#ICYMI - Swimming Science and USRPT

In case you missed this episode on the Playing with Science channel… Hosts Gary O’Reilly and Chuck Nice dive into the deep end as we explore swimming science and Ultra Short Race Pace Training alongside some of the sport’s insiders – Dr. John Mullen, Dr. Brent Rushall, and coach Peter Andrew. NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://www.startalkradio.net/all-access/swimming-science-and-usrpt/ Photo Credit: Ben Ratner.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Gary O'Reilly?

  I'm Gary O'Reilly.

• 0:10Chuck Nice?

  And I'm Chuck Nice.

• 0:11Gary O'Reilly?

  And this is Playing With Science. Today Chuck and I get a swimming lesson. Yes, and the answers to important questions such as, do swimmers actually sweat in the pool? And why the hell can I no longer float? Really, what is up with that?

• 0:26Chuck Nice?

  Because you're not made of soap, that's why. And keeping our heads above water will be physical therapist and swimming researcher Dr. John Mullen, along with Dr. Brent Russell, the man behind the ultra-short race-paced training method that has helped power teenage swimming sensation, Michael Andrew.

• 0:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes, and that's not just it. Michael's father will join us, Peter Andrew, who is Michael's coach, and he'll be telling us what it's like to have a teenage phenom bouncing around. Can you imagine if he says, "You're grounded"?

• 0:58Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:58Gary O'Reilly?

  And he laughs at him and says, "Dude, I'm a swimmer."

• 1:01Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, exactly. Why do I care if you ground me? Dad, what you should have said was, "You're anchored."

• 1:07Gary O'Reilly?

  Ooh. There, you see? Okay, right, that's all coming up, but first... That's so good, I like that. Dr. John Mullen, he's a physical therapist and a man who is considered a swimming science guru.

• 1:22Chuck Nice?

  So, due to timing, we captured the interview with Dr. John Mullen a little earlier, but man, it was still very good. Check it out.

• 1:30Gary O'Reilly?

  Here we have Dr. John Mullen. Now, you're going to have to explain exactly in the process of elite swimmer to the type of training regime, where you fit in. Because you don't coach swimmers, you prepare swimmers, is that correct?

• 1:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's correct. So, you know, with some of the Olympic-level swimmers that we're working with, we're meeting with them, kind of going through exactly what they're doing regarding not just their pool training, but also their strength training, their mental training, their rehabilitation as well. And then my main role is to try to make sure all those things are organized, make sure all those things are moving seamlessly together, to make sure that they are optimizing all these different areas, or making any slight adjustments to ensure they are getting to the next level. Often times with these Olympic level swimmers, they don't need a complete overhaul of their programming. Any of these areas usually don't need a full overhaul. So it's just trying to figure out the one or two little things that we can do to maybe put a small spin

• 2:26Speaker 02

  on it to get that, you know, 21% more improvement that they need to get to that next step.

• 2:32Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, so I have one burning question.

• 2:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35Gary O'Reilly?

  Why can't I float?

• 2:37Speaker 02

  Why can't you float? Well, that could be a mixture of two things.

• 2:40Gary O'Reilly?

  I used to be able to float as a younger person and as a teenager up into that sort of, and then I'd just race anybody to the bottom. Just technical.

• 2:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, as far as, you know, floating and those things could have to do with a bunch of things. How often you're in the water, maybe you lost that sense of position, or perhaps it's coming down to some body composition changes and things like that. So we can get into your body fat and muscle mass if we really want to get into those things.

• 3:06Gary O'Reilly?

  All right. So.

• 3:07Chuck Nice?

  No, no, no, no, no, please.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Maybe we might not want to get down that route.

• 3:11Chuck Nice?

  Does fat, does fat float? Because that means I am going to be very buoyant.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Well, that is typically more buoyant for sure, but I think the biggest thing is just the position within the body or in the water for the person.

• 3:22Chuck Nice?

  Right on.

• 3:24Gary O'Reilly?

  So the thing is, I mean, that's sort of leading me into everything I've read about swimmers, swimmers' strength, core strength is pivotal. And then I learned something else. You've got these core muscles and everybody says they can develop them and you work them, but there's different areas in the body, the frontal area and the dorsal area for core muscle development. Now, are there any others? And how do you go about building that core strength? But as you touched on, imbalance for a swimmer.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, every sport is a repetitive action, especially these ones like running or swimming or cycling, these ones where it's just one activity over and over. So what we have to try and do is to offset some of these imbalances because then doing that skill over and over, whether you're doing, you know, a USRPT or ultra short race pace training, you're still doing one activity over and over that's going to lead to some imbalances. So we want to start strengthening and offsetting some of those areas. And that can, for swimmers, a lot of it is with the shoulders because that's the primary risk of injury, but also can be done for the core and the hips. Because low back pain is common in the general population and that kind of feeds into swimming as well. So we want to make sure we are working those imbalances. And as far as core strength goes, yeah, it isn't just the, you know, six pack abs right

• 4:43Speaker 02

  in the front. It comes off to some of the core muscles on the side and then in the butt and then the hips here to make sure that the athlete has proper awareness to be able to maintain and get into a proper streamlined position in the pool. As elite swimmers keep improving, one area that we see that people need to keep getting better at is to streamline. Because when you're trying to get faster, there's really two areas. One, to build more propulsion and then two is to decrease your drag in the water. So if they can be in a better body position, that should be an easier route to reduce drag and to become a better swimmer than just saying, oh, we're just going to make you stronger and make you grab more water. But doing those things uses a lot of energy and may not be as efficient, especially for

• 5:27Speaker 02

  some of the longer races like 100 meters and up.

