New training program is generating a lot of buzz for Mizzou swim and dive this season

The meet has an interesting roster rule, as only eight swimmers and one diver are allowed for each the men’s and the women’s teams. This is significantly smaller than some other meets where normally it's 24 athletes for an SEC competition.

Director of Swimming and Diving Andrew Grevers is ready for the challenge that this brings.

“You have to get creative on how you use your pieces. So it's gonna show, you know, where our strengths and weaknesses are, or at least our inability to cover all the events when we only get eight athletes,” Grevers said.

He notes that it will be a great way to simulate how the NCAA championships might look like.

After the NCAA championships finished up in late March, the athletes got just 1-2 weeks out of the water to recover. Then, it was time to get back in the lab.

Grevers knows there is more in the tank for the Tigers after last season.

“My assessment last year is we had a phenomenal season, and we just didn't quite have everything come together at the end of the year,” Grevers said. “I think to give the women credit, I really do think they did an incredible job at getting to NCAA’s and performing (there).”

The men’s team also made it to the championship meet, where they had three athletes score points too.

Most notably, Collier Dyer won the 3-meter dive. Jan Zubrik nabbed 10th with a personal record in the 200 fly and Tanner Braunton snatched 11th in the 10m dive.

Mizzou is looking to build off of its success from last season, and it started in the offseason.

“We’ve, as a staff, done a deep dive and made some pretty substantial changes to our training, our training foundation and not changing the ingredients, but changing the structure,” Grevers said.

He explained that the team has switched to something called a periodization training module, and it's already showing promising signs of success.

“It's gone extremely well in the long course season (summer), and from what I'm seeing this short course season (fall) even better,” Grevers noted.

The traditional model of training has three phases. The first focuses on building up aerobic conditioning, then it transitions to building up threshold as well as working on conditioning, then the final phase hones in on strength, power and peak performance. Then they will taper for the end of season meets.

The new periodization training method has a unique flow to it. It's broken up into four week rotations. The first of those weeks is referred to as the base week where the team will focus on foundational training.

Then they enter the build week, which ramps up a bit. This features an increase in aerobic capacity threshold, performance and power.

Peak week follows, and serves as the hardest of the four different training focuses.

“Peak week is kind of stepping away from that aerobic and endurance training, really focusing on performance. Almost every practice,” Grevers explained. “Peak week is pure performance, really simulating exactly what their bodies go through (during) a week of SEC’s or a week of NCAA’s.”

Finally, they end the cycle with an unload week. Grevers notes that while other teams may do a recovery day here and there, the Tigers are getting a full week. It serves as a time for the athletes bodies and minds to refresh, also helping the immune system get strong again.

“It allows us to track our improvement every month because every four weeks you're seeing the exact same progression,” Grevers said.

He has also noticed that athletes seem to be more motivated by the existence of a recovery week, and in turn are less afraid to give it their all in practice.

The implementation of this new periodization training module has got coaches excited about the upcoming season.

“To give me and my staff a little credit, we did know that it was gonna be beneficial, but it is surpassing my expectations at a pretty, pretty huge level,” Grevers said. “We’re seeing our athletes dig in and do things I don't know if I've ever seen here at Mizzou.”

The other big change made during the offseason was switching to lifting in the morning instead of the evening. This is due to wanting to rewire the athletes central nervous system to perform better in the mornings.

Since prelims are usually in the mornings and finals at night, if you don't get it done in the morning you don't even get to swim at night.

It has been all about the analytics for the coaches this summer, and the long wait to see how it pans out is almost here.

“The reality is we have the entire planet's knowledge at our fingertips now, so why not do the deep dive?” Grevers said. “We’re constantly taking the metrics, feeding them back into all our data points and learning how to do things better every single week.”

This new system and just how well it works will be put to the test this weekend, but at the first meet of the season there will be no high expectations for the team.

Grevers added that for bigger meets, unlike this one, it's possible to freshen up, practicing lighter in the days prior to make sure the athletes feel good.

“We are not getting ready, we’re not freshening up,” Grevers remarked. “It is going to show us kind of where we’re at right now.

The team will use this first meet as a baseline and build off of it as the season rages onward.

The swim and dive teams start their seasons at 5 p.m. Friday at SMU in Dallas.

While it's certainly too early to look ahead to the NCAA championships in March, Mizzou is striving to once again be back there. Grevers is hoping to reevaluate these goals and push for even more as the season progresses, but for now he hopes to score points with the women’s squad, and land top 25 at the championship meet with the men.