Michael Andrew faces criticism for his training methods

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American team swimmer Michael Andrew has aroused a lot of curiosity due to his unusual training methods. After his collapse in the Friday 200-meter individual medley, those methods will likely be more scrutinized.

Andrew took the lead in the 200m IM, holding it until the last 50m. However, he collapsed during the free part of the stroke and ended up missing the podium entirely, continuing a trend he exhibited in his past performances.

Andrew and his father Peter, who is also his trainer, are followers of a methodology called Ultra Short Race Pace Training that is not used by any other American swimmer. The method involves dozens of short 25-meter repetitions at the pace of the race, unlike the preferred training method of swimming longer distances slightly below the pace of the race. Andrews’ training method means he’s less used to the 50-meter pools that are standard in international competitions like the Olympics.

The method has already been criticized by Michael Phelps, who saw Andrew disappear in a previous race and argued that he had to change his training in order to properly prepare his body for a full 50-meter swim.

When you slide water like that, I feel like it’s a training error, Phelps said in June, via Swimming World’s David Rieder. You don’t give yourself that chance to have the training reps you’re going to feel in the last 25 meters.

Andrew had told Wall Street Journal’s Laine Higgins that his goal was not just to win the 200 medley, but to break the world record of 1: 54.00 set in 2011 by Ryan Lochte. While acknowledging that the free end of the race is his weakness, he said his goal was to split 24 seconds on the butterfly, get almost 29 seconds on the backstroke, do the breaststroke in 32.5 seconds, then to finish the final division with a 28.5 second freestyle.

Instead, Andrew fell terribly short, especially on the free end.

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