• 5:29Chuck Nice?

  What stroke actually uses the most muscles in the body? That, what's the hardest stroke, I guess, is what I'm saying?

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, typically butterfly is the one that's using the most energy and requires the most muscles involved. I mean, each one is similar, other than breaststroke, it's a little bit different, just because of the whip-like motion of the legs and the leg being the more propulsive area. But I'd say most studies show energy is, uses the most energy. Butterfly uses the most energy, so that would probably be the hardest stroke.

• 6:01Chuck Nice?

  And, and, and why would anyone swim the butterfly? I mean, like in real life? Seriously? I mean, you know?

• 6:08Speaker 02

  Because, because way back when, this is what they determined is going to be a stroke that they're going to compete in and that's pretty much the only reason why. I mean, butterfly wasn't a stroke originally, you know? It made a transition where it used to be butterfly arms with breaststroke legs and now it's transitioned into this dolphin motion and now it's turning into almost all underwater swimming, especially in short course nature. But yeah, when he would actually do butterfly on an everyday basis, hmm, I'm coming at a lapse of when to think that scenario could happen.

• 6:39Chuck Nice?

  I'm just saying, you don't see a lot of people butterflying up to the swim up bar. That's all I'm saying.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  No, that, that's for sure. That's, that's for sure.

• 6:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Chuck, you are unique. That is as polite as I can be right now. Okay. Doctor, you...

• 6:58Gary O'Reilly?

  Reading some of your work, you're very strong on joint mobility.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 7:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Obviously, you think about the more things in your wrists and your feet, the hips, to be able to generate that motion within the water. How can you go about developing that extra mobility for an elite swimmer?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, so with the elite athletes, when we're looking at joint mobility, we're starting to look at the soft tissue structures, the muscles and tendons, as well as some of the other, you know, you know, not technically soft tissue, but we'll put in that group, the tendons, oh, sorry, the nerves, the veins and arteries. These are some of the structures we can change, opposed to the bones and anatomy. We can't change those areas. So, once we find the area that's most limited, we come up with a game plan to address these with massage-like techniques, some stretching techniques, and then we monitor it over time, trying to have frequent doses to make those improvements.

• 7:50Gary O'Reilly?

  So, let's go back to some of the work you do with athletes, and I noticed something that kind of concerned me, standing landmine exercise, which sounds as if it's going to be particularly dangerous.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, that's just one exercise we use, and it's gonna be a great tool for helping an athlete develop power, um, where they're getting what we call triple extension, where they're getting hip extension, knee extension and ankle extension, and we feel that that can really help athletes who have a difficult time exploding off of a block, to help get them really using their whole body into the water. You know, we don't have, like you were saying, the pounding or the ground reaction in a lot of swimming, so I really feel like dry land can provide some compliment in combination of working on the dives and the starts a little bit more, but just being able to develop and create force on land is something a lot of swimmers have difficult times with, just due to the lack of practicing.

• 8:43Gary O'Reilly?

  When you talked about swimmers and developing power on land, a lot of people see the answer to any sporting problem as build more muscle.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:53Gary O'Reilly?

  Yet, that isn't the case so much in swimming, is it?

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Well, I think there's starting to be a shift in that mindset. It was certainly the traditional mindset that swimmers want to be long and lean and not have too much muscle because you could think that more muscle, bigger size, more drag in the water. But, you know, we're starting to see bigger and bigger Olympic athletes that are having more and more muscle. So I think that that kind of traditional mindset is starting to, you know, lack the evidence, or at least practical evidence based off of the size. And it may be that, you know, muscle is a pretty firm tissue that can still slice through the water. And as long as you're able to adjust your body line and position based off of your different body composition or more muscle mass, I think putting on more muscle is okay. Now, there may be a, you know, a higher end or limitation on that. We can't have, you

• 9:41Speaker 02

  know, bodybuilders, throw them in the water and expect them to be great swimmers. But I do think, you know, trying to limit muscle mass is something that is starting to be disproven at the upper level stages of swimmers.

• 9:51Gary O'Reilly?

  Interesting. Do you feel that there's a positive trade-off for the muscle, the increase in muscle mass as opposed to the times that you can create as a swimmer?

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for the most part there is. I think that's a very individualized question and that with some people you may hit that tipping point where it says, you know, hey, you're starting to get too bulky. Um, you're, even though you're creating more force, that might lead to you having more drag or creating too much metabolic waste in your body as you fatigue. But I think for the most part, most swimmers could put on some muscle and not have a negative effect with it. That's a very individual question, especially once you start reaching the elite levels.

• 10:30Gary O'Reilly?

