How Josh Staples Uses Distance Freestyle Training to Excel in Breaststroke/IM

Northwestern sophomore Josh Staples, last season’s 47th-place finisher in the 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA Championships, is now one of the nation’s top breaststroke and IM swimmers.

At November’s Texas Hall of Fame Invitational, Staples clocked personal best times in the 400 IM (3:40.05), 200 IM (1:42.45) and 100 breast (51.83), ranking 7th in Division I for the 400 IM. An international student from Australia, he had never raced any of those events in yards prior to this season.

In fact Staples, who raced only the 500 and 1650 free at Big Tens and NCAAs last season, still calls his non-freestyle events his “accessory” events. At practice, he still primarily does distance free workouts.

“I don’t actually even train it,” Staples said of breaststroke. “We just decided one day I’d do a couple 50s of it in a set, and I’ll do a 100 or 200 at a meet and see how it goes. And it went quite well.”

“Quite well” was an apt description of Staples’ performance at Northwestern’s first meet of the 2025-26 season against Miami-Ohio and Southern Illinois, where he won the 100 breast and swam the 50 breast for his school’s ‘B’ team for the 200 medley relay. He then proceeded to swim breaststroke at each of the Wildcats’ next four meets.

Staples added the 200 and 400 IM events to his repertoire during Northwestern’s Nov. 7 meet versus Duke, the Wildcats’ final meet before their midseason invite. Still thinking of himself as a freestyler, he only took on those events because he knew he could “always go out fast and not die.”

Josh Staples‘ Time Progression:

Other NCAA swimmers, Indiana’s Van Mathias and Finn Brooks to name a few, excelled at initially unfamiliar events because of their underwaters. But Staples attributes his own newfound abilities to his distance training, as the endurance he developed from it made shorter events easier.

“Because I’m doing the longer events, I’m always going to be fit to do the shorter events,” Staples said. “I don’t think I need the training specifically on breaststroke to finish a breaststroke race.”

Staples’ jump up the NCAA rankings can also be reflected in his increased collegiate experience. As a freshman coming from Australia last season, he wasn’t used to getting meet reps all the time, and struggled with his times being slower than what he’d expect in competition.

Still, Staples made a name for himself as a first-year by breaking Jordan Wilimovsky‘s school record in the 500 free, clocking a time of 4:13.28 at a last chance meet to qualify himself for NCAAs. However, he didn’t feel quite ready at the big meet, and ended up adding over 11 seconds to finish last — his personal best would have scored.

“I was pretty nervous going into it, not very confident,” Staples said of 2025 NCAAs. “I didn’t really put myself in a position to the best I could.”

This season, Staples is more assured in his abilities. After taking the entire summer off before his freshman season, he decided to train with his club team in Australia before his season, giving him more training under his belt headed into the fall.  Noticing the greater emphasis on underwater and skills rather than purely endurance in short course training, Staples has discovered what works best for him and has stuck with it.

Staples’ confidence showed at midseasons when he clocked a 3:42.88 in prelims during his first-ever 400-yard IM, despite his goggles falling off mid-race. He enters every season with the mindset that he’s capable of swimming at NCAAs, but he compete the rest of the 2025-26 season knowing that his midseason times put him in a greater position than he’s ever been to qualify.

Although Staples doesn’t enjoy thinking too far ahead, he will eventually have to make big decisions during the postseason. He’s expected to take on an increased role, as Northwestern’s main breaststroker on medley relays after only racing the 800 free relay last season. The 400 IM and 100 breast also fall on the same day at NCAAs, in addition to the 800 free relay and the 1650 free.

Right now, Staples leans toward picking the 400 IM over the 100 breast, citing less room for error in the latter event. But he credits Northwestern head coach Rachel Stratton-Mills and her staff for creating an environment that prioritizes swimming what one enjoys most rather than maximizing points — something that the men’s team has the luxury of of doing now that there’s more swimmers with high-scoring potential.

“We weren’t really focused too much on winning every single event we can,” Staples said. “We’ll focus on just having some fun with it and giving us something different to play around with, so it’s been a bit of a chance from last year.”

Alongside Staples, the Northwestern men’s team saw strong performances from David Gerchik, Oli Kos (younger brother of Hubert Kos) and Stuart Seymour, the latter of whom is ranked 7th in the nation for the 2021. The hurdle will be continuing those strong performances into NCAAs, a meet where Northwestern struggled to drop from Big Tens last season.

With Staples and his newfound event lineup, that task will be a lot easier for the ‘Cats to accomplish come March.