StarTalk Radio - #ICYMI - Swimming Science and USRPT

Episode Date: July 19, 2018

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. Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

I'm Gary O'Reilly and I'm Chuck Nice 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 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 pace training method that has helped power teenage swimming sensation michael andrew yes um 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? Yeah. And he laughs at him and says, dude, I'm a swimmer. Yeah, exactly. Why do I care if you ground me? Dad, what you should have said was, you're anchored. 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. 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.

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? Yeah 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 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.

Oftentimes 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 on it to get that you know 21 percent more improvement that they need to get to that next step okay so i have one burning question yeah why can't i float well that could be a mixture of a few things i used to be able to float as a younger person and as a teenager up into that. So then I'd just race anybody to the bottom. 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 all right so no no no no no please they might not want to get on that route does fat does flat does fat float because that means i am going to be very buoyant that is simply more buoyant for sure but i think the biggest thing is just the position within the body or in the water for the person right on so the thing is i mean that's sort of leading me into everything i've read about swimmers swimmers core strength is pivotal and then i learned something else you've got these core muscles and everybody says 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 that you touched on in balance for a swimmer? Yeah, I mean, every sport is a repetitive action, especially these ones like running or swimming or cycling. These ones were just one activity over and over. So what we have to try and do is to offset some of these imbalances because them doing that skill over and over, whether you're doing a USRPT or ultra-short race-based 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, you know, six pack abs right 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 just 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 some of the longer races like 100 meters and up what what what stroke actually uses the most muscles in the body that what's the hardest stroke i guess is what i'm

saying yeah typically it butterflies the one that's using the most energy and requires the most muscles involved i mean each one is similar other than brush stroke. It's a little bit different just because of the whip-like motion of the legs and the legs being the more propulsive area. But I'd say most studies show energy uses the most energy. A butterfly uses the most energy. So that would probably be the hardest stroke. And why would anyone swim the butterfly?

I mean, like in real life? Seriously. I mean, you know. 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 you would actually do butterfly on an everyday basis, I'm coming at a lapse of what I think that scenario could happen. 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. No, that's for sure. That's for sure.

Chuck, you are unique. That is as polite as I can be right now. Okay. Doctor, reading some of your work, you're very strong on joint mobility. 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? 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, not technically soft tissue, but we'll put in that group the tendons, sorry, the nerves, the veins, and the arteries.

These are some of the structures we can change. Opposed to the bones and the 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. So let's go back to some of the work you do with athletes. And I noticed something that kind of concerned me, a standing landmine exercise, which sounds like it's going to be particularly dangerous. Yeah, I mean, that's just one exercise we use,

and this can be a great tool for helping an athlete develop power 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 complement 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. times with just due to the lack of practicing. When you talked about swimmers and developing power on land, a lot of people see the answer to any sporting problem as doing more muscle. Yet that isn't the case so much in swimming, is it? 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, higher end or limitation on that. We can have, you 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 interesting do you feel that there's a there's a positive trade-off for the muscle the increase in muscle mass as opposed to the the times that you can create as a swimmer yeah i, 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. 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 more most swimmers could put on some muscle and not have a negative effect with it so that's a very individual question especially once you start reaching the elite levels 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 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. 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 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 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 better times in the pool better better records. Or really, when will everybody catch up to Michael Phelps? All that. Yeah, great question. I think that's still going to 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 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 some more of Phelps' records. Or maybe he can just come back and entertain us for one more Olympiad.

See, Chuck, I told you, faster water. Faster water, that's what it's about. There you go. Yes. The future, the faster water, the future. Pools filled with Avion. There you go. Thank you to Dr. John Mullen. Some great information.

Yeah, 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-paced training. Say that ten times fast. No, thank you. See you shortly.

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-paced training method. Professor emeritus, San Diego State University. I do like San Diego. Recognized

as the founding scholar in the field of behavioral sports psychology. Wow. Oh, man, there's so many things we can have him back for. Excellent. Yes. And four-time Olympic team psychologist for Canada, wrestling, swimming, ski jumping, and cross-country skiing. A man, as we've now found out, of many talents. Yes. Dr. Welcome to the show.

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

It's actually, the physiology actually is not new. Ah, okay. In Australia, we were using ultra-short training of a type with the Carlisle School of Swimming in the early 1960s. Oh, wow. And we're very successful in having four Olympians. The four youngest Olympians on the Australian team in 1964 were all from our club. And 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 German 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 team and that, then I was out of swimming mainly for four or five years or so at that particular time. So my reason for being in swimming was the late Forge Carlisle, who coached many world records and was looked on as being the actual

master coach around the world, in the same vein as is George Haynes, the master coach that the United States has had in its history. At present, there is one teenage phenom called Michael Andrew who is using your technique. Now, that's today, and 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 pace training actually is

and what you did that was different from what was the norm, if there's such a thing? 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, then you'll get no benefit from it. If I'm not mistaken, you have a pace set for certain times in the pool 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 correct in what you're saying there? Very much so. And it not only learns, but it differentiates. Gotcha. How an important muscle for propulsion and swimming works when you're swimming 1.8 meters a second as compared to 1.9 meters a second could be very, very different.