  How many of the guys that you meet have unique cases where you said, oh, this person has presented this and the solution is that. And then you think, well, that's going to be common throughout. But they're not. Each, each elite swimmer, Olympic swimmer comes in and they have a particular thing that's making them not perform as well or is needed in their swimming.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, almost every time, actually. You know, I've worked with Olympic swimmers where some, they Are actually too flexible in certain areas. So we really have to stabilize those joints and to make sure that they can stay healthy. And you could argue that that hypermobility is maybe helping them get into odd positions to be more streamlined or create more force. But we really have to work on stabilizing to keep them healthy for the long run. Where other swimmers, they're a little bit stiffer and maybe can create more force. But if we could just improve their range of motion in certain areas a little bit more, that can hopefully get them to produce more force in that range and be a better athlete. So I really think it is individual and very case specific. And certainly, there is some overlap and carryover. But for the most part, just watching someone, you won't really

• 11:36Speaker 02

  know just at an observational level, oftentimes what they need to work on until you start to put them through tests or really watch them swim or train more.

• 11:45Gary O'Reilly?

  How much further can we take swimmers in terms of developing power, developing streamlining, efficiency in the water? And is it going to eventually get what everybody wants? Less, well, better times in the pool, better records?

• 12:02Chuck Nice?

  Or really, when will everybody catch up to Michael Phelps?

• 12:08Gary O'Reilly?

  All that?

• 12:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, great question. I think that's still gonna take a little bit. But I still think there's tons of room for progression within the sport. And I think where it's different than other sports is that drag is such a huge variable. And we're still coming up with ways to improve streamline and reducing drag. And some of those are, you know, things like the full body suits that were came around for a little bit and they were banned. But there are other avenues that they're improving with pool technology like the starting blocks, the lane lines and gutters to reduce waves and things like that. So I think there's some, a lot of room for biomechanical improvements that will help swimming speed. But then there are these few other swimming technological improvements that are coming out that also may help out the sport and help out speed and knock down

• 12:50Speaker 02

  some more Phelps's records. Or maybe he can just come back and entertain us for one more Olympiad.

• 12:55Gary O'Reilly?

  See, Chuck, I told you, faster water.

• 12:58Chuck Nice?

  Faster water, that's what it's about.

• 12:59Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 12:59Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 13:00Gary O'Reilly?

  The future, the faster water, the future.

• 13:03Chuck Nice?

  Poolsfield with Avion, there you go.

• 13:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you to Dr. John Mullen.

• 13:08Chuck Nice?

  Some great information.

• 13:10Gary O'Reilly?

  Pretty interesting, the way that you go about developing. An elite swimming athlete. Right, we are going to take that break. When we come back, another doctor, this time Dr Brent Rushall, the man behind Ultra Short Race Pace Training. Say that 10 times fast. No, thank you. See you shortly.

• 13:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. I'm Gary O'Reilly. And I'm Chuck Nice. And this is our swim meet and our special guest now, Dr Brent Rushall, world expert. And this is a long list, so I hope you're comfortable. Yeah. Human performance and sports psychology and creator of the Ultra Short Race Pace Training Method. Professor Emeritus, San Diego State University, I do like San Diego, recognised as the founding scholar in the field of behavioural sports psychology. Wow, we got, whoa, man, there's so many things we can have him back for. Excellent. Yes. And four time Olympic team psychologist for Canada. Mm hmm. Wrestling, swimming, ski jumping and cross country skiing. A man, as we've now found out, of many talents. Yes. Doctor, welcome to the show. Welcome.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Thank you very much. I'm pleased to be here.

• 14:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Ultra Short Race Pace Training. Now, swimmers always do the hard yards, like backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. You get up at some silly hour of the morning and go to the pool and that's what you do. This changed when you decided to enter the arena. How did you work towards achieving this kind of training method?

• 14:41Speaker 03

  Uh, it's, it's actually, the physiology actually is, is not new.

• 14:47Gary O'Reilly?

  Uh huh. Okay.

• 14:48Speaker 03

  Uh, in Australia, we were using Ultra Short Training of a Type with the Carlisle School of Swimming in the early 1960s.

• 15:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Oh, wow.

• 15:02Speaker 03

  And we're very successful in having four Olympians, the four youngest Olympians on the Australian team in 1964 were all from our club.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  And it it then worked very well in Nova Scotia. When I was the head coach of the Nova Scotia Scientific Swimming Squad. We had an age group swimmer there who went away to an age group meet and broke a world record. Broke one of the East Germans' women's world records, which was quite an achievement. And I've been in and out of swimming. My first love of sport really is rowing. And so if I get hooked up with rowing, as I did with Cal Berkeley and the national

• 15:56Speaker 03

  team and that, then I was out of swimming mainly for, you know, four or five years or so at that particular time. So, but my reason for being in swimming was the late Fergus Carlisle, who coached many world records and was looked on as being the the actual master coach around the world. In the same vein as is George Haines, the master coach that the United States has had in its history.

• 16:28Gary O'Reilly?

  President, you, there is one teenage phenom called Michael Andrew, who is using your technique. Now, that's today, and the the history is incredible that you've just listed there. Can you, because our listeners may, but people like me do not know exactly what ultra-short race-paced training actually is and what you did that was different from what was the norm, if there's such a thing.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  If you do some form of training at a physical level or in a physical attitude that doesn't replicate the final criterion place where you want to use the performance, that is, the competition that you're going to be in.

• 17:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 17:14Speaker 03

  Then you'll get no benefit from it.

• 17:17Gary O'Reilly?

  If I'm not mistaken, you have a pace set for certain times in the pool for for your swimmers, and that you train towards that particular pace, whatever it may be, rather than, well, you won't expect them to swim like that in competition if they don't actually replicate. And you're saying that the body will learn. From training at those speeds, am I, am I correcting what you're saying there?

