Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast - TST Quick Splash with Gary Hall Snr

Masters Swim racing season is upon us, culminating in the World's in Fukuoka in August.  Are you prepared? Have you included everything in your program that you need to? What are the quintessential cogs in the wheel that need to be learnt, practiced and perfectly practiced? 

In this bite size Torpedo Swimtalk Podcast we revisit our chat with World renowned swimmer and coach Gary Hall Snr from The Race Club where he outlines the important components to help you on your way to being the most successful swimmer you can be.

And if you enjoyed hearing from Gary Hall Snr in this short form pod, listen to the full episode (number 41) for more of Gary's coaching advice.

Connect with Gary:
The Race Club

Transcript

Danielle Spurling: 0:03

Here's a scenario for you. So if it goes ahead, next year the FINA World Masters will follow the world championships in Fukuoka. If you were a master swimmer and you've been out of the water for a while, with lockdown or whatever you know life getting in the way, what would you advise som e one with seven months out to do in their training to improve, to get to Fukuoka to be successful?

Gary Hall Snr: 0:30

It's a great question. When we do our camps, we have five different areas that we teach, five disciplines. I call them The one we teach the least, which we're very capable of teaching, but most swimmers that come to us have a pretty good swimming program, training, swimming training program And around the world not every master swimmer does, by the way, but most of the you know the eight to 80 year olds that come to us are coming from a fairly good club where they're working out And sometimes they're doing it the wrong way, but that's okay. But they get a pretty good base training with the mental training, the strength training, the nutrition and the recovery aspects. Those other four parts of the training are almost like neglected. Nobody talks about them. So the first thing if I say okay, Danielle, you're swimming at Fukuoka in seven months, and seven months for me is a long chapter. I don't call seasons seasons, i call them chapters because you are writing your book as you live it And every time you finish a championship meet, you close the book on that chapter and you start a new one. You don't look back, you glean from it what you can, you don't dwell on the past, you look forward to the next one. I like my chapters to be three to four months, but when you're training for a big event like the World Championships, you really should start even sooner than that. Seven months is a reasonable amount of time, but what you have to do in those seven months is really important, and that is not only have you got to. You have to train and you have to remember those five disciplines because if you're only doing a swim program and you don't have a strength program or mental training, tough toughness program, or your nutrition is bad or you have no recovery program, you aren't going to do well or as well as you would if you incorporated all those. You don't have to have a coach in all five, you just have to have a program. You have to learn. What do I need to do to improve my recovery time? What do I need to do to improve my nutrition? What do I? what's going to make my body swim faster? What do I need to do to swim fast in training? Do I do USRPT or HIPS training, or do I go aerobic or anaerobic threshold? What am I swimming? Am I going to focus on the 50 and the 1500? I hope not. Some do. Laura could do all of those and win. But most are going to say now I'm doing like these three events or four events and that's it. And these are my special, these are my best ones. So stay focused on the events, don't try to do it all. Pick your top two or three events, but know how to train for those events. And all swimming events, even the 50, requires some aerobic training And we're all everybody's enamored and we all want to swim fast, with the least amount of time and spending right, and maybe energy is going to that. This doesn't happen. So even in a 50, the last 10 meters or 20 meters of that race very aerobic. If you don't train hard enough, you might have a great 25, but the last 15 is not going to be so pretty. So the first thing we do is try to build the right swimming program. Incorporate a good strength right And at any age a nine year old, i would tell them you need strength and flexibility program incorporated. Yeah, three times a week or even more in some case, you know, i tell them how to recover faster, getting sleep, you know, changing their lifestyle, nutrition, and then we build that program. But the often the missing piece of this for the master's is the competition. No race enough, i think. Okay, i'm going to train really, really hard. I'm going to go to food. I haven't raised in three months but I'm going to get up there and I'm going to go for it. Uh-uh, your body's going to go into shock when you do that. Yeah, i mean you have to prepare to race by racing. It's different than training. I don't care if you do a quality lactate set or you go up and say, okay, i'm going to do 450s on five minutes all out. It's not the same. It's going to be warming up, sitting around for an hour and a half and getting up on the block and go. That's a different physiology, yes, that's a different. That's a different requirement, and you have to learn how to do that. The body has to be adapted to that stress level And so racing that's why we call ourselves a race club. I mean we want you to race to get faster in your championship. Me you need to go to. You know, ideally one a month, maybe more, but one a month they'll do it. And sometimes you can't find one need a month, especially during lockdowns and COVID. It's hard to find a place to go and train, let alone compete. But I would tell that person to try to find you know at least six weeks to go to five or six weeks before the change of me and get yourself ready by doing that. Okay, and then the five disciplines of training. Make sure you have the program in all five.