And if you try and go into an event and swim at 1.9 meters a second could be very very different and if you try and go into an event and swim at 1.9 meters a second using the motor coordinations and the brain structures that you formed at 1.8 you're guaranteed to fail wow so so ultra short race pace 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, they improve better physiologically. That's in terms of their tolerance of lactate and their aerobic capacity is better from just that one session. Right. And so we don't take USRPT swimmers and expect them to do 11 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 1.9 meters a second of crawl stroke propulsion, of crawl stroke propulsion, then you tell them to get out of the water, go home, because they're only going to do bad swimming. And bad swimming trains bad swimming. 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'd 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? I'm shaking my head here. Unfortunately, what you described there is not how the body works. Fine, then please. I'm going to school. All energy systems work at the same time. All right. When you go at 50% effort, sure, you've got a lot of the type 1 fibers, slow twitch fibers are carrying a 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 thank you for correcting my thinking on aerobic anaerobic metabolism just what I needed. 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 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 it's so complex that it takes maybe 60 to 90 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. If they blow 50% of it in the first lap, then the remaining seven laps they've got, they've only got 50% left to spread over. And that's why swimmers who go out fast usually come home slow. It becomes a matter of 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 30 seconds for every 50 metres, let's say that, and you do it eight times and you swim a four-minute 400 freestyle. a four-minute 400 freestyle. The body has to learn how much energy is required to propel the muscles in the way they are used at swimming at that particular velocity to do it as efficiently as possible. 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 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 control your body for this particular type of action. So if the action is a quick, particular type of action. So if the action is a quick, as you say, 1.9 meters per second, then you got to have your brain tell your body what to do to get to that. And that's really what's going on. That's right. You learn the neuromuscular patterns. There's a representation up here that makes the muscles function.

And when they function, they function at generating a certain amount of force to get that 1.9 meters a second if that's what the target you're looking for. The high-intensity interval training differs from what I do in that 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 and the the high intensity training is more of a fitness thing right 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 HIIT training.

And then you start to get better in your other indices. But there's so many studies out now that show that when you do high intensity training versus traditional training, intensity training versus traditional training. Traditional training is where you grind out the miles. They call it in swimming garbage yardage. When you grind out all that sort of stuff, you don't get much benefit at all from that type of training. And so there are all many positives that come from the usrpt the main one is that if you keep repeating sets say there's uh you need to do as many 50 meter freestyles on one minute at 200 race pace that you can possibly do

and count how many successful ones you do before you have your first failure. Right. And that might just be because of 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, today I did 21 successfully, and I was up to 24 when I actually had to stop. I met the two failures on it.

That means that swimmers that don't have much of an endurance capacity like tall, thin girls who are sprinters, they do the same set, but they can only do 12 of them. 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 and 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 quit on it. So every swimmer swims a set, any set of USRPT that fits their capacity. And as long as you keep it at that level, you're talking about happy swimmers. In the early stages of USRPT, and I wrote the seminal paper in end of 2011, 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. So I'm a coach. I'm using the ultra pace short race training. I want to bring a swimmer's time down. How do I go about doing that? Is this something that you can utilize to do that? Or is this just something, how would you do that?

That's what it does. Okay. There's a concept that's called propelling efficiency. All right. How much energy does a swimmer use to go through the water at a particular velocity? Gotcha. Now, the faster you go using less energy, the better you're going to be as a swimmer. Yeah.

Right. And so 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.

That's it. You've got to put in the hard yards and all that sort of stuff there. Still, although in some masters' premise it's a little contentious, but it's still the amount of specific training you do governs your success in races. And you talk about Michael Andrew. Michael Andrew, since he was 10, probably has never, ever done a session where he's not swum fast. And the majority of the work he does, he gets in there,

he does the quick stuff. Gotcha. And he, people are, one of the knocks on Michael is, he's the best in the world now that he's 19, but he's always been the best in the world for every age group that he goes through. He just wasn't the Olympic 16-year-old phenomenon that comes out and then doesn't improve anymore. Like Michael Phelps was a very good swimmer, 2000, 2004,

and Michael Phelps swam slower at the London Olympics than he did at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. And then he swam even slower at Rio than he did in the London Olympics. But he's just so good that he was able to still get gold medals swung for him in inferior performances. So if you want to learn to do something and become good at it, do it. Good advice. There you go.