• 17:44Speaker 03

  Very much so, and it not only learns, but it differentiates.

• 17:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Got you.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  How, how an important muscle for propulsion and swimming works when you're swimming one point eight metres a second as compared to one point nine metres a second could be very, very different. And if you try and go into an event and swim at one point nine metres a second using the motor coordinations and the brain structures that you form at one point eight, you're guaranteed to fail.

• 18:18Gary O'Reilly?

  Wow.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  So, so ultra-short race-paced training is probably, in modern terms, one form of high-intensity training. Now, high-intensity training is short bursts, short rests, and you get it over and done in a much shorter period of time. The effects on the physiology of the body of high-intensity work is very dramatic. There's a study out of England that says that we take recreational runners and they run for half an hour, five days a week, and we track how they go, and we give them one session a week of high-intensity training.

• 19:03Speaker 03

  They improve better physiologically, that's in terms of their tolerance of lactate and their aerobic capacity is better from just that one session.

• 19:14Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  And so we don't take USRPT swimmers and expect them to do eleven sessions a week or anything like that. If there is any indication that the swimmer is tired and will not be able to swim with the same exquisite patterns that they want to do at one point nine metres a second of crawl stroke propulsion, then...

• 19:44Speaker 03

  You tell them to get out of the water, go home because they're only gonna, they're only gonna do bad swimming.

• 19:50Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 19:51Speaker 03

  Bad swimming trains, bad swimming.

• 19:53Gary O'Reilly?

  How have you developed this ultra short race pace training in terms of the metabolism in the muscles? First of all, you'll go through an aerobic metabolism, then you'll go through anaerobic metabolism and you end up with a bucket full of lactic acid. How do you work so as not to get so far into that kind of debt?

• 20:14Speaker 03

  I'm shaking my head here. Unfortunately, what you described there is not how the body works.

• 20:19Gary O'Reilly?

  Fine then, please, I'm going to school.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  All, all energy systems work at the same time.

• 20:25Gary O'Reilly?

  All right.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  When you, when you go at 50% effort, sure, you've got a lot of the type one fibers, slow twitch fibers are carrying the performance at that particular time, but there's still anaerobic work being done and periodically, depending upon the technique you're using, these stored oxygen compounds that have got oxygen in there, use them and they're able to almost instantly replenish themselves from oxygenated blood that's flowing around.

• 21:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Thank you for correcting my thinking on aerobic anaerobic metabolism, just what I needed.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Do you know, it goes on, you do aerobic training, you do anaerobic training, you do lactate, the body doesn't function that way. When a swimmer dives into the water and they haven't done any movement because they've been forced to stay in the marshalling area and then walk out and get introduced and sit down and do all this sort of stuff. So they go from a no activity to a high activity when they dive off the blocks, their first 90 seconds of work is dominated by anaerobic energy because.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Aerobic energy, the systems behind it take a while to start. Blood pressure is one of those things and so here you are doing an activity where you're primarily using your upper body and the lower body is submaximal and so it's paying back oxygen and oh it's so complex. It takes maybe sixty to ninety seconds for a really trained person to go from no activity to as efficiently as they possibly can. And so that's anaerobic in there and if you do it too hard, you're going to use up your anaerobic stores because a swimmer goes into a race, they have a certain amount of anaerobic energy and that's it.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  If they block fifty percent of it in the first lap, then the remaining seven laps they've got, they've only got fifty percent left to spread over and that's why swimmers who go out fast usually come home slow. It becomes a matter of how, how hard do you swim to get a particular time in a race? What is the pace you've got to do? You've got to do thirty seconds for every fifty meters, let's say that, and you do it eight times and you swim a four-minute, four-hundred freestyle.

• 23:05Speaker 03

  You, the body has to learn that, um, how much energy is required to propel the muscles in the way they are used at swimming at that particular velocity, uh, to do it as efficiently as possible.

• 23:28Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so may I ask this, Professor? It sounds to me like what you're saying. Is that your brain has to be wired to produce performance in your body uh that it matches a circumstance. So the training is really about the circumstance for which you are training. So what you're doing is you're really training your brain to to control your body for this particular type of action. So if the action is a quick, uh, as you say, one point nine meters per second, then you gotta have your brain tell your body what to do to get to that. And that's really what's going on.

• 24:13Speaker 03

  That's right. You learn their neuromuscular patterns. There's a representation up here that makes the muscles function.

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  And and when they function, they function generating a certain amount of force to get that one point nine meters a second. If that's what the target you're looking for. Uh, the uh, high intensity interval training differs from what I do in that uh, we actually designate the velocity. And you've got to learn the nuances of swimming at a particular velocity that will take you to be the best that you can possibly be.

• 24:52Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:53Speaker 03

  Uh, and the the high intensity training is more of a fitness thing.

• 24:58Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  And they they get in and they just work really hard and they find that their heart rate goes down in the early stages of doing introduction to uh, uh, hip training. And then you start to get better in your other indices. But there there's so many studies out now that show that when you do high intensity training versus traditional training.

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  Hmm hmm.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Uh, and traditional training is where you grind out the miles. They call it swimming garbage yardage. Uh, when when you grind out all that sort of stuff, you don't get much benefit at all uh, from that type of training. And so uh, there are all uh, ma- many positives that come from the USRPT. The main one is. But if you keep repeating sets, say there's a, you, you need to do as many 50 meter freestyles on one minute at, um, at a 200 race pace that you can possibly do.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  And count how many successful ones you do before you have your first failure.

