of the two resulting in mixed results.

So we have 1,800 yards of ‘unknown’.

Looking back at the whole workout, most of what’s here looks to be generated by a coach who has generally thought the process through.  He did what he thought would be best for his swimmers.  What I hoped we have shown you is that what this coach has done is to pass on unproven training techniques.  Some of his swimmers will benefit and become faster making this look like a successful workout.  This gives us the false idea that the coach has a good program.  The coach no doubt has his swimmers best intentions in mind.  In fact, most of the coaches I’ve met with have great character and want only the best for their athletes.  We post this not to defame any one person, but to encourage you to examine your own workouts.  What’s the method behind your madness? 

Here’s a general example of just one day’s workout for the 500Y swimmer that would generate a known quantity of quality yards.  With a 'KNOWN' quantity, the swimmer can monitor for progress in practice.  Improvements can be seen here and not just on race day.  The swimmer above would want to hold 17 second repeats and rest for 20 seconds if they’re at the start of the season and 15 seconds if they’re advanced swimmers.  This is designed to allow for maximum adaptation of the swimmer’s type II muscle fibers.  Once they can’t hold the pace, their nervous system can no longer learn and ‘swimming on’ will have negative effects on performance.  A key to the following set is that the swimmer monitors the times and pulls themselves when failure occurs. 

Set #1

10 x 50 @ 500RP    (skip one after one failure, stop the set after two consecutive fails or three total)

Set #2

10 x 50 @ 500RP  (skip one after one failure, stop the set after two consecutive fails or three total)

Set #3

10 x 50 @ 500RP  (skip one after one failure, stop the set after two consecutive fails or three total)

If you said ‘It looks boring’, consider this.  There are no boring practices, just boring coaches.  USRPT calls for the coach to get involved.  You have 20 seconds to interact with your athletes between each repeat.  This is when you help them hold technique, refine their mental skills, and monitor their actual performance.

So if the above swimmer completes just HALF of the workout, they’ve just trained at their race pace for 750 yards.  With additional training they will approach the 1500 yard mark, three times their race yardage.  All at race speed.  It will be at that time when you adjust the repeat times down just a bit to work towards an even faster time.  And this is science….

We built it, but they haven't come?

This blog has many purposes;

First, we are joining a growing group of people who find that traditional swim programs aren't ideal for many of our young and developing swimmers.  We feel that too many programs today are composed of methods born from habit, old ideology, a lack of new information and plain old stubbornness.  The sport of swimming is an art, just as is dancing, music, acting, brain surgery….   Yet the athletes get treated like rented mules swimming 20+ hours a week.  So many young swimmers are subjected to endless yardage, boredom, and a basic lack of education regarding proper swim strokes.  Much of this is due to the general lack of educated coaches. When looking into the reasons why swim coaches are so scarce we discovered something fairly unique to the sport.

Swimming has the odd belief that in order to coach, one must have been a competitive swimmer.  We know, blasphemy!   How could a 'non-swimmer' ever coach swimming?  Take a good look around at other youth programs.  So many of the coaches have never played football, basketball, baseball, soccer, the list grows…. yet they manage to successfully develop youth sports programs.   We rarely hear any parents ask what 'other' qualifications do the coaches have?  Why aren't we bringing more parents into the coaching ranks?  We feel that many coaches would rather the parents look away while they have their kids slog through another uninspired practice.

Secondly, while this reason is tied in with the first it stands directly in the way of delivering access to swimming to thousands of kids each year.  The typical swim team template is very difficult to implement in area with limited resources.  Swim programs, unlike many other youth programs have made it a habit to pay their coaches.  To the swim clubs out there that do, this is not a shot at your program!  We write this to encourage areas that just can't afford that template to seek other options.

In our own town the swim club based out of the YMCA has had 5 coaching changes in 5 years.  Each change has threatened the very existence of the program and resulted in the hiring of coaches out of desperation.  It's time to scrap that system and tap into the talent that already exists in our small communities.  We have leaders all around us, let's put them to use!

Third, we have made many connections around the swimming world with some incredible people who don't hesitate to share their experiences with us.  Their love of the sport is greater than their egos, and they represent the swimming world very well.  We hope that this blog creates yet another venue for discussion and idea exchange.

Finally, we hope that this blog helps me to stay focused on WHY kids swim.  You can find many reasons why they quit scattered all over the internet.  Let's start sharing how we can help them stay IN LOVE with swimming.  Don't be the coach that teaches that 'fun' and 'hardwork' are mutually exclusive.  Both of us have been inspired by many new coaching friends who have made it a priority to keep fun in their practices while at the same time showing their athletes how to work towards excellence.

Feel free to comment anyway you choose.  Please remember our goals though.  Get kids swimming.  Keep kids swimming.   Make it fun.  Find more coaching talent.