Thank you. I don't think we can get any better than that or more succinct, right? You don't take a violinist and let him play drums in an organ that's that's just uh if you want to 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 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 we said if you do this it's going to be great for you right There are whole industries around this sort of stuff.

Look at the land training groups. Get out there and take your swimmers and get them to hump these weights and do all this sort of stuff. Never do they do the neuromuscular pattern, that is what the brain tells the body to do that's what goes into the race right uh you you're gonna strengthen up irrelevant activities it's a waste of time so how what's uh what's latin for bullshit uh heather dust. I'll take that. The way you explain it, it seems like it's just common sense. It's a perfect, you know, an elegant way of thinking about what you're doing.

Do what you're going to do. Actually do, actually train for what you're going to do. So why the controversy? Why such pushback? Why is there, you know there such resistance to this? 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 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, they're very want to turn around and say, whoops, wait a minute, we were wrong.

We've got to now change all this and go with USRPG. Wow. So I'm going to say perhaps we can call you the Galileo of swimming, my friend. I need to go to Italy and have a feather. 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. Well, listen.

What an absolute privilege. It really is. We went to school. Yeah, we did. We're so grateful you were the teacher. Thank you. It really is. We went to school. Yeah, we did. And we're so grateful you were the teacher. Thank you. It's been a pleasure

talking to you. Thank you. Doctor, we are going to 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.

Andrew will be speaking to his father, no less. Stick around. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Playing With Science. I'm still Gary O'Reilly. And I'm still Chuck Nice. And we are still in the pool, swimming around. Just been speaking to Dr. Brent Russell, 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?

Good, thank you. Thanks for joining us. You are actually taking a bit of a 10-minute break from training. You're actually training right now, right? 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. Well, tell him we said you're welcome. 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 at 14 turns pro how are you coping by the way yeah yeah i mean we obviously coping well i mean he's my he's my son and i mean something Swimming really is just something that he does, right? He loves doing it.

Who he is and how he lives is way more important than the swimming. For me, it's a huge honor. I get to train him and be with him and coach him. I mean, I'm super blessed. So let me ask you this from a father's standpoint. All three of us are fathers here. Yeah. What is the biggest challenge of coaching your child?

I mean, I can tell you right now, I'm the kind of father I could never coach my son. I know that. I know it would just end our relationship. My son would end up hating me. But you, you seem to have the secret sauce. What's your secret? I don't know. You know, right now he's pretty fatigued and I can see he's super angry at me. You know, right now he's pretty fatigued and I can see he's super angry at me. Yeah, so, but yeah, he's away now. I'm watching him kick away from me. But you know what I've discovered and really it's been amazing on our journey is that to really make this work is, you know, we both have to have a why and define, you know, why we do things.

What is really our ultimate journey? And then in the training is to train him as a father loves. That's what I think it is. I love him no matter what, you know. And there's got to be obviously a real trust factor. I mean, 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, um, you know, 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 sees it before. And what I've noticed noticed and learned over the years is I can't fool him. By being negative in any way actually just makes his training worse. Him perform worse. It's just really all about love.

Love and serving. For him and for me. That would be it, you know. I got to tell you, that's what you just said. That's a beautiful thing, man. Secret sauce of most things, love. 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 got to with my son. And as you were talking, I got to tell you, Peter, as you were talking, I literally said to myself, Chuck, you are fucking up.

I'd have gone with doing it. It could have been done better. Could have done it in a different way, but that's your thinking. All right. All right. Let's move on. Having spoken to Dr. Russell, how much of that ultra-short race pace training are you implementing

in your regime, or have you modified it, or is it exclusively that? Yeah, I'd say that we are definitely exclusively USRPT. Everything we do is at race pace. Wow. We stick to the race times. I mean, we really only do 25s and 50s, mostly 25s, you know, because, and what I've learned with Michael, too, is really, I believe he should be doing the 2 IM 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 anything in this has to be his choice. train him and prepare him for it you know and so anything in this has to be his choice but i mean we we definitely are exclusively usrpt 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 supports doing outside dryland weights to help fast swimming.

But we have a relationship with Dr. Noakes. And I know Dr. Noakes in South Africa is very close with Dr. Rushall. And, you know, he's got that central governor theory. And really the brain controls the body. 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 fatigue from the weight doesn't take away from the fatigue in the water. So, yeah, so that's kind of our change.

But as far as the swimming, it's totally USRPT. And Michael is so proficient in so many strokes. Has that proved a challenge over the, since he turned professional at 14, has that proven a challenge for you as coach? Yeah, no, I mean,

not really, you know, because, I mean, I think the challenge now is that he, he loves to sprint. And so that he just wants to swim 50s and a couple of hundreds, you know, nothing above that.