• 26:13Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 26:14Speaker 03

  And that might just be because of some, uh, some reason. And so we say, miss one trial, get back in again, go for them again. But when you miss two in a row, it's all over. So you know that, well, on today I did 21 successfully. And I was up to, uh, 24 when I actually had to stop. I met the two failures on it. Uh, that means that swimmers that don't have much of an endurance capacity in that, like tall, thin girls who are sprinters, they, they do the same set, but they can only do 12 of them.

• 26:56Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:56Speaker 03

  It's, they stop when they get to 12. They've worked as hard as they possibly can to get neural fatigue. And they just stop and get out, start to recover. Meanwhile, there are other swimmers in the pool with different abilities continuing on. Then you get someone who's a real whiz at distance swimming, and they might do 30 before they, they quit on it. So every swimmer swims a set, any set of USRPT that fits their capacity. And as, as long as you keep it at that level, you're talking about happy swimmers.

• 27:40Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Uh, the, in, in the early stages of USRPT, and I wrote the seminal paper in, uh, end of, uh, 2011.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  There were little clubs forming up all over the country and parents were pulling their kids out of traditional training programs because the kids weren't getting any better. They were being abused for not working hard enough when they didn't have the capacity to work any harder than they were doing. And so the parents then try the ultra short race pace things and the kids love it.

• 28:16Chuck Nice?

  So I'm a coach. I'm using the ultra pace, uh, short race training. Uh, I want to bring a, a swimmer's time down. How do I go about doing that? Is, is, is, is this something that you can utilize to do that? Or is this just something? How, how would you do that?

• 28:37Speaker 03

  That's, that's what it does.

• 28:39Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Uh, we, there's a concept that's called propelling efficiency.

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  All right.

• 28:46Speaker 03

  How much energy does a swimmer use to go through the water at a particular velocity?

• 28:50Chuck Nice?

  Gotcha.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Now, the faster you go using less energy, the better you're going to be as a swimmer.

• 28:57Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, right.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  And so how do, how do you hone the skill of getting everything fine tuned in your body to work as best as it possibly can to give you the best efficient movement? You do what the violinist does. You practice the thing that you're going to do in your performance. It's the specificity of training. If you are not training specifically for 200 backstroke, then don't expect to be the best in the world at 200 backstroke.

• 29:33Chuck Nice?

  That's it.

• 29:34Speaker 03

  You've got to put in the hard yards and all that sort of stuff there. Still, uh, although it's a, in some masters for us, it's a little contentious, but it, it's still, the amount of specific training you do governs your success in races. And you talk about Michael Andrew, Mi- Michael Andrew.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Since he was ten, probably has, probably has never ever done a session where he's not swum fast. Ooh. And the majority of the work he does, he gets in there, he does the quick stuff. Gotcha. And he, people are, uh, one, one of the, the knocks on Michael is he's the best in the world now, uh, that he's nineteen. But he's always been the best in the world for every age group that he, he goes through. He's just, uh, wasn't the Olympic sixteen year old phenomenon or that, that comes out

• 30:35Speaker 03

  and then doesn't improve anymore. Like Michael Phelps was, uh, a very good swimmer, two thousand, two thousand and four. And Michael Phelps swam slower at the London Olympics than he did at the Beijing Olympics in two thousand and eight. And then he swam even slower at, uh, Rio than he did in the London Olympics. But he's, he's just so good that he is, was able to still get gold medals, swimming for him, inferior performances. So i- it's, if you wanna learn to do something and become good at it, do it. Good advice.

• 31:17Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 31:19Chuck Nice?

  I don't think we can get any better than that.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  No, I don't.

• 31:21Chuck Nice?

  Or more succinct, right?

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. You, you don't take a violinist and let him play drums in an organ. Uh, uh, that's, that's, that's just, uh, not, uh, if you wanna become a physicist, you don't do what happened to me when I was in school. You studied Latin because Latin is supposed to make you think and use information and all this stuff and that was.

• 31:49Speaker 03

  I got put through that mill and soon as I finished it, they said that doesn't work. And I could have told them that at the start, but uh, you know, there are things that were said, if you do this, it's gonna be great for you.

• 32:02Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:03Speaker 03

  Now, there are whole injury, uh, whole industries around this sort of stuff. Look at the uh, land training groups.

• 32:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 03

  You know, get out there and take your swimmers and get them to hump this, these weights and do all this sort of stuff. Uh, never do they do the neuromuscular pattern. That is what the brain tells the body to do. That's what goes into the race.

• 32:27Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Uh, you, you're gonna strengthen up irrelevant activities. It's a waste of time.

• 32:34Chuck Nice?

  So how, how, what, what's uh, what's Latin for bullshit?

• 32:39Speaker 03

  Uh, heather dust.

• 32:42Chuck Nice?

  I'll take that.

• 32:45Chuck Nice?

  The way you explain it, it seems like it's just common sense. It's a perfect, uh, you know, an elegant way of thinking about what you're doing. Do what you're going to do. Yeah. Actually do, actually train for what you're going to do. So why, why the controversy? Why such pushback? Why is there, uh, you know, such resistance to this?

