I'm saying I have no clue what the goals of the meet were, what his volume going into the meet was, what his training has even looked like to come to any "conclusions" from this "swim meet" result. All I can conclude is that his fastest 100m was the final 100m and that in the battle of Sam vs LS, Sam raced it more like what an pro tri swim will look like while LS swam it pretty much what a 1500m swim is; So there's not a ton of conclusions to make, and to suggest he's failing because he didn't set a PR is very short sighted imo. I certainly don't think they will "waste" training time to be "fresh" for a local swim meet, I'm guessing they used this far more as one of the quality swim days then going into some full blown "taper" mode for this event. This is far too irreelvant to waste a bunch of valuable training days.
II've never said he can't expect improvement. I've said this swim meet may not show you what he actual has improved upon based on his big swim block volume approach and that imo the bigger improvements will be truly determined in races. For all we know he's dropped his 100yd get out time to sub 1:01 or 1:03.5 from a 1:05, and that imo is far more relevant for him than this 1500m swim time would be. Yet we don't know if that's true or not and thus we are all basically talking in the dark when we are determining if he's improving or not.
So if he did a LCM meet middle of this year and is still in the 19:3x then yeah we have a problem. But again it's why I personally as a coach don't like to add in intermident "check in" races like this in a big volume training plan. To me I would value what each weekly key sessions are showing (or not showing more importantly) 1000% more than what an athlete did or didn't do at a "swim meet" (out of their element, middle of training block, etc).
Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II
II've never said he can't expect improvement. I've said this swim meet may not show you what he actual has improved upon based on his big swim block volume approach and that imo the bigger improvements will be truly determined in races. For all we know he's dropped his 100yd get out time to sub 1:01 or 1:03.5 from a 1:05, and that imo is far more relevant for him than this 1500m swim time would be. Yet we don't know if that's true or not and thus we are all basically talking in the dark when we are determining if he's improving or not.
So if he did a LCM meet middle of this year and is still in the 19:3x then yeah we have a problem. But again it's why I personally as a coach don't like to add in intermident "check in" races like this in a big volume training plan. To me I would value what each weekly key sessions are showing (or not showing more importantly) 1000% more than what an athlete did or didn't do at a "swim meet" (out of their element, middle of training block, etc).
Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II
Last edited by:
B_Doughtie: Mar 6, 24 20:58