And I feel like for me, the challenge in that is that he's 19 and he really, he doesn't have the same strength as the big sprinters. Although, I mean, he's ranked in the top five in the world in the 50, but, you know, and strength will come. And so I don't have a real problem with it because I think by 21, when we go for the Olympics, he's going to be a lot bigger and stronger anyway. You know, just growth will come. But, yeah, so, I mean, as far as 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. How much of a temptation is it, particularly for such a young athlete who, you know, when you're 19, 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 yeah i mean no we haven't we haven't i haven't uh yeah way back when he was even younger we've tried that and it was it was not it doesn't work okay because you fail too early you fail too early and not, it doesn't work because you fail too early. You fail too early. And, um, yeah, it doesn't work. 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 and as fast as you can go.

And I can see that's getting faster and faster, But then we use the 100 pace work to really help with the back end of a 50. And so we keep that at his 100 pace. And I really see that working really well. Because, you know, we work to try and hold more than 16 repeats before he would have a neural failure. And, yeah, if we try and push that any faster, I think he's failing at 10. And then I don't think it's effective. I don't think he'll build the endurance that he needs, even in a 50. So yeah. Yeah. So now let me ask you this, and you may not have an answer because

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 Michael, his body is still going through. He's really not out of puberty yet. Let's be honest. He's 19. Before he was 21, he was going to find himself. He's really not out of puberty yet. Let's be honest. He's 19. Before he was 21, he was in the point of 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? Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you're totally right because I do see that. I mean, it's growth happening all the time. And I think with growth and stuff too, you know, little things happen with technique. But, I mean, I think that's our advantage 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 and we try and make little alterations as he grows. And, you know, so I don't think it's a huge issue at all because I think, you know, most people, except for, you know, grown adults, they're all adapting and changing. And so, you know, he's a whole human being. So, you know, it's not really a big issue. Okay.

That's interesting. Fair enough, fair enough, yeah. All right, just because Michael was featured in National Geographic magazine, the attention as he starts to deliver those faster races, how is he coping with that kind of attention? Oh, yeah, no, he's fine. You know, he, I don't know, I was listening to his answers and stuff today, or yesterday with that Splash magazine, they're doing an Oscar block,

so he's like the feature leading internationals. And, you know, I really think he, I know he has it right, you know, that he has a gift, you know, he believes he has a gift, and that it doesn't define him, you know. And we've worked a lot on this has a gift, he believes he has a gift, and that it doesn't define him. And we've worked a lot on this as a family, because we kind of try and team around him and support him. And it's like, you know what, if it's all about making money or getting a gold medal,

you're probably going to 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 races a lot. He loves to race on the big scene. 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.

to be some nerves and stuff but if those are good nerves those are good but it's that negative nerves and and having to perform or having to do it for a sponsor or or that type of thing that 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 signed 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 definitely, I think, I mean, for me, I think, wow, what an amazing opportunity we have where he's 19 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. And now i see a freer kid that stands up there and and i see it you know even with swam

in columbus and all of his times he's going pbs on 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 right and and so there's a pressure on that but i think he's going to handle it incredibly well sometimes it's funny sometimes no matter whichever sport an athlete is in attention can help deviate yeah from what their original objectives were but it sounds like the the family, are very well placed and very aware. And Michael himself obviously has quite a good grip. And like you say, he's actually used to it.

He's already gone through all of that, and now he's kind of at the beginning of his career. It's an interesting point of view. And he's experienced that bad coaching because I think that I, I was in a stage where I was a 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 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, you know what we've had two days of filming and we're up late and we're out and we you know we're kind of showcasing other things we do and and so it's strategic and and uh and you know we've been through all that i mean still 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 um so yes we've been through all that 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 uh we have a massive advantage going forward well thank you peter it's been a pleasure we want to we won't hold you up from we won't so uh hopefully we've given michael a bit of a 15-minute break. Yeah. Because he sounds like he 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. Thank you. Peter Andrew there, Michael Andrew's father. It sounds as if they've really got it together as a coach, as an athlete, but as a family. And the balance is there.

What an interesting thought that at 14, he turns pro. Unusual as an athlete, an elite athlete. But mistakes, coming to terms, effect on performance. to terms, effect on performance, and now still as a teenager, looking at this point in the journey as the first year of his professional career. Absolutely. I call that, I'm going to call that the rookie veteran. Yeah. That's what he is.

Not in a negative way. No, I'm saying it's the best thing in the world. As his father says, I'm only bringing positivity. That's right. That's so cool. And here's what I learned from that interview and maybe this whole show. I'm a lousy father. No, he's not.

Great father. He just needs a hug 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. That's right. Telling me I don't know squat about aerobic or anaerobic.

But thank you, sir. That was an honour to be schooled in that way. And, yeah, wish Michael Andrew the 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.