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. That when, when people make a commitment to something that's wrong, or they accept something without being able to make a judgment, is this wrong or right? I don't have the capacity to do that. And they do it very publicly and they use funds, say, to uh, make an educational system that perpetuates all these myths and misconceptions about how the human body works. And that then becomes the only knowledge that should be known by swim coaches or by athletic coaches. Uh, they're, they're very uh, want to turn around and say, whoops, wait a minute, we were wrong.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  We've got to now change all this and go with USR PC.

• 33:58Chuck Nice?

  Wow, so I'm gonna say, perhaps we can call you the Galileo of swimming, my friend.

• 34:08Speaker 03

  I need to go to Italy and have a feather.

• 34:15Gary O'Reilly?

  You've already thought about this, you've thought this through. That's not the first time that thought's been entered into your mind. Doctor, what an absolute privilege.

• 34:23Chuck Nice?

  It really is.

• 34:23Gary O'Reilly?

  We went to school.

• 34:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we did.

• 34:25Gary O'Reilly?

  And we're so grateful you were the teacher. Thank you.

• 34:27Chuck Nice?

  It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you.

• 34:29Gary O'Reilly?

  Doctor, we are gonna take a break. It's been, as I said, a privilege talking to you, Dr Brent Rushall there. Thank you so much. Right, that break, when we came up, yes, that young swimmer, Michael Andrew, will be speaking to his father, no less. Stick around, we'll be right back.

• 34:49Gary O'Reilly?

  Welcome back to Playing with Science. I'm still Gary O'Reilly.

• 34:52Chuck Nice?

  I'm still Chuck Nice.

• 34:53Gary O'Reilly?

  And we are still in the pool, swimming around. Just been speaking to Dr Brent Rushall, who took me to school, which was brilliant. I enjoyed that, very much so. And it's now time to talk to the coach and father of Michael Andrew, one of the country's leading swimmers and still a teenager, a swimmer that turned pro at the tender age of 14. Oh my word. Peter, how are you, sir?

• 35:18Speaker 04

  Good, thank you.

• 35:20Chuck Nice?

  Thanks for joining us.

• 35:21Gary O'Reilly?

  Taking a break from, you are actually taking a bit of a 10 minute break from training.

• 35:25Chuck Nice?

  You're actually training right now, right?

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's right. No, we are. That actually works out well because he's just finished the set and he's feeling pretty fatigued anyway. So an extra 10 minute break will be really good.

• 35:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, tell him we said, you're welcome.

• 35:41Gary O'Reilly?

  Glad we could help. So, I mean, how do you, not just as a coach, but as a father, how do you live with the teenage phenom?

• 35:53Gary O'Reilly?

  At fourteen turns pro, how are you coping by the way?

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, we obviously coping well. I mean, he's my, he's my son and I mean, swimming, swimming really is the, just something that he does, right? And he loves doing it and I mean, who he is and and you know, how he lives is way more important than than the swimming. And so, yeah, I mean, I, I, for me, it's a, it's a huge honor. I get to train him and be with him and coach him. So, I mean, I'm super blessed.

• 36:29Chuck Nice?

  So let me ask you this from a, from a father's standpoint, all three of us are fathers here.

• 36:34Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 36:34Chuck Nice?

  Um, what is the biggest challenge of, of, of coaching your child? I mean, I, I can tell you right now, I'm the kind of father, I could never coach my son. I, I know that, I know it would just end our relationship. My son would end up hating me. Uh, but you, you seem to have the secret sauce. What's, what's your secret?

• 36:58Speaker 04

  I don't know. I, I, you know, right now, he's, he's pretty fatigued and I can see he's super angry at me. Uh, but yeah, so, but yeah, he's either way now I'm watching him kick away from me, but, but, but you know what I've, I've discovered and, and really it's been amazing on our journey is that to, to really make this work is you, you know, we both have to have a why and define, you know, what, what, why we, why we do things? What, what is our, really our ultimate journey? And then in the training is to train him as a father loves. That's what I think it is, is, is I love him no matter what, you know, and, um, and there's got to be obviously a, a real trust factor. I mean,

• 37:41Speaker 04

  I believe when he, I know like when he's, when he's tired and I have to trust always that he's, you know, that he's totally honest. And you know, I, I think he reads me so incredibly well when I'm stressed or, or, or or I pretend that I'm, I'm okay with something. He, he sees it before. And what I've noticed is, and learned over the years is, is I can't fool him, you know, and, and by being, by being negative in any way, actually just makes his training worse, makes him perform worse, you know? I mean, it's just really all about, uh, love. I mean, uh, love and, and serving, you know? I mean, for him and for me, yeah, that was the end, you know?

• 38:26Chuck Nice?

  I gotta tell you, that's, that what you just said is, is it's, that's a, that's a beautiful thing, man.

• 38:31Gary O'Reilly?

  Secret sauce of most things, love.

• 38:32Chuck Nice?

  That's a secret sauce to, I mean, what you just said translates into so many other things in parenting. I was sitting here just taking some things in and started to think about my son and how I handle certain things with my son. And as you were talking, I gotta tell you, Peter, as you were talking, I literally said to myself, Chuck, you are fucking up.

• 38:56Gary O'Reilly?

  I'd have gone with doing it, could have been, could have done better, could have done it a different way, but that's your thinking. All right, let's move on.

• 39:05Gary O'Reilly?

  Having spoken to Dr. Rushall, how much of that ultra short race pace training are you implementing? In your, in your regime? Or have you modified it? Or is it exclusively that?

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I'd, you know, I'd say that we are, we are definitely exclusively USRPT. Everything we do is at race pace.

• 39:29Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 39:30Speaker 04

  We stick to the rest times. I mean, we really only do 25s and 50s, mostly 25s, you know? Because, and what I've learned with Michael too is, is really. I believe he should be doing the two I M because he's so good at all strokes. But it really doesn't matter what I believe, you know, that my job is to coach him to be the best in what he wants to be. Because because I believe in at a stage he's going to come around and he'll want to do that race. And then and then I can help train him and prepare him for it, you know, and so a- anything in this has to be his choice. But I mean, we we definitely are exclusively U S R P T.

• 40:08Speaker 04

  Except just probably about a month or two now, we've started trying to integrate some weight training. And I and I still don't get the science, there's no science that that um uh uh supports doing outside dry land weights. To help fast swimming, but um we have a relationship with Dr. Noakes and I know Dr. Noakes in South Africa is very close with Dr. Russell. And you know, he's got that central governor theory and it really the brain controls the body.

• 40:39Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 40:40Speaker 04

  And so Michael's brain, when he stands up next to Nathan Adrian, feels like he needs a bit more size. So you know, that's what we're kind of working on, but trying to do it in a way that the the fatigue from the weight. Doesn't take away from the fatigue in the water. So um yeah, so that's kind of our change, but as far as the swimming, it's totally U S R P T.

• 41:04Gary O'Reilly?

  And and Michael is so proficient in so many strokes. Has that proved a challenge over the the la- since he turned professional at fourteen? Has that proven a challenge for you as coach?

• 41:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, I mean, not really, you know, because um I mean, I think the the challenge now is that he he loves to sprint. And so that he just wants to swim fifties and a couple hundreds, you know, no- nothing above that. And um I feel like for me, the challenge in that is that he's nineteen and he really, he doesn't have the the same strength as the big sprinters. Uh although, I mean, he's ranked in the top five in the world in the fifty, but you know, and and strength will come. And and so I don't have a real problem with it because I think by twenty one, when we go for the Olympics. He's gonna be a lot bigger and stronger anyway, you know, just growth will come.

• 41:56Speaker 04

  But um, but yeah, so I mean, as far as a challenge, no, I, I, you know, I think the challenge would be me trying to have him swim races that I think he should be doing as opposed to training him for what he wants to do.

• 42:10Gary O'Reilly?

  How much of a temptation is it, particularly for such a young athlete who, you know, when you're nineteen, you can leap off tall buildings and stop trains, it's the kind of thing you think you can do. How, how difficult is it to resist the temptation to think, let's work at a much faster race pace in his training and see how that goes?

• 42:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, no, we haven't, we haven't, I haven't, I, you know, way back when he was even younger, we've tried that and it was, it was not, it doesn't work.

• 42:42Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay.

• 42:42Speaker 04

  Because you fail too early, you fail too early and, um, yeah, it doesn't work.

• 42:48Gary O'Reilly?

  Hmm.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  And so, so really what we, what we do, I think what we're doing, especially in the fifties, is that when we do over speed work, I mean, it's at all out pace, like crazy, you know, as fast as he can go. And I can see that's getting faster and faster, but then we use the hundred pace work to, to really help with the back end of the fifty and so we keep that at his hundred pace. And, and I, I really see that working really well because we, you know, we work to try and hold more than sixteen repeats before he would have a neural failure. And, um, yeah, if we try and push that any faster, I think he's failing at ten and then I don't think it's effective, I don't think he'll build the, the, have that endurance

• 43:32Speaker 04

  that he needs even in a fifty. So, yeah.

• 43:36Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. So now, let me ask you this, and you may, you may not have an answer because, um, when you start so young and your body is going through so many changes, how does that affect you as the athlete, your performance? And how do you manage the goals that you'd like to achieve, knowing that your body, I mean, when you look at, uh, when you look at Michael, his body is still going through, he's really not out of puberty yet, let's be honest, he's nineteen, he's- Before he's twenty-one, he's been appointed himself- Yeah, he's still changing. So how do you manage the goals that you'd like to achieve, knowing that the athlete's body is going through this metamorphosis?

• 44:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, you're totally right because I do see that it's, I mean, it's body, it's growth happening all the time. And I think with growth and stuff too, you know, little things happen with technique and, but I mean, I think that's our advantages is with technique. You know, it's just him and I, so we get to, and he feels the water so well. And so if I see anything, we just speak about it until we try and make little alterations as he grows. And, um, yeah, so I don't think it's a, it's a huge issue at all because I, I, I think, you know, most people are, except for, you know, grown adults, they're all adapting and changing and so, you know, he's a, he's a whole human being. And so, you know, I, it's not really a big issue.

• 45:02Gary O'Reilly?

  Okay, that's interesting. Fair enough, fair enough, yeah. All right, just to, because Michael was featured in National Geographic magazine, um, the attention as he starts to deliver those faster races, how is he coping with that kind of attention?

• 45:20Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, no, he's fine. You know, he, he, I, I know, I, I, I was listening to his answers and stuff today, or yesterday with, uh, that Splash magazine is, they're doing a Oscar block, so he's like the feature leading internationals and, you know, I really think he, I, I know he has it right, you know, that he has a gift, you know, he believes he has a gift.

• 45:43Gary O'Reilly?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  And that it doesn't define him, you know, it's, it's, and we've worked a lot on this as a family, you know, because we kind of try and team around him and support him and it's like, you know what, you, you, you, if you, if it's all about, if it's all about making money or getting a gold medal, you're probably in a fatigue and not make it anyway because all that stress that you put on, you've got to really be able to step up there and be free. So, I mean, he's, he's, he races a lot, he loves to race on the big scene and, and he's really working to just be free, you know, free of any anxiety and, you know, and obviously there's going to be some nerves and stuff, but if those are good nerves, those are good, but if it's

• 46:24Speaker 04

  negative nerves and, and having to perform or having to do it for a, a sponsor or, or, or that type of thing, it actually makes you fail. And, you know, he's so smart, he realizes that and we've actually been through that when he was younger and he's so smart. I think that's a huge advantage that he went pro early. Because he he almost failed right away because now he had that pressure of, oh, I need to perform because I've got to do it for my sponsors. And so he's gone away from that. And and and definitely, I think, I mean, for me, I think, wow, what an amazing opportunity we have, where he's nineteen years old and it's actually the beginning of his career. And he's already been through all the things that kind of choke him.

• 47:04Gary O'Reilly?

  Yes.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  And now I see a freer kid that stands up there. And and I see it, you know, even with Swam and Columbus and all of these times, he's going PBs and everything. And so it's such a beautiful progression going towards nationals. And this is really the first meet where, you know, he has to step up. He's not a junior anymore.

• 47:23Gary O'Reilly?

  Right.

• 47:24Speaker 04

  And and so there is a pressure on that. But I I think he's going to handle it incredibly well.

• 47:28Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, sometimes it's funny, sometimes no matter whichever sport an athlete is in, attention can help deviate.

• 47:40Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Gary O'Reilly?

  And from what their original objectives were, but it sounds like the team, the family are very well placed and very aware. And like himself, obviously has quite a good grip.

• 47:53Chuck Nice?

  And like, yeah, and like you say, he's he's actually used to it. Like, he's already gone through all of that. And now he's kind of at the beginning of his career.

• 48:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah, it's an interesting point of view. And it's it's something.

• 48:04Speaker 04

  And I mean, and and he's experienced that bad coaching because I I think that I I was in a stage where I was I was in negative, you know, like when he's when he's failing, I'd be like, oh, come on. Even today, I feel a little stressed because he's he's he's not doing as well in practice. And it's like, you know what, we've had two days of filming, and we're up late, and we're out, and we we were kind of showcasing other things we do. And and so it's fatiguing. And and and, you know, we've been through all that. I mean, still, I'm I'm we're all human, right? I catch myself like, what am I doing? You know, I'm just gonna heap the coals on him. And so, yes, we've been through all that.

• 48:46Speaker 04

  And I feel like we've all come out and and learned so much in the time that we've had. So so definitely, our journey forward, we have a massive advantage going forward.

• 48:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Well, thank you, Peter. It's been a pleasure.

• 48:59Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we won't we won't hold you up from.

• 49:01Gary O'Reilly?

  No, we won't. So hopefully, we've given. Michael, a bit of a 15 minute break.

• 49:06Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 49:06Gary O'Reilly?

  Sounds like he could, could use it. Well, look, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. As I say, we wish Michael all the very, very best in the pool with all the upcoming meets and for the rest of his career.

• 49:16Chuck Nice?

  Thank you.

• 49:17Gary O'Reilly?

  Peter Andrew there, Michael Andrew's father.

• 49:19Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Gary O'Reilly?

  It sounds as if they've really got it together as a coach, as an athlete.

• 49:25Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 49:25Gary O'Reilly?

  But as a family.

• 49:26Chuck Nice?

  As a family.

• 49:27Gary O'Reilly?

  And the balance is there. What an interesting thought that at 14, he turns pro.

• 49:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:33Gary O'Reilly?

  Unusual as a, as an athlete, an elite athlete, but mistakes, coming to terms, effect on performance. And now still as a teenager.

• 49:45Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 49:45Gary O'Reilly?

  Looking at this point in the journey as the first year of his career, professional career.

• 49:52Chuck Nice?

  Absolutely. I call that, I'm going to call that the rookie veteran.

• 49:55Gary O'Reilly?

  Yeah.

• 49:56Chuck Nice?

  That's what he is.

• 49:57Gary O'Reilly?

  Not in a negative way.

• 49:58Chuck Nice?

  No, I'm saying it's the best thing in the world.

• 50:00Gary O'Reilly?

  Father says, I'm only bringing positivity.

• 50:02Chuck Nice?

  That's right. That's so cool. And here's what I learned from that, from that interview and maybe this whole show. I'm a lousy father.

• 50:09Gary O'Reilly?

  No, he's not. Great father. He just needs a hug.

• 50:14Gary O'Reilly?

  And no more coffee. All right. Well, that's our swim show. Hopefully you've enjoyed it. It was a pleasure being taken to school by Professor Brent Russell.

• 50:24Chuck Nice?

  That's right.

• 50:24Gary O'Reilly?

  Telling me, I don't know squat about aerobic or anaerobic, but thank you, sir. That was an honor to be schooled in that way. And yeah, wish Michael Andrew a very best of luck. Yeah. Really do. That's it for playing with science and our swim meet. Hope you've enjoyed it. We're back soon, I